Wild Food for (F)unschool

Only three families, this week, but we went foraging in the meadow and surrounding woods & marsh for wild food. On the menu this week were licorice fern root, salmonberry shoots and petals, dandelion blossoms and young leaves, new cedar and fir needles for tea... We looked for maple blossoms, but none were low enough to reach. Then we got distracted with holding some baby and adult snakes.

Wild food is rather behind, with all the chilly weather, this year. We'll try again in a couple of weeks and see what else we can gather.

 

...and we went home with flowers in our hair...

(which appeared there while climbing around in a wild plum)

Witness Excellent Teaching

I've talked about Brian, before, here. But last week Tal had his last violin day of the year with Brian, and I want to celebrate that, as well as give you all the opportunity to see really excellent non-coercive teaching in practice.

Brian Hoover is a virtuoso teacher. Not because he 'trains' people to be virtuosos, but precisely because he doesn't. Brian listens.

What you will witness in the 1/2 hour video below is Brian's extraordinary patience, flexibility, openness, and compassion. This is the definition, to me, of a good teacher. He acknowledges that teaching is not a one-way flow of information, but that it is a conversation, with acceptance and response being key to learning. In just 20 or 30 weeks (45 minutes/week), Brian has taught Tali many fundamental (conventional and unconventional) music skills, but above all he has become his friend.

Each class is a compassionate conversation between two people, through music. Beyond conventional musical theory, my son has learned to express himself, to hear music, to be open to ideas presented, that he has a valuable voice, and that the universe is available to him to create, to love, and to celebrate. And all of this happened while Brian honoured Tali's desire to hold his violin upright on his feet, and to never 'practice'!

Taliesin plays when he wants to, how he wants to, and he goes to his excellent teacher for inspiration, to learn about life, and for friendship.



Tali is very quiet. He prefers not to talk, if possible, until he has known somebody for quite a while. During the first few sessions with Brian, he was pretty quiet; he lightly fluttered the bow across the strings and mumbled a few words when absolutely required. He did the bare minimum. Then one day he played with volume. Volume! 

Exclaimed Brian, "Well - that's a different sound than usual!"

"Yes," Tali replied, through lowered lashes and a screen of long hair. "My violin found his voice again." 

Thank you, Brian, for your beautiful gift to us and to the world.

The Music Party on Ile Kerguelen

I heard music coming from somewhere deep in the woods beside our property. Harmonica and accordion.

This morning the kids decided to go on an adventure around the world, and checked on their inflatable globe-beachball where exactly the other side of the world is... Turns out to be Ile Kerguelen, where they tell me a French music party is happening! So they planned their route over land via Alaska, Russia, the middle East, and Africa, made plans for rafting across the aqueous parts of that route, packed up both winter clothes and sunhats, first aid supplies, a French dictionary, a camera, a harmonica and an accordion, and they left.

They said I can call them in if their friends come over.

One beautiful part of this is that it the following were the only input from me:


"Mama, Where's the exact other side of the world?"
"I don't know; maybe Australia. You'll have to check your globe."


"Mama, can we bring the big first aid kit?"
"No; please don't."

Home

On Friday 3 things converged upon my sense of place:

• read a post at Radio Free School called Staying Local
• finally replied with my feelings about our learning centre taking a family field-trip to Mexico
• went on another (f)Unschool adventure close to home

The Radio Free School post inspired me to chime in on the issue, too. So here it is.

I've always felt very strongly that the beginning of any exploration (including life) needs to begin with the self. When a baby is born she first discovers the feeling of touch on dry skin; of air in her lungs, and the sound of her own voice. As she nurses, the simple act of living is her connection with her mother and her experience of the world around her. As she grows and her eyes become able to focus; her ears to differentiate voices, intonations, pressure changes, etc. she begins her relationship with the wider world. She moves into this relationship from a place of security, knowing that the strong connection she has with her mother will be her safety net; her 'home'. At first she will watch the world from her mother's breast: the changing texture of skin, the rolling of her mother's hair, the smell of milk and sweat; the feelings she's experiencing, and her own breath. Eventually she will take interest in movement and light, in her parents' faces and clothing, and also in others. She will look out from the safety of the arms whose smell and touch she knows as 'home' to explore the world around her with her eyes and ears, with her nose, and eventually with her skin and mouth. As she ventures into that world, she will return to 'home' for security and reassurance, at first dozens of times during the day, then perhaps one dozen, then just a few, as the safety net she's developed in her firm rooting of 'home' becomes less and less necessary. Eventually she'll move out of her parents' house and return perhaps once every few days with a phonecall to her parents or siblings, to talk.

It is the knowledge that that 'home' exists that gives her courage to explore beyond it.

I think most of us accept this scenario as normal. So isn't it normal, too, then, to expect all learning to follow a similar course? When our learning community was pondering having a family fieldtrip to Mexico, I responded that although I understand that those who can afford to travel find educational benefit in seeing other countries, I think it's very important, especially for younger kids, to learn and become inspired about our own home community, first. Although our kids do projects and field-trips and vacations to learn about other countries, cultures, and ecosystems, when do they learn about their own homes? How much time do most of us really spend getting to know our immediate surroundings? Every week I take families out to explore our island - the richness of history, ecology, biology, and sociology on this island is the same as everywhere else in the world, and it's free for us to explore. Every week, most if not all of the kids make discoveries that to them are 'amazing': things in our own 'home' that they never knew existed; things which inspire them to be interested in learning of all sorts, that inspire them to be curious learners, in general. We're developing a close bond with our home, so that the complex sciences of life have a grounding in that safe place the children know; so that we can grow our interest in these sciences from our deep understanding and concern for how those sciences apply to our 'home'.

We know home matters, so it matters to us to learn about it. Our learning community's director answered my email with these words: "One thing I really notice is that young kids especially are very present and mostly noticing the little things right in front of their noses. If you take them on some far away trip, what they remember the most is the flower they picked, or the water in the pool, or the dog that played with them, or the big hole they saw - which leaves you wondering why you paid so much money to go that far anyways!"

A couple of years ago I led a folk-song series with kids from our learning community, and did what I felt was natural: I started them off with a map of our island, and encouraged them to find their homes. From there, we began by singing songs about our island. It was that simple. Yes, we covered topics such as folk music, mining (there are mines on the island, marked on the map), driving (we pretended to drive around the map) and island life, but the root of it all was the children's understanding of their connection to the bit of land we call 'home'.

This past week for our usual (f)Unschool exploration we went up the bluffs on Mt. Collins. We got to know a piece of our home. Here are some visuals, photographed by myself, Rhiannon, and Beata:

Microcosm:

smell, touch, texture, physical connection, and tiny tiny things to see and hear

being here

Macrocosm:

Our smallness on the big island that sometimes seems small, itself. Our insignificance on a steep mossy slope; trees and rocks and animals whose existence supports ours, and whose fate is our responsibility.

Being Here.

Synthesis:

(Joy!)

(f)Unschool Discoveries, Today

Today we went exploring Killarney Creek.

Sarra found a Red-Legged Frog (blue-listed, but abundant in this area)

Tal still puzzling over the placement of fawn-vertebrae; Sarra learning how to hold a frog.

We found a little sinkhole near the creek, and measured its depth (with varying results, depending how far the kids stuck the stick into the mud at the bottom).

One of the earth's greatest puzzles: scattered bones! These are the bones of a young deer.

We accidentally frightened a wren from its nest-building.

Cedar Shells

Much of our side of the island burned at the beginning of the last century, and we are left with quite a large number of enormous blackened shells of the old-growth cedar that once stood all over this area. (Much of it was logged.) These black, spiky towers stand like ghosts among the trees, sometimes inhabited by animals, and temporarily by children. They make great forts, as long as they're safe.

We stopped by one of the largest groups of cedar shells on the way home from the community school, today, and the kids had a bit of a play. As he ran up to them, Tal shouted: "This is a monument, you know!!"

Learning Nature-ally

I may have mentioned before that part of the benefit of (f)Unschool becoming a Nature Club program is that we will have opportunities to have local experts join us on our outings. Bob Turner, an inspired geologist and also our local mayor, is one of those experts. Last month Bob joined us and some of Island Discovery's kids and parents to explore a clay-bank full of sea-shells. Discovering fossils first hand and learning about the history and geology of the earth is amazing anytime, but when one has the opportunity to learn about one's own home in such a manner then we internalize that learning much more deeply. It creates a spark of wonder and personal inspiration for further learning, in the future.

It is with great thanks to Bob for his gift of time, spirit, and knowledge that I publish this video of our clay-bank exploration:




A couple of weeks ago, during (f)Unschool, we were talking about the history of the forest we were hiking through: springboard notches in old-growth cedar stumps, burnt-out cedar shells from the long-ago forest fire, various edible plants and the benefit of the spring flooding to the ecosystem. I try not to talk too much, especially to the kids, but let them wonder and explore ideas, adding bits of information when it seems appropriate. And usually the kids share their own diverse knowledge with each other, deepening their relationships and their desire to understand the world. In all of this, Andra, who attends our local mainstream school, looked at me intensely and waved her arms around. "I didn't know all this, before!"

I laughed, and said that she knows lots about the island; we all have something to share.

She did not smile. "No. Seriously. They don't teach us this. If I brought my friends out here, they wouldn't know anything about this place! There's so much to know, here!"

I like to imagine her out in the woods sharing her newfound forest with her friends.

***

This week we're looking forward to getting back out to Nature Club (f)Unschool, after 2 weeks' break. It will likely be raining, and I'm beginning to think we might head right out into the water and really relish it. Maybe the mossy rainforest on the other side of the island. Hmmmm... Or up the bluffs if it's sunny.

***

When I talked to the Nature Club directors about making (f)Unschool a Nature Club activity, Will Husby (a very knowledgeable and friendly entomologist, educator, flautist and father who also happens to be my neighbour) suggested I look into David Sobel and Richard Louv, whom I'd never heard of...

Well, needless to say, I did look into them, and can now sharehere some really very excellent reads:

Article from Yes! Magazine: Beyond Ecophobia, by David Sobel
Article from the Boston Globe: Nature Nurtures Learning, by Peter Dizikes
Richard Louv's Blog: Fieldnotes from the Future

Passionately Reasonable

Auntie Bree (in black) practicing her excellent auntie techniques...

My lovely sister Breelana has started a blog!

Passionately Reasonable

And of course, because she's the manager of BC Playthings, and also in the process of getting her Early Childhood Development certification, as well as being both a beloved caregiver and a passionate supporter of child-led and life-learning, this thoughtful blog is going to have some interesting posts. :-)

Welcome to blogland, Bree!!

Peregrine Falcon Visit with the Homelearners

Lori took the full time homelearners to meet this lovely peregrine falcon near the Cowan house, today. We heard about falconry duck-hunting methods, all the little baubles, rings, and leash, etc. that she wears, and how to hold her. I believe she weighed about 3lbs.

She has to wear a little hood too keep her calm while being handled.

She's interesting, definitely, but not affectionate.

Tali's Mining Shovel

Tal has a mine. This seems to be his most usual outdoor haunt for the past couple of years, and all of his friends (and some of Annie's) make a habit of not only helping dig, there, but also often of checking out its progress before even coming to our front door! They were all rather upset when the mine was filled in by an overzealous Opa with a new tractor, last January... but then Opa made amends by putting up a steel fence and a "Slow Men Working" sign. The digging began again, and now the mine is better than ever. The mine is becoming so famous that Uncle Ralph gave Tali his own brand new shovel, this year. After repeated reminders, Tal has become a little more reliable about putting our shovels away, but now he has his own to look after. And it even has his name carved into it, so that passing adults will leave it alone.

Bird Feeders

One day I came to the table to find the kids making bird feeders. I love that they have these notions and just begin them, all of their own inspiration. We did encourage them to continue their rather messy activity out in the sunshine, and Markus ended up helping choose drill-bits. Tal actually carved out a roof for his, but then decided not to use it, when he realized that his base (a little clay planter-pot he made 2 years ago) had drain-holes in it, anyway. These feeders were completely designed and created by the kids, hung, and filled by the kids, and now we adults get to benefit, too, as they are frequently visited by a pair of Juncos.

Crab-Trap Saga

It began at Christmas. My brother Adrian bought a crab-trap for Markus. Finally in February, Markus appeared home from a friend's house, grabbed the trap and some life-jackets, and dropped it - with the friend's trap - on a line off of the friend's boat, in Deep Bay. All very lovely, but when the diligent friend went to check the traps, he discovered that ours had become hopelessly entangled with the buoy line, and had to be cut free, to save the rope. Various plans were hatched, and during the next couple of weeks we went out twice to try to retrieve the trap by fishing for it with various improvised tools... until one day the friend handed us a new trap.

The new trap sat around for a few weeks, until the kids and I took the notion to just simply drop it off the Mt. Gardner dock and see what would happen. We got a fishing license, and headed down. Oops. No bait. So we decided to just put a very mussel-laden rock in, which we first smashed the mussel-shells on. Here is what ensued:

Rhiannon and her friends untangled the rope.

We guessed that 20 knots might suffice, so they calculated 5 each, and tied with all their might!

Dropping time!

...and off we went.
When we came back to check the trap two days later, we found it neatly tied up on the dock. The rope was cut. Wait - no - not cut... lacerated! our rope had obviously wound around somebody's propeller, and we'd caused a moderately large pain in the ass for some poor soul who then carefully unwound it, rolled it up, and set it on the dock for us!! So sorry, whoever you are, and SO grateful!!

Well, we had arrived with real (junkfood) bait, this time, and tried to do a better job of setting the trap. Cheap catfood tied on a string, to keep it from falling or drifting out of the trap. Markus hunted the beach until he found a plastic bottle, which we filled with rocks and tied 2/3 the way up the rope. The idea was that this would keep the slack rope from drifting around at low tide. We also went through considerable effort to tie the rope around the actual decking of the float, in order to keep it out of the way of future potential prop-accidents.

Which would they like best? Cheap canned food or cheap bagged food? Are crabs picky?

Back two days later again... the kids made the exciting haul...

Tally: 2 giant sunflower stars, one small sunflower stars, and one giant pink spiny seastar.

Well, like everything else in life, it was a learning experience.

...learning about giant pink spiny seastars...

We went back with Ethan and Andra a couple of days later: More Sunflower Stars!!  This photo shows the quickly-retreating stomach of the giant sunflower star who had completely encased the can of catfood and was busy digesting its contents to nothingness. It was not sharing. Upon contemplation, we realized that where sunflower stars (voracious, giant, and relatively fast-moving predators of the seafloor) are plentiful, crabs may not wish to hang around...  At low tide we could see at least 20 sunflower stars just around the dock.

...nevertheless, for experience's sake...

...the kids added a new piece of bait and threw the trap back in, anyway.

A couple of days later again we went back and finally took our trap home. We now have plans to take it out with its own buoy, and see if we can find something edible. Someday.

Is Unschooling Bad for Us?

After all this time, we still quite regularly encounter people who worry about the children's welfare. Some of these people are passersby; some are long-time friends and family. The well-meant comments my kids have mentioned to me range from "Don't you ever get tired of being with your Mum?" to "You're homeschooled. You don't know anything!" to long explanations of common-knowledge things that they assume my kids must not know. To me, people usually quietly mention deep concerns about my children's "socialization" or "keeping up with their peers" or their ability to "make it as adults" or "in the real world". Or they assume my kids are geniuses, or have learning disabilities. Or they just roll their eyes.

The fact is, my kids are just kids. I am not sure exactly what grade level they function at, and I'm happy about that. I ensure that they have some regular activity that helps them develop basic life-skills, and this includes a bit of workbook practise (but I allow them to skip whichever pages seem silly or boring). Generally, I allow them to choose their own activities. Sometimes they read all day; sometimes they draw, craft, play lego, or do dramatic play all day long. When they get involved with something they generally keep at it for many hours. I'm not sure if the extra-long attention span is a result of not having a TV or of being allowed to take as long as they want, but I do think it's a good thing. It can indeed be difficult to schedule social time, because so many of their friends are in school so often, but therefore most afternoons are spent visiting with friends, and it's certainly not an issue.

I can't see the future. I don't know if my kids will "make it in the real world", but, just as I have confidence that they will succeed when allowed to follow their hearts, I have confidence that if the "real world" doesn't turn out to be what they want, they'll shape it to fit their dreams.

Anyway, I came across this video, which is a nicely thought-out adult unschooler's response to some of the criticism we face:





...and this one...

LIFE is Good Unschooling Conference

We just registered! 
And we're so looking forward to it! Perhaps some of our BC compatriots will be joining us...?

LIFE is Good Unschooling Conference
Red Lion Hotel, Vancouver Washington (next to Portland, Oregon)
May 26-29, 2011

http://lifeisgoodconference.com/

Note: This trip is actually sponsored for the MAMA Project, and I will be interviewing mothers in Portland and Vancouver, while we're there, as well as presenting SuperMAMA there and facilitating a MAMA Conversation at the Conference.

The MAMA Project is making a trip down the coast to California, to interview and gather data for the next set of portraits (the US West Coast set!) which will effectively double the MAMA Project's size and scope.

Surprise Picnic

Rhiannon's gift to Tal for his birthday was the promise of a picnic. One day when we had some time in the afternoon, she secretly made him a special birthday note, while instructing me on what to put in the picnic basket. She marched outside with a baby-carrier, retrieved Tal from the yard, and tied the carried around his face as a blindfold. Thankfully, he was a willing participant, as she led him to the car, down a somewhat dangerous blind-walk to the beach and over the rough rocks to the little island, where she left him to sit while she spread out her surprise lunch in front of him. It was a wonderful afternoon!