happiness is...

the Pony Club 'D' workbook...

doing a quiz...under the watchful eye of Prof. Malcolm

she has read and quizzed her way through the entire thing.....in two days....

relentless in the pursuit of her bliss

suh-weet.

(the actual testing isn't until March...i'm pretty sure she'll have it down by then)

Stream of Dreams...

Whereupon a group assembles to learn of the perils of putting crap down the storm drains and how washing their cars with vile soapy concoctions do unfathomable things to the Earth and the Water and our friends, the fishes....

...and when they have completed the aforementioned learnings, great fun is had painting wooden fishes and attaching them to otherwise ugly fences...

my favourite

 

When the sun doesn't shine....

Here's what we're doing.....

Sebastian masters his giant dinosaur floor puzzle!! (WOO-HOO!!!) This kid is a Master!
Savannah working on the Sims game....she's building an empire and tearing it down....one computer-simulated character at a time.......learning some more reading words and some simple math while she's at it....

In which Savannah is learning to read....

The learning to read saga reached a pinnacle today when I had flashbacks to the learning to ride a two-wheeler saga....desperate, I turned to the Oracle of Google. And found a fabulous and FREE (my favourite flavour) website (Starfall) full of learn-to-read goodness. This, it seems, is Savannah's preferred medium in which to approach this particular task....

And she's getting along swimmingly -- enjoying herself immensely -- and is much more confident. And I am much happier knowing that she isn't relying on my wretched teaching skills to achieve greatness!!

Oh, the places we go....

Savannah announced yesterday that reading is "the most important thing". I tend to agree. Then again, I'm a bit biased as I have an uncontrolled addiction to books. Seriously, an intervention may be required at some point.

So we decided to take a tour of the bookish places in our house...and, it seems, there are many...

Even here... a couple of books squashed between the shelf and printer on our computer desk. No idea why they're there..likely because one of them I was using for an online course and the other two as handy reference guides - the computer desk not being too terribly far from the kitchen...

Then of course there's the one shelf next to the computer....which is stuffed to capacity...overflowing even...

Those 'in-progress'....(I'm on my way out to drink tea and read in the garden when I'm done with this)...

The basket under the TV...it also overfloweth.....

The shelf in *my* space...these volumes are 'in-between shelves' at the moment await the purchase of an additional shelf to complete *my* space (a modest corner of the bedroom for my arting and writing pursuits)

The stack on my side of the bed...reads in-progress and the to-be-read pile...

The shelf in Savannah's room...we divided up the big shelf from the Bat Cave to lessen its load and she claimed some volumes for her own...

The basket beside her bed.....a bit empty-ish now as she's gone off the bedtime story routine...

Ah...the Bat Cave Collection...Sebastian's I Spy books...a perennial favourite

A beloved set borrowed from Cousin K....

The Bat Cave shelf...recently lightened to accomodate another attempt to simplify and organize our obscenely vast toy collection...

Sebastian's box o' books and his favourite reading chair....bucket o' dinosaurs within arms reach should the urge to act out a scene overwhelm him...

Yes, I'd say reading is mighty important....in our little family, anyway...

How we learn numbery things...

How unschoolers approach simple math and financial transactions....

Step 1: Invite over your BFF

Step 2: Get dressed up

Step 3: Play Fairy-opoly (like Monopoly, only with faeries)

Much hilarity ensued. Learning something was a mere side-effect.

What we do...

We're back.

A few 'cosmetic' changes...a little something to mark the passage of time.

You will notice a change in the blog title....it was Earthenwitch who coined the phrase, as she described Sunday breakfasts with her little family; a time of unhurried cups of tea, of wandering in the garden, of feeding ducks and reading books. She described it as experiencing life..as it happened, rather than how someone else prescribed it. It struck me that this is how we choose to live our life...well, as much as possible, anyway. Combine those thoughts with the realization that it's been about a year since Savannah left school - yessiree, she's a kindergarten drop-out, some questions raised by a caring friend about what exactly is unschooling and the fact that there have been raised eyebrows and puzzled looks surrounding the idea that this removal from school isn't a temporary thing. It's a done deal. Until such time as either one decides they'd like to return....it's over.

Of course there are questions, worries, concerns, panic - how? why? what about...? Hopefully there can be some answers found in the handy-dandy links on the sidebar. And I hope to further populate my list of other blogs with more wonderful unschooling families and the things they get up to.

But for now, a brief synopsis....a glimpse of our little world and what we get up to....after all - this one's all about the pictures.

First, you should know.....that the world is our classroom - there are no walls, no time limits - only our boundless imaginations and the far reaches of the Universe to hold us in.....lots of room to move, there, wouldn't you agree?

We stop to smell the flowers......and we believe that a 'weed' is just a 'weed' because a person didn't plant it there....

We follow our noses and find treasures in the unlikeliest of places....

... indeed, there is Life amidst the decay

We take a bug box out into the woods to look for caterpillars....and if we don't find any...then we look for other things instead.....

...like wild strawberries and red clover tops - yummy things to eat. See? It's best not to depend too much on a plan...you might miss something.

The seats are very comfy in our classroom....they're all over the place and.....

..there's always one with a good view of the.....

....*board*.

"But how do they learn?"

*sigh* Still don't get it? Okay...

We play with books....we are surrounded by books...all kinds of books....and sometimes, we read them....sometimes we just look at them....and sometimes we build fortresses with them...but they are always there...for when we're ready...

We send and receive postcards from all over the world....we wonder about the people and the places and their beautiful lives...(we refer to the aforementioned books when we desire further details - or not.)

We make paper dolls....just because it's fun and art ROCKS our little world...

And then, when we're tired - we take naps....

Life is a journey and we choose the road less travelled....


Walk with us?