Living-Deliberately.com

In school……we’ve changed things a bit. Doing a bit more of what we call “A Living Education”. Things were getting to be a bit too much “school at home”. Workbooks, timed drills, bland and boring. Institutionalized learning does very little to excite a life-long passion! So we’ve shaken things up with bird watching (project feeder watch with Cornell U), tea time with poetry, long walks through the woods, fun math books full of puzzles, riddles, and tricks, and reading, reading, reading. They are excitedly learning about the American Revolution and maybe more excitedly, awaiting the chance to see the movies Dreamer, Harry Potter, and Chicken Little.

Saturday brought the final soccer game with a big party-lunch at Los Amigos with our…. amigos :-). Way fun. We dashed home to bake quickly a Fall Streusel Cake and then off to the Reformation Day Party with our church.

What an awesome time!!! The Whites have the perfect property for such a thing: a few acres that back up to woods and others’ fields, with mountain views in the distance and lots of hardwoods all around dropping picture-perfect leaves and acorns. They had a huge bonfire (it was very cold that day!), a pig roasting on a bbq, games like apple bobbing from trees, vintage dancing, vintage music played by costumed musicians, potluck side dishes and desserts, archery, sack races, and a huge “war” by the children with a miriad of wooden swords and shields all over the rolling hills. At one point, all my conversation halted as I was struck by the view of the hills. The sun was setting behind us, making the mountains in the distance the most beautiful layered color I think I’ve ever seen. One layer was red-violet, the other auburn, orange, yellow, and green in the foreground. The sky was a dusky blue, light at the bottom and intense at top. I was struck speechless as I marveled that we get to LIVE HERE. I wondered what the mountains and trees would look like when the colors started to change…would they still be various shades of dusty blue? I got my answer: it all depends on the light. There are a million shades of color right now.

Two sparrows just landed on our porch rail. Sparrows are pretty basic birds but until Project Feeder Watch I probably couldn’t have identified them, let alone male or female. We had one of each after the female scoped it out first. Male sparrows are fatter and have a little black beard. They are very stern looking, while thier little women look busy.

I’ve been reading a great book. It’s called The Last Child In the Woods.
It’s more than just an encouragement to get your kids outside. It goes into why that is so important for brain and intellectual and emotional development. It goes into why this is so difficult to achieve in our techno society and the subtle ways it’s undermined. The natural world in many ways is disappearing….not just in a “save the rain forest” way but in a daily, interactive, and whole way. Genetic Engineering, deforestation, and even the uber-controlled exposure we give our kids by always taking them to a created park or ball field rather than a true pocket of wilderness to dream and explore without us hovering over thier shoulders. The NDD part of the title was a selling-gimick, totally unnecessary and annoying but it has proven to be an adequate conversation starter.

My own kids are in the woods today. A smallish section behind our apartment, that leads to a haven they call “The Sandy Pit”. David spent much of Sunday afternoon back there playing with them and we plan to get them walkie talkies for safety purposes. It has radically changed the stress level in our days and affected our next-home search. There is tea time to be had today, violin lesson, books to be read, pictures to be created, a riddle to be solved.

Onward.

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