Natural Attachment

We went to the Andy Warhol Museum and the Weekend Art Factory in its basement. We played with Legos, made stained ‘glass’ pictures (loving E’s ’share the road’ sign on his), screen printed and had fun goofing off in the photo booth.

We bused across town for Oh Yeah! ice cream again…this time for breakfast (okay, so really it was late enough to be considered lunch)! On the walk over from our bus stop, I caught a picture of a friendly alien…he lives near Highland and Baum, right next to Abay. When we left Oh Yeah!, we decided to go eat tasty food at none other than Tasty!

The kiddo and I walked around downtown, visited Point State Park for the first time and walked around down by the river for about three hours.

There was watercolour painting at dusk in the driveway. William painted a robot, Elijah got abstract on a piece of cardboard and I painted an anglerfish.

E & I played at War Memorial Park (which had a creek, totally cool) with new radical unschooling friends! Afterwards he and I ate dinner downtown at the Backstage Bar by Katz Plaza and I had to take a picture of the sign that is posted.

Yesterday, we bus hopped to hang out with friends we haven’t seen in awhile. There was fighting, bickering and arguing, as to be expected. There were cars, planes and trains, as to be expected.

Elijah was more interested in the baby’s toys than anything else, I think! Well, actually, there was some scheming by the boys — they were making plans for a sleepover in the near future.

I got to see the adorable and yumm–ily sweet baby girl Banyan (and her mum, Courtney), who I got the pleasure of being midwife to at her birth.

There was crafting of sorts with Dore (he is sporting the best ever vest!), which consisted of using scissors, tape, markers and wooden trains. Poor guy is all blinded by my super bright flash

It was a happy day, if you subtract all the traffic we encountered when our friends drove us back home all the way across the city

On Tuesday we left daddy home so that he could get some extra sleep and get some music done. We hoped on the bus and headed to the Central Northside a.k.a Mexican War Streets. First, we skipped through a community garden close to where we hoped off the bus and then we ran into Beleza and grabbed a vegan turnover and something to sip on. Elijah found a puzzle on the bookshelf that amazingly enough had all its pieces! We ran across the street from Beleza to another little garden-y spot to look around.

Next we walked over to The Mattress Factory [an art museum] and got to see its new exhibits — Inner & Outer Space. We also got to see its new expanded location just a couple doors down. We spent the majority of our time out in the garden at the museum. Elijah likes to run around the ‘urban lanscaping’, which is basically the remnants of what was once a house, but now only bits of its basement and steps exist. There is also a pretty neat little water feature, complete with a little waterfall.

After we left the museum, we walked over to the Old Allegheny Community Gardens for a look-see. Sorry, no pictures of the community gardens, but believe me when I tell you that everyone’s lot looks wild and fantastic and there are LOTS of huge sunflowers everywhere!

Today, we meet up with a family that we ran into at the park last week. Elijah and the little girl get on with one another quite well. The mum and I exchanged numbers and made plans to meet up today so the the kiddos could play. I got to meet the dad today and he’s a cool & fun guy. The mum is really nice, an artist and someone who likes to hang out at The Moose. It’s nice to finally meet someone nearby, who is fun to be around and who doesn’t take this parenting gig so damn seriously! They aren’t homeschoolers, but they are awesome. Bella, the daughter, and E have fun together and that’s what it’s all about. We’re going to hang out with them again at their house in Manchester next week one evening. I kind of forgot about taking pictures of them, but I did snap a couple of Elijah dancing at the park before Bella and family arrived. ~~Elijah just informed me that he wasn’t dancing, but that he was being ‘king of all the trees’…so there you go~~

This afternoon, after we both had a nap, because we got up so freaking early to go to the park, E made a race track for some vehicles and I was on the ball with the camera.

Then we ‘had to’ walk over to Rite Aid and get some more pretzels and check out their popcorn selection. I snapped a picture of the kiddo goofing off in the driveway.

We’ve had a good couple of days, filled with people, places, some creativity and lots of online computer games

After the positive response to the last ‘week in review’ blog that I posted (loaded with lots of pictures & very few words), I present you with another week of awesome-ness!

Peek-A-Boo (how could you not love this face?!)

E & I spent an afternoon at Affogato (the big red ‘a’), drinking coffee, running around in the yard & taking each other’s pictures (even upside down).

We played on our balcony with our new Robot Pencil Sharpener & posed for camera-ham pictures!

Finally got a picture of the mysterious toy horse that has some how found its way up on top of the building right next to our bus stop by the house…s/he appeared early this Spring and has survived many storms…we think s/he might have been glued down!

We finally tried out Oh Yeah!, where we got to gorge on VEGAN ice cream!!! Oh, and we also found where Waldo was hiding!

We ran around East Liberty and Downtown late at night, practicing our balance beam skills, trying out new bus routes and romping around ‘eyeball park’ (Katz Plaza).

I think we had a great time! What filled your week?

After placing more thought into this new ‘project’, I will be just posting whatever and whenever it comes to me. There might end up being a method/form to it or it might be just as scatterbrained as I am! The only thing that I know for sure is that I will probably keep posts to one, maybe two, per month. My only apology for this month is that I don’t have pictures to share

This post is for Ren’s August Blog Carnival.

A Day in the Life of a Radical Unschooling Family - August 4th, 2008.

Today I was greeted by the Sunshine streaming in and Elijah standing in our bedroom doorway with an odd/goofy expression on his face. It’s 11:30 am and it’s morning around here. I’m up to feed the cats, make breakfast, pack lunch for hubby (who will be off to work shortly) and leave Elijah snuggling in bed with Daddy.

Halfway through breakfast being done…

E: I’m starving. Aren’t you going to feed me?
M: Um, I think you are capable of feeding yourself, but I am making food for you to eat.
E: What’s on my plate? (looking slightly suspicious of the harsh brown on his plate — first one he’s ever eaten!)
M: It’s a hash brown…a fried potato cake or patty thing.
E: I love potatoes…and apples and kiwis and…tofu scrambler again?
M: Would you prefer something else?
E: No, this will fill my tummy

After food is consumed and Daddy is hugged off to work, we settle in at the computer for about 2 hours and play various online computer games. Today we were big on puzzle type games where you had to move things in the right order to make the right things happen and so on.

There was more food to be had…always learning…always moving…always hungry!

I checked emails and read over some unschooling discussion forums in my office, while Elijah built various obstacle courses with his Kapla blocks and wooden marble run blocks across the hall in his room. I could also hear him playing with his Leapster some. I was done once Elijah came and announced that he wanted to see the Sun!

We chugged a bottle of water together and ran around the front yard and played various games with a couple balls. We examined how many tomatoes were growing on our plants in the front and ate some broccoli right off the stalk! We talked about why our grass was turning brown and what we could or could not do about it. We reexamined the squirrel nest that had been blown/fallen out of one of our White Pine trees last week. Elijah was fascinated that squirrels would use plastic bags for nesting material. We were thirsty again and decided to go back inside.

Elijah needed a snack and I was hungry too…

E: I want another hash brown.
M: Oh, no. We ate the last ones during breakfast.
E: Why didn’t you buy more…you knew I’d LOVE them!
M: I’m not sure. Do you know what you want instead?
E: I still want potatoes.
M: I have some waffle cut fries I can bake for you.
E: Sure.
M: You know what you want with them?
E: …just surprise me.

We looked up the unschooling conference cruise for next year again and Elijah wanted to watch the video again! He’s totally enamored by the idea that there’s going to be a never ending spread of fruit 24/7! I think he cares more about the fruit than the idea of getting to meet and run free with other free kids and their families. We also played a couple more online games.

Around 8:30 pm I decided that doing that load of laundry was a good idea. Elijah wanted to watch the Thomas The Tank Engine movie while I did laundry and made dinner. I brought him something to eat about 1/2 an hour through the movie, which made him extremely happy. I got laundry done and food cooked and eaten.

After the movie was over, Elijah went back to alternating between tweaking the things he built earlier and playing his Leapster. I wrote in my journal and wrote some more for my book. I read a few blogs and by this time Elijah was asking me to read the next chapter in Wind in the Willows to him.

Daddy came home from work around midnight and he was hugged and sent to bed — not to sleep; he’s still up working away on music or reading blogs right now at almost 2:30 am! I read to Elijah and he was asleep by 12:30am.

Well,  I guess that’s a pretty ‘normal’ day. We didn’t do anything really fun or exciting, but that will happen tomorrow when we go by the community garden and check out the reopening of our favorite coffeeshop…hope it ends up still being our favorite!

A day in the life of…

I want to start having regular postings about our days. I know many people out there who are interested in unschooling and want to know ‘how it works’ and ‘what it looks like’ on a daily basis. So, I am going to attempt to grab days at random and days that seem to showcase ‘what it is’ to unschool.

I think it’s important to know that unschooling looks very different in every unschooling home. While you are waiting for me to start posting about our days, please visit some of the blogs on the right that I have listed, so that you can find snippets of other families’ daily lives and grand adventures.

I haven’t quite decided just how I am going to go about doing this. I’m not sure whether or not I want to journal the lucky days, as in: at 10am we woke up and did such and such until this happened at noon and so on and so on. Or I could showcase bits of days that are good examples of ‘unschooling moments’…not that every moment isn’t unschooling, but I think you know what I mean. I’m not sure just how bored I want readers to be! I feel like if I only present moments from a day, then readers who are new to or contemplating unschooling might think thats all there is or that there isn’t down time and moments of ‘nothing’ and ‘free play’. We’ll see how things develop here and change over time.

Unscholg = Unschooling + (web)blog: things specific to OUR unschooling (not yours or there’s ); a log of unschooling.

I had originally wanted to write little bits and bots about our unschooling journey and what E is up to, but it’s really so hard for me to separate things out into little neat boxes for readers…unless I try super hard and over analyze everything thing we do. We are living and learning…learning is everything we do. Our educational philosophy, parenting philosophy and life are not one without the other. I am finally at a point where I don’t see in ’subjects’, but rather really neat and often profound connections that E makes between thing ‘A’ and thing ‘B’.

With that said, I’ll do my best to give a recap of the last week. This is just more of a list of things…I have expounded on some and left some comments here and there…it might make no real sense to many of you, but that’s why this here Unscholg is OURS and not YOURS!

5th:
Noggin TV
Walk to & from picking up CSA (it was hot & E wasn’t too happy; I felt sad for him)
Pick up CSA share
Online computer games w/Mum  (these vary & he insists on not playing the same one more than once!)
Asked to make hand-puppets at 11pm, which needed pipe cleaners and none could be found — we still haven’t found/bought pipe cleaners ;(

6th:
Noggin TV
Kapla blocks
Wooden blocks
Lincoln logs
5# dumbbell — he really likes this thing & actually uses it!
Online computer games w/ Mum

7th:
Noggin TV
Online computer games w/ Mum
Lincoln logs
Wooden blocks
Outside w/Mum - played with a ball & checked on the garden
Outside on screened porch (alone) - trucks & such
Figured out that it’s so much fun to open his Sigg bottle & make water messes!

8th:
Noggin TV
Took apart 2 dozen pens
Lacing beads
Online computer games w/ Mum
Made lots of food & water messes!

9th:
Noggin TV
Zingo w/Mum & he made up a memory-type game with the tiles too
New dinosaur puzzle
Summer box of goodies from Great Grandma J
One of his dismantled pens exploded & he was covered from head to toe in blue ink!
Long bath — his skin is still stained a bit though!

10th:
Noggin TV
Walk to & from Community Garden
Community Garden — weeded, watered (and played with water!) & dead-headed the spring onions.
Visited w/ Matt, Tracey, Annan & Dugan while at the garden
Online computer games w/ Mum
Kapla blocks
Watched me mix up & apply henna to my hand

11th:
Noggin TV
Sprout TV
Online computer games w/ Mum
Cardboard box car & related shenanigans
Very lazy day w/ lots of ‘just hanging out’!

12th: so far today
Sprout TV
Noggin TV
Walk to & from picking up CSA
Picked up CSA share & ate some of the strawberries on the way home
Online computer games w/ Mum
Made random made-up ‘organs’ w/ some Fidgets (neat little blocks stung together by elastic through the middle)

So, that’s it…man, maybe I should have picked a ‘better’ week to post with! Ha! Tomorrow we are going to be purchasing a Leapfrog Leapster for Elijah…he doesn’t know it yet! Hopefully it will be something new to engage him during our car rides during this vacation…and it might spawn a life-long obsession with ‘video games’…and that’s okay with me. So long as he enjoys himself and the others than are around him.