Deschooling is a long and beautiful thing...

I am contemplating experts and hierarchies and ways we make ourselves feel less than. I am learning to stop trying to find an"expert", and just trust my instincts and explore. This is my deschooling...shaking off school brain. Luckily i am inspired by these four humans who have no qualms doing these things. Because at the root of it all is living. And being. And doing. Together. (that is a direct steal from David Albert/ who you should totally check out) I am finding this freedom keeps expanding. It is a simple way to untie, gently and slowly, the knots of the "system", the upbringing, the refuse of a life lived by arbitrary standards....It feels like jumping into a swimming hole on a hot day...come on in, the water is JUST RIGHT.
I will leave you with playday pics..

Make believe....

So much of the kiddos time is spent at what they refer to as "playing a game". They are full bodied warriors, characters from movies or books (The Hunger Games is very popular in the woods behind our house). Aley is particularly entrenched, pretty much 24/7 in creative play of one sort or another. She wears cat eye glasses she has popped the lenses out of, types stories on the computer, draws comics, creates stuffed animal kingdoms, and RULES at dramatic play. Even when her younger brothers' friends come, she makes up games with hobbits and killer robots and princesses and dragons...
Arlo does ninja moves, wears costumes, and fake dies across the entire house, Ivy cackles like a witch from a very scary movie and also rocks the hero role in many of Aley's adventures, and Sol, my teen, my oldest, continues the habit he started as a wee one of walking through the yard with a stick or a nerf gun or a lego ship in his hand, telling himself a story with the occasional explosion.
I CANNOT imagine their lives or personalities without this particular freedom. It is awesome to behold.

Playday

One of the best parts of home schooling is the luxury of time. Right now, in America, in my life, in my little neck of the woods, time has revealed itself to be the ultimate luxury. Time to draw in notebooks, type story after story into the computer. (Aley has one called The Ware Scream about a werewolf who, well, you know, has a spooky scream), take the canoe onto the pond, read books (In the last month Ivy has read the entire Hunger Games Trilogy, Scumble, and The Neverending Story), ride bikes to the cemetery down the road, do way too early polar bear jumps into the pond, ask lots of questions, including the BIG ones, and have lots of time to discuss parental responses (note I didn't say answers. I don't think I can claim a lot of certainty. Only faith, hope, and love). There is so much time for hanging out, watching movies (Sol loved Harvey with Jimmy Stewart, which is tied with Harold and Maude at my favorite movie spot!), making cookies and brownies, reading out loud (right now it is Peter Pan), and hanging out in Cheyne's shop listening to reggae and Big Star and learning how he makes toys and beds and cabinets.
One of our favorite things is long afternoon playdays. We share snacks and get to have more and more friends on the trampoline and tire swing. Cheyne might be working at home, in the shop, or clearing trees or double digging beds in the garden. I get a table full of mamas to open my heart to, to share hospitality with, and to help me remember the kind of parent I really want to be.
Playdays are so rad.

The kids get four to five hours of play in the big wide Houstonia woods. The olders, all in early teen years, spend hours in the woods playing The Hunger Games. For my children this is blessed socialization, much better than any sort of fabricated class. Us mamas plan to set up volcano making stuff next week,  just putting  the materials out and being willing helpers. This time feels personal, and I can see this in my children as we continue on this journey. The idea that, for the most part, their time is their own. There is something so empowering about this, it is humbling to watch, and I am experiencing this in my own life as well, although on a smaller scale. I DO feel that my time is spent with way more discernment than in the past.
We are all learning and growing free together, and playday is bringing us likeminded friends to be with on this road. I am blessed.

The Journey Begins

This past year profound changes have happened  in me, mostly because my family chose to follow a path of radical unschooling. I have grown, released amazing amounts of school and society based baggage, begun to live my beliefs, and mined the depths of my own heart to figure out what it is I really want. I have pulled away from a lot of traditional ways of living and doing things, but not with judgement. Learning to really believe that "love wins" as Robb Bell says, and that I can create my own way of life on this earth, based on what I hold dear and what I value for my children, community, and world. This positive and creative way of living is something that has transformed everything about my family life, and my own personal life as well. Anything is possible. Anything.
I am planning to self publish a book about my parenting journey this October! Meanwhile, please check out this blog for my daily ponderings and photos.
                            In so many ways this life is like stripping everything back to basics, and then adding layers of only what brings joy. Join me.
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