Goal-free week -- sort of

This week Sarah and I are experimenting with a Goal-free week, as described at zenhabits.com. Perhaps later I'll head over there and find the specific article.

We're currently without a car, so we're walking everywhere. To the store, to the laundromat, to the park, home from the mechanic...

We also give ourselves the week off from our routines, during our occasional Goal-free weeks.

It's refreshing, invigorating, gives us the opportunity for deep rest, and sends us back to our routines with renewed enthusiasm and some exciting new ideas.

(It also teaches me a lot about the extent to which I can never be truly goal-free, as long as I'm raising Sarah -- everytime something new comes up in conversation, I find myself scurrying for my homeschool notebook and books of homeschool resources, to add it to our list, to make sure I don't forget it's something we want to pursue.)

So what do we do with our time when there's nothing we "have to" do?

Play with dolls, make mulled cider, cuddle, watch cartoons, watch Rick Steve's Europe, decorate tshirts, do yoga, do dishes, make soup... That's early on the first day (technically the second, but the first goal-free day was spent out with friends at the zoo, and then doing laundry at the laundromat, so it was no different from what that sort of a day would look like on a regular week).

Late on Tuesday I realize I'm getting stressed, feeling as if I'm puttering and wasting my time. Feel pulled to really retreat into the week, sinking deep into mindfulness and being present. Watch a romantic comedy (Imagine Me and You -- fun but forgettable, with Giles doing an awesome job as the beaten-down dad of the bride) while Joe and Sarah are out at Pokemon. Clean mindfully. Contemplate what a four-day pre-equinox retreat might look like. Consider whether that would count as a goal, even if I felt called to it spontaneously. Consider whether I can set an intention of being present and relaxed, without considering it a goal. Do a short ritual preparing to welcome the Fall.

Wednesday I had plans in Montclair in the evening, to talk with a new friend who's thinking of homeschooling her 3 year old daughter. Since we've been missing our friends from our volunteer gig, we set out to walk into Montclair (a daunting prospect for Sarah, even when we broke the journey down into several parts -- I promised her we won't do it again any time soon, but suggested that if we make it a habit to walk into Bloomfield, soon Montclair won't be a big deal at all), and spend the day. We hung out at the library, took out a few books (including a children's book on The Socialist Party and Eugene Debs, and the next books in two series Sarah's into right now: Inkheart, and Percy Jackson). Then we helped out at our volunteer gig for a few hours (everyone there is awesome, but one new staff member is particularly great with Sarah, offering her simple and doable opportunities to help).

So far today we're reading companionably on the futon. I also took a nap for a bit. I'm sitting with the experience of having multiple, conflicting desires for how to spend my time, without immediately turning it into a Daily Plan (usually I'd notice the desire to do 7 different things, and immediately make a list, planning out how to give half an hour to each of my goals). I'd also like to clean the house, play music, exercise, meditate, cook, read some articles online. With only a handful of days "off", it's hard to let myself just sink into whatever I feel like doing, and trust that I'll get around to all of it in time. I suspect it would be easier if we had a whole week (in theory we do, but because of prior commitments that we've decided we want to keep, today and tomorrow are our only two entire days to devote to this delightful experiment).

Perhaps we'll start giving ourselves a goal-free day a week. I can imagine that, for much of the fall and winter, Fridays could be goal-free. Maybe we can persuade Joe to take a few off and join us -- we've tried, from time to time, to make a few Sundays a month a true Sabbath, a day of rest focused on family and joy, but it's hard and we don't manage as often as we like.

Not Back to School

We celebrated Not Back To School week with:

* Country Day, the Indonesian edition! Sarah gave a presentation on tree kangaroos, I made bubur manado (similar to congee, a rice porridge) with a spicy broth, and topped with stirfried cabbage, stringbeans, and spinach. We both had a wonderful time reconnecting with all our Country Day friends. I love every single kid (and adult) involved in that group -- they're all compassionate, enthusiastic, interesting, and generally delightful.

* A laidback Wednesday -- garlic bread for breakfast along with a couple episodes of Rick Steve's Europe, a trip to the library, drinks with a couple of our GSE friends at a cafe in Montclair, and a viewing of Anastasia in prep for studying Russia this month.

* A busy Thursday -- playing school in the morning (reading about the Cherokee, the Dakota, Carthage, flying reptiles and the first birds, and a couple native American sacred stories), lunch at the library, a couple hours at GSE helping them unpack from their move to new offices, and a little food shopping.

* A wonderful Friday -- watching a couple episodes of Globe Trekker (learning about Mexican and Moroccan food), having lunch with Joe in Hoboken, reading about the death of the dinosaurs and the rise of mammals and learning a little about Russia in preparation for next month's Country Day, and then Joe and Sarah went to a street fair while I went out with friends.

I am full of awesome, Sarah is full of awesome, and our lives are brimming over with awesomeness.

Today was the first Country Day of the school year, focused on Indonesia. After a busy Labor Day weekend (long days out with friend all three days), Sarah spent last night doing her research and putting together a presentation on tree kangaroos. She did a great job on her presentation.

I tried to make seitan satay for the potluck, to no avail. Instead I made a rice porridge with a spicy broth (vegetable broth, garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin, curry powder, chili, and a little soy sauce), sauteed string beans, cabbage, and spinach. Turned out really nicely.

A year ago, at the first Country Day, Sarah was taken aback by how many kids were there (she'd been assuming it would be more like Lego League, with just a handful of kids, most of whom she already knew). After the first meeting, she didn't want to go back -- the thought of standing up and talking in front of such a large group was daunting, and she didn't want to be the only kid coming to Country Day and *not* doing a presentation.

We went home and talked about it, brainstormed different ways she could work around her concerns, and she decided to give it one more try. Joe showed her how to put together a presentation using OpenOffice's version of Powerpoint, and she spent days collecting pictures, doing research, breaking her presentation down into bite-sized pieces, then recording a separate voice-over for each slide. When Country Day came around the next month, all she had to do was set up the laptop at the front of the room and hit the space bar to keep advancing to the next slide.

Each month she grew more and more comfortable standing up in front of the group. Before long she decided that, for the amount of work that went into her powerpoint presentations, it would be easier to just bite the bullet, glue a few pictures to some posterboard, and do the presentation live. I don't know which one of us was prouder, Sarah or me, the first time she stood up there and read the presentation outloud in front of the whole group.

One of the many, many blessings of homeschooling is how easy it makes a process like this. We were able to meet Sarah exactly where she was. Sarah would have been more than welcome to come every month even if she didn't want to give a presentation. When she came up with an approach that worked for her, it was a totally trivial thing to implement -- we didn't need special permission or paperwork, and there was no stigma attached. Everyone, moms as well as kids, were so totally supportive and compassionate, no one ever made a big deal out of it, and I think the other moms were nearly as excited and proud as I was when Sarah made the transition to speaking in front of the group and answering questions comfortably.

(I also love the fact that at the age of 10 she knows more about time management and her own learning style than I did when I started college. She and I check in with each other about everything, about how the day went, how a particular approach to a project went, and how we could make sure it goes better next time. It only took her a couple Country Day meetings before she started gently suggesting that we might be less likely to wind up running late, both of us grumpy and stressed, if her presentation was finished by the night before. I know I hadn't learned that lesson by high school (as evidenced by all the homework I did on the train on the way in to school in the morning. No idea how my teachers could read a single thing I handed in.). Hadn't entirely learned it by college (as Joe can attest, after spending many nights watching me finish reading a book at 3 in the morning so I could write the paper due 6 hours later).)

Note to self

Watch more videos on the neurology of learning. Remember to get her to make predictions about outcomes or what will happen next, and then give her timely feedback, to get the info to set in her brain.

Gearing Up

I love this time of year! I love the Fall even more, with the crisp air and the start of the new year, but the plans that start percolating in August are almost as exciting. Last week we went shopping for Sarah's first full-size backpack, a new lunchbox, and her first looseleaf notebook, and I think I was even happier about it than she was!

This year Sarah and I have put together a set of themes that we started working with in June (because our Spring was so busy that we decided to take 6 weeks off from playing school in April and May), and which we're planning to work with through the end of the Fall semester. If they work for us we'll continue using them into the Spring, or we may shift to using something else.

Social Studies:
Mosaic Intro to World History part I (starts with the Big Bang)
(this uses Story of the World and the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, and also does timeline work, map work, and brings in myths and folktales from different traditions)

Math:
Living Math
Good Time Math Event Book by Marilyn Burns
Oak Meadow Fifth Grade
Khan Academy
Logic and Critical Thinking (can't find the name of the book at the moment)
(can you tell how much she loves math?)

Science:
Intellego Weather Unit
Chemistry Experiments
Nature Study
Physic Experiments and Engineering

Spanish:
Coffee Break Espanol
Conversation with friends
Spanish story books

Poetry and Storytelling:
Memorizing a variety of poems together. Familiarizing ourselves with a variety of stories so that we can tell them in our own words.

We're also continuing with Life Skills (cooking, shopping, maps, gardening, drawing, sewing, crafts, building stuff, planning adventures, building confidence with animals and in social situations), and with our miscellaneous projects and topics (NYC, family history, Hudson River, Food Detectives, Family Zine, Family No Free Lunch). She'll also be taking the Active Citizenship and Music classes I'm facilitating, and doing Country Day once a month.

My Super Secret Goals for her, this year, are:
* Improved writing skills (spelling, handwriting, composition, vocabulary, research, analyzing what she reads and forming and expressing her own opinion, introducing the ideas of: metaphor, simile, analogy)
* Improved math skills (more math facts at her finger tips, also more abstract skills, more comfort with the use of math in every day life)
* Increased confidence with social situations and physical skills (soccer, baseball, etc.)
* Expand our narration styles to include scrapbooking, bookmaking, songwriting, dioramas, magazines/newspapers


I can't wait to get started! (We've been doing a lot of this already, this summer, but we're gearing up for Sarah's week of Grandma and Grandpa Summer Camp right now, and visiting with lots of friends who are getting ready to go back to school, so we're taking more days off than we're playing school. We'll jump back in when Sarah gets back from her visit to my parents'.)

End of year wrap up

I met with my good friend and fellow homeschooler, A, this week, for a Parent Teacher conference. :) As both parent and teacher to the same child, it can be good to have the opportunity to say aloud "this is what my plans were for last year, and here's how those plans went." To talk about what you're going to keep doing, what you're going to change, what new goals and approaches you're going to try to add for the next year.

At the start of this last year, Sarah and I had just shifted to choosing themes for the year (before we'd been choosing new themes each month). Our themes for this year were:
* Math (using Oak Meadow and Living Math)
* Social Studies (history and culture of NYC, early US History, Oak Meadow 3rd grade's social studies (which uses stories and maps to explore several ancient civilizations and several Native American tribes)
* Communications (writing and conversation, Spanish, family zine, letter writing, making books)
* Science (nature journals, the ecosystem of the Hudson River, potions (that is, chemistry experiments))
* Lifeskills (cooking, rollerskating, gardening, drawing, bravery badge...)

My Super Secret Goals for her included improving her writing skills (handwriting, spelling, composition, vocabulary, rhetoric), improving her practical math skills (making change, telling time, increased proficiency with basic arithmetic skills), and life skills (in addition to the ones above, increased familiarity with public transportation, phone etiquette, maps, nutrition, and a variety of spiritual practices).

How did that go?
Math: We made it through the 3rd grade Oak Meadow math, and her work with Joe has put many more math facts at her finger tips. We're jumping to 5th grade Oak Meadow math, this year, and using the Good Time Math Events book for math projects. This last year we picked and chose from the Living Math books, integrating them into our homeschooling, but didn't work our way through them in order.

Social Studies: Lots and lots of books on NYC, using a documentary on the history of NYC, and several field trips into the city. Our early US history theme focused mainly on biographies of some of the founders of the US, and field trips to various sites connected to the Revolution. We also learned a little about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Oak Meadow 3rd grade social studies was the bulk of what we did in the second half of the school year -- reading stories set in several ancient civilizations and then in several Native American tribes, and spiraling back around to each society again and again to explore themes of geography, economics, and government. We only touched on family history a little.

Communications: The family zine has languished, unfortunately, but her writing and communication skills have just taken off. Between the copywork she's been doing on a regular basis (including copying over lines of poetry and working a little bit with spelling lists) and the research, writing, and presentations she's been doing every month for the geography club she belongs to, her clarity of thought, grammar, spelling have blossomed astoundingly. Her handwriting is like night and day, when she takes the time to focus and work carefully. The sophistication of her vocabulary amazes me, and this year she shifted from reading almost exclusively comic collections (which I consider absolutely valid things to choose to read, but I was a little concerned about the fact that, while she could read chapter books, she still found them a little daunting because of all the unbroken text) to sitting for hours reading 3- and 4-hundred paged books (like Lightning Thief, DragonRider, This Book Is Not Good For You).

Life skills: Her cooking and drawing have improved immensely. She's improved at the various practical math skills (like making change) but we're going to continue to work on them.

What am I rolling over to next year? We'll be continuing to work on all the life skills mentioned, the chemistry/potions, the nature journal. Also, family history, NYC, the Hudson River. I'd wanted to work more with fractions and decimals than we did, this year, so I'll make a point of making sure a few of the math projects we do, this upcoming year, incorporate those skills.

My underlying Super Secret Goal for this year (what I also call my Shadow Curriculum) was to stretch her academic sophistication a little by slowly increasing what I was asking her to do on her own (at the start of the year, I was reading everything to her, and then just asking her to do an art-based narration afterwards), and by having more sophisticated, abstract conversations with her about how to take your dreams and break them down into bite-sized goals, and how to assess your own progress. I'd say that was wildly successful, in part because of the changes I consciously made, but largely because the soil was fertile, she was ready to make that sort of leap.

More later, on our goals for this year.

Is that anything like "Pop Up Video"?

I never did post the pop-up cafe wrap-up I'd intended to. It was so much fun, I think all the kids had a great time, and I was thoroughly impressed by how smoothly our brand-new staff of 5-12 year olds kept things running!













Sarah and I spent all day Wednesday cleaning and cooking, and then got up at 8 on Thursday (ungodly early for us night owls!) to start cooking again. Joe took the day off and was an invaluable gopher and assistant!

We made a lot of things ahead of time -- cake, brownies, pizza dough, focaccia bread, sloppy lentils, pasta sauce -- but made sure there was still plenty available for the kitchen staff to do if they were feeling especially enthusiastic!

Sarah handled the front of house, and I was head chef. We wrote up the kitchen rules and taped them to the wall in the kitchen: 1) Wash your hands -- when you come in to the kitchen to start working, before you touch food, and after you touch food (pretty much any time you even *thought* about food); 2) keep an eye on the supplies and let the head chef know if we're running out of anything; and 3) Have Fun!

We had two seating areas, at the dining room table and on floor pillows around the coffee table in the living room.

The first batch of guests/kitchen staff started arriving promptly at noon. We split them in half, brought half of them in to the kitchen to decide if they wanted to be chefs or servers and to familiarize them with the menu, and sent the other half to Sarah to get seated in the cafe.












After an hour or so, we switched shifts, and the first batch of staff got to eat while the first customers now got to take their turn at cooking, plating, and serving.


Sarah had spent the weeks leading up to the cafe thinking about what to put on the menu, flipping through her cookbooks and magazines, considering her own favorite foods, the tastes of her prospective guests, and what would be quickest and easiest to prepare. She wound up with quite a nice menu: three appetizers to choose from, four entrees, three desserts, and three or four drinks.











Some friends stayed all day, moving in and out of their roles as guests and staff, and others came for just an hour or two. I was so pleased to hear from many, many customers that the front of house remained serene and pleasant, no matter how hectic the situation in the kitchen got, even as calls of "Behind you!" and "Order up!" could be heard coming from behind the scenes.

There were some rough patches -- some miscommunications about who wanted to work when, some difficulties balancing out available staff with the flow of guests, some confusion about RSVPs/reservations, and I was on my feet cooking from 8 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon -- but I'd say it went really well for our first try and we're both looking forward to doing it again!