Welcoming my little monkey home

Today P is at school for the last time, at least for this school year. T and I are home, preparing favorite foods to share this afternoon when she gets home. They'll be arranged on "monkey platters," or big plates with an assortment of finger foods. Monkey platters can be meals, snacks for the moment, or sustenance for all day. The idea of a monkey platter came from Sandra Dodd, who writes tirelessly about unschooling and whose yahoo email list, AlwaysLearning, has been a big help to me so far. Her first monkey platter was inspired on a trip to the zoo, when she and her kids saw zookeepers bring out a big platter of sliced fruit for the primates. Here's Sandra's page about monkey platters; it has dozens of photos of monkey platters many unschoolers have made for their families.

Why make monkey platters? Many, though not all, unschoolers, choose to "unschool" food, meaning they give their kids a great deal of choice and power in deciding what to eat, and they handle meals without resorting to bribery or coercion. As I understand it, the idea is that if parents aren't stressing out about what kids eat, the kids will have fewer food issues relating to control. One study after another shows that young humans, when offered a wide variety of foods, will choose to eat a reasonably healthy and balanced diet. By offering food on monkey platters, which can hold anything from candy to broccoli but generally offer several healthy choices, unschoolers have found that often the fruit, veggies, cheese, nuts, etc. disappear before the marshmallows. And they report that when the food is offered without direction or coercion, their kids eventually try things they have resisted or refused in the past. I've offered monkey platters in place of regular meals several times now, and everyone here loves them, so it seems like a great way to celebrate the start of our unschooling journey.

Our platters today will have more than my usual 4-6 choices: cheese cubes, olives, apple slices, edamame (we depart here from Sandra's guideline that everything on the plate should be edible, because my kids LOVE shelling their own edamame), boiled eggs, melon pieces, banana chunks, red bell pepper slices, popcorn, baby spinach and lettuce leaves, hummus, corn-tortilla quarters, carrot sticks, strawberries, and gluten-free blueberry muffin chunks. All but the last three are P's requests; T asked for the carrot sticks. Here's a photo of round one (the stuff I got done before P came home). Later: popcorn, apples, and greens.

We're also decorating with stuff P started making earlier this week: paper chains, colorful signs that proclaim (in a variety of spellings!) "I am out of school," flowers on the table, and perhaps we'll make a Welcome Home sign to put on the door.

P stayed up late last night, writing and decorating cards for her teachers (first-grade teacher, plus music, art, and P.E. teachers) to take to them today. It's feeling like a good transition. I'll be glad to have all my monkeys together now, for some good times at home and some adventures in the wider world.

What we're learning: This morning P asked what the radio was talking about. It was a discussion of the current status of the nuclear power plants in Japan. So she got a quick primer over breakfast on nuclear fission (we've talked about elements and protons/neutrons/electrons before), nuclear power, what is normally done to keep nuclear power plants safe, and why that isn't working right now in Fukushima. Those last two are new for me this week, so I'm just steps ahead of P. I'm also learning about IRS rules for small-business expense deductions, and how to get QuickBooks to do my bidding. T has been focusing on concrete and various forms of damage to it, which are plentiful here because of ice, snowplows, ice-melting salts, etc. He's also been watching and helping with some cooking -- he measured, sorted, and washed garbanzo beans (he says their name over and over because it feels good!) yesterday, and he'll probably help make the hummus today. He watched with interest when an egg we were boiling this morning burst, and the egg whites squirted out and poached in the boiling water. Right now he's testing the sounds he can make by talking and making other noises into an echoing steel water bottle, and finding out what happens to crayons when they break.