Life is full, learning is good, and this entry is long!

Whoo -- we've had solstice, Christmas, and a trip to an unschooling conference, with nary a blog entry. I'll try to hit the high points rather than fall farther behind!

For three days in late December, P was at a church day camp, which focused on the seven principles of Unitarian-Universalism in the form of the recently-invented holiday Chalica, condensed into three days. P and I celebrated Chalica last year together in a very low-key way at home, but this year we were going to be on the road and otherwise occupied during its Christmas-to-New-Year's span, so camp was it. At chapel each day, there were stories and songs related to that day's principles. Activities, specifically related or not, rounded out the days. A song to the tune of the do-re-mi song in The Sound of Music summarized all the principles (given in brackets) thus:
     One, each person is worthwhile [The inherent worth and dignity of every person]
     Two, be kind in all you do [Justice, equity and compassion in human relations]
     Three, we help each other learn [Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations]
     Four, and search for what is true [A free and responsible search for truth and meaning]
     Five, all people have a say [The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large]
     Six, work toward a peaceful world [The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all]
     Seven, the web of life's the way [Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part]
     That will bring us back to me and UU you!

P had a great time at camp playing with friends, making art, swimming at the local rec center, toasting marshmallows, helping make Stone Soup, and more. On the last day, families were invited to come share the Stone Soup, so T and I went. Both kids really love having a chance to be in the church sanctuary outside church services, exploring the space, asking questions about things, and making the place their own. I remember liking it the same way when I was young, though I started going to church at age 11.

One day while P was at camp, T brought me a Magic School Bus chapter book and asked me to read it to him. We read about half before we got tired of it. T was actively engaged in listening and making sense of the story. He asked questions about the story. At one point he pointed to the last line on a page and asked me what those words said, so I read them to him again. Unsatisfied, he pointed to the quotation marks on the line and asked what those were, finally getting what he was looking for in my explanation. I love watching him crack the code! Around once a day, he asks me how to spell some word, often a long one like transform. He's working actively on his spoken diction as well, starting to differentiate his L and R sounds and pronounce more consonant clusters, all of which makes him much easier to understand. He's also getting good at talking about things in a different way if he can't get us to understand a particular word. Recently he was trying to tell me something about snow, but he kept saying "so," and I just wasn't getting it because there wasn't enough context. He patiently explained, "You know, the white stuff that's falling down from the sky outside." He and I were both very happy when his idea got across!

In the lead-up to Christmas, T and P were doing lots of pretend play. I'm noticing more acceptance of a greater range of play. P used to get irritated at T whenever he wanted to play a female character or have a female name, which happens sometimes -- after all, his biggest pretend-play role model is his sister! I've been noticing recently that she has more slack for this and is embracing his creativity with fewer reservations. To top it off, on the 20th I overheard P saying that she was T's father in the game. Good stuff.

At last Christmas came, with several cool gifts from relatives. Both kids got packages of 10 matchbox-style cars, the better to share playing with cars. P's been asking for some of her own, since T has so many! There were Polly Pockets and a camper van for them, Barbies and clothes for them, Transformers, and an erector set, which have made for great separate and shared play. We also gave T an airplane that comes apart, using a battery-operated, kid-size cordless screwdriver. He spent hours over the next couple of days (before we left town and had to leave it behind) very earnestly taking the plane apart (always with some reason it needed to be fixed), reassembling it, and flying it about. He's a natural with the tool, even better than I expected. (P has had a small set of real tools and some wood to use them with for years, and she enjoys them too.) The grandparents also picked some things from my wish list for the family, giving us a set of Cuisenaire rods and a United States map that goes with our Tag reader. The map is getting some play, and the Cuisenaire rods have already led into some informal exploration of addition, multiplication, area, volume, square and cubic numbers, and prime numbers. I'm having fun with my Christmas gift, too -- a coffee-table book of the elements with amazing illustrations and amusing and informative text. It's getting read aloud a lot, mostly by me to UnschoolerDad, but the kids get to hear and see some of the good parts, too. Christmas stockings also provided pocket magnifiers that came along on our trip and got some use looking at color elements on TV screens and playing with light refracting in through motel peepholes.

And then we went on our trip! We attended a symposium in Albuquerque for unschooling parents and families tied to the Always Learning list, one of Sandra Dodd's many gifts to the world. Sandra spoke, and so did Pam Sorooshian, Joyce Fetteroll, and several other long-time unschooling parents who contribute to the list, as well as some always-unschooled children, teens, and young adults. There were play rooms set up for kids right next to the room for speakers, so parents could go back and forth as needed. I missed parts of talks while mediating kid difficulties, but it was good to be able to hear what I did, and UnschoolerDad filled me in on some of what I missed. He also took turns helping the kids.

There weren't a huge number of new ideas for me at the symposium (though there were some), since I've been reading the list faithfully for a year now. I did find the experience valuable, though, in that I got to see other unschooling families in action and hear about some ideas in new ways that allowed for deeper understanding. One idea that sounded preposterous to me before the symposium, but that I'm thinking about more seriously now, is that children can be treated as guests in their homes. They didn't ask to join our families; we parents decided to have them, and we committed to their upbringing and care. As such, it may make more sense to keep doing chores and such ourselves, accepting help as it's willingly given rather than requiring it. I do find that P helps more willingly (whether asked or not) when I request help less, and not trying to require chores certainly reduces the adversarial situations between us and creates more opportunities for grace. One young-adult speaker, always unschooled, talked about how her mom always had a hard time getting help with chores other than laundry. The key difference, it seems, was that the mom enjoyed doing laundry. When the mom realized this and started being more cheerful about other tasks, help became more available with those as well. Another speaker, a mom, talked about giving up on getting taking-out-trash help from her husband (who was forced to do that chore as a child and never wanted to do it again), and instead asking kids along to do it with her and making it fun. There was an in-ground trampoline on the way from their back door to the trash cans, and taking out the trash turned into a short, fun family expedition, chatty, playful, and stress-free, with children enthusiastically finding their shoes to come along. One of the ideas Sandra Dodd talks about a lot is releasing our sense that we "have to" do anything in particular, and instead emphasizing that we choose our actions, in general (by choosing the principles by which we wish to live) and from moment to moment. We don't actually have to mop the floor. We can choose to, or we can let many socks do the job, or we can play Cinderella from time to time, or we can just let it be dirty, or... you get the idea. That idea is an important one for me, when I'm considering that perhaps chores are my job, not something to be forced upon youthful conscripts. I can choose my priorities. And one of them can be supporting my kids' priorities, so they can learn to make good choices and establish their own priorities and principles, rather than living life as a list of have-tos based on other people's priorities.

The array of things for kids to play with during the symposium was wonderful. There were art supplies, coloring books (including beautiful stained-glass mandalas), puzzles, mazes, Geoboards, Doodle Tops (with crayon tips), dinosaurs, pipe cleaners, a foam Fraction Burger, and lots more. The bigger kids' room had lots of board and card games, and several kids played Minecraft in there on various laptops that came with them. P joined them for a time on my computer, but unfortunately it had some problems. She did benefit from the expertise of some of the other kids, though, watching and learning from their amazing creations. Both kids had a great time with the Geoboards, and adults happening by and looking at the patterns they created often made comments that got the kids thinking even more. I think there are some Geoboards in our near future. Both kids also got to play with other kids a lot, both near their ages and not. We got some contact information for staying in touch with new friends. Unfortunately, none of them are local. But P is very enthusiastic about going to future unschooling conferences, so we may see some of them then if we don't see them sooner on trips!

P was very fearful and clingy when we went to the first evening gathering at the symposium. She was absolutely not willing to do the getting-to-know-you games that were going on, so I took her to the kids' play area to check out the toys. She played there happily for a long time, and by the time other people started coming in, she was ready to be social and get into the groove. Other big feelings came up a couple of times when she was dealing with younger children who were hitting. I sat with her outside and helped her release the feelings, and she rejoined the play with greater flexibility, enthusiasm, and resourcefulness. (This -- encouraging the release of big, hard feelings rather than changing the environment to make things easier -- is not an approach I learned from unschoolers, but it's one I think we'll keep using for a while, yet, because the rewards are great.) T wandered about from play room to snack table to our laps, getting his food and parent fixes as needed, and was on a pretty even keel emotionally the whole time. Both kids adapted easily to where and when noisy play was okay or not okay, and they enjoyed living all in one room in hotels. T, as usual, was sorry for the trip to end, though when he saw the left-behind toys, he didn't stay sad for long!

On the way home, we had some fun. We played tourist in Albuquerque, peeking in a few shops and eating our New-Mexican-leftovers lunch in the plaza in Old Town. We read about the brief occupation of Albuquerque by the Confederacy in 1862, and how the confederate troops buried eight cannons near the plaza and church as they fled. The former Confederate leader returned years later and showed the locals where to find the cannons, which by then were underneath a chile patch. Two of them (replicas now, because the originals were so valuable) are still on display in the plaza. We brought home a ristra of New Mexico red chile peppers (hard to find around here) and a blanket to remember Albuquerque by.

On a brief stop in Santa Fe, we browsed the markets, enjoyed some red-chile kettle corn, and found another couple of souvenirs. At first, as we waited to use a hotel restroom, I was distressed at how coiffed, made-up, and put-together the folks in Santa Fe seemed to be, compared to those in Albuquerque or other places I've been comfortable with my casual self. But it turned out that was the selection effect of the pricey hotel and the expensive shops on its ground level; once we hit the plaza, it was just folks again. The amount of public art on display in Santa Fe was impressive; I'm glad such creativity doesn't have to go along with people who go to such lengths to change their appearances.

Our last tourist stop before home was an aircraft museum in Pueblo, Colorado. There were dozens of aircraft on display, ranging in history from the Civil War to nearly the present, and a couple of helicopters were open to explore the inside and check out the instrumentation and seating, which made the kids happy. We also saw bombs, a space shuttle tire used on Atlantis, a MASH-type evacuation helicopter for the wounded, and many other craft. A huge captured Nazi flag was on display, and we talked about how Germany had changed from being our enemy in WWII to being an ally now, and what ally means. We saw a display of uniforms from real, local, female servicemembers. One Pueblo woman whose uniform was displayed had been a test pilot for prototype aircraft during WWII. We talked about the danger such a job would involve, and the high level of skill a good test pilot would need. P and T each chose a model airplane to bring home; T indulged his perpetual love of biplanes, and P chose a Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet, which she's been cuddling as blissfully as any doll. Today we found a web site about the Hornet, because we wanted to know how fast it could go. P's eyes were wide as we compared its Mach 1.7+ top speed to a fast ordinary car and to the fastest racing cars. P remembered seeing something like the Blue Angels in the movie Cars, and seeing the real Blue Angels fly over our house from time to time in Boulder. We also bought a water rocket that should be fun to play with, exploring the effects of pressure and Newton's third law, when we get a warm day.

Since we returned, I've been trying to leave something fun or interesting on the coffee table each night for the kids to find in the morning -- a form of strewing that Sandra recently referred to as a "daily special." I love that idea, though I can imagine I'll have to give it some thought to come up with things. This morning I left out a set of blocks, similar to the Jenga game, to play with, having found them in a closet last night. The kids were up before me, and by the time I came out, there was a problem with not enough blocks to go around, so I got out some alphabet blocks and Connectagons. P went to town with the Connectagons, building a Robot Town and regaling us with stories about the various robots and how they worked. Later she was pretending to be a robot. This evening I put out the Tag reader, the books currently loaded on it, and the U.S. Tag map. T asked P to play with a Tag book geared to helping kids learn to write letters, which she willingly did as he watched, absorbed. The Tag things were meant to be tomorrow's daily special. I guess it's a good thing for me, for my own development as a co-discoverer with my kids of interesting stuff, that I can't wait to get out the fun stuff once I think of it. Maybe I'll get out a jigsaw puzzle for tomorrow, one that no one's seen for a while. I could really get to like this!