It's Spring!

(Well, tomorrow it will be.)

We're spending time outside. The time change means that we have light in the evenings for bike rides before or after dinner.

The garden is growing. We really haven't planted much, and already we harvested the bok choy and lost the broccoli to the heat. The kale isn't growing much ; it got too warm too fast. Still, we eat lettuce and radishes, and marvel that our seeds sprouted and are now becoming food.

We started reading Scottish trickster tales, and now we're going to read about John Muir. We sing Loch Lomond quite often. We're going to make gluten free scones and gluten free shortbread.

We're revising the vacation slightly. San Francisco is probably out; it's difficult to mesh a city vacation with a camping vacation. We'll probably spend more time in Big Sur. We're researching hikes in both Big Sur and Yosemite.

Mostly we are working on meshing living and learning; or more specifically, letting go of the idea that learning happens outside the context of real life. I've thrown out pretty much any idea of having to do certain things, and instead we are doing what we want to do, along with everything that we need to do. We still bring things to the boys: stories, trips, experiences, music, etc....all of the things that we want them to experience. We practice reading and math when they are interested. We sing Spanish songs when we hear them.

Mornings? Best for learning, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera? I give up. I can make mornings "work", I can create lovely Enki/Waldorf school routines, I can see how lovely it all is AND I can now admit that it is artificial and that I had it right 3 years ago when I was using afternoons as focused "learning" time. Because honestly, in the mornings the boys want to play and I want to get my chores done. I'm done fighting it. I never relax fully into sharing with the boys when my homekeeping tasks have been put aside. In the afternoon we are all ready, ready to come together, to hear stories, to create, to laugh and to sing, to cook. We're relaxed.

Happy Spring everyone!