Basically, she banned all computers, MP3 players, video game systems, cell phones, etc etc, for 6 months.  And to kickstart the whole experiment, they went several weeks with no electricity at all.  She figured that after weeks of old-fashioned living, simply getting electricity back would be excitement enough that not having all the electronic devices wouldn’t seem so bad in comparison.

And they had amazing results.  The older kids adapted surprisingly easily, and the family found new time to spend together.  The eldest son even found a talent for music which he’s now pursuing professionally.  And even the youngest child, who had the hardest time with the experiment (even ‘running away’ to live with her father for a time) still saw a great improvement in her grades.

If you’ve read anything about Last Child in the Woods, or Nature Deficit Disorder, or anything about Waldorf philosophy, then you’re familiar with the whole idea of today’s culture being too ‘plugged in’ and not connected with our environment — both in terms of nature AND of the individuals around us.

Technology has its usefulness, of course.  I wouldn’t be posting this right now if it weren’t for the incredible advances the internet has given us, for instance.  But it can be too pervasive, too all-consuming.   As the author put it, “Her girls had become mere accessories of their own social-networking profile, as if real life were simply a dress rehearsal (or more accurately, a photo op) for the next status update.”  Brilliantly observed.

Flipper is techno-addicted, no question.  He’s pretty responsible about obeying the rules, no video games until his work is done, etc.  But his free time is filled with video games, his new electronic music recorder, his videocamera, his MP3 player.  His Gameboy until I permanently took that away some years ago.  This isn’t all bad — he’s learning to make stop-motion movies with his videocamera.  He’s producing full multi-track original songs with his music recorder.  But he shows a level of obsession that is worrying.  He sneaks his camera in bed at night.  He makes video recordings of himself playing video games.  He watches endless Youtube videos of other kids playing video games.  When he engages in creative drawing or writing, it’s all centered around his video games — diagrams of new levels for Mario, inventing new Pokemon characters, designing LineRider tracks… Again, at least he’s being creative and wanting to invent new uses — maybe someday he’ll be a video game designer! — but the exclusion of nearly all other creative offerings is, well, pretty tragic if you ask me.

His Asperger’s likely plays a role in this.  AS kids will hyperfocus on particular areas.

But still.  Wouldn’t it be great to do what SHE did?  Even just for a little while?

I would do a few things differently, of course.  First of all, I love the “no electricity” introduction, but we probably would not do that for more than a week.  And not COMPLETELY off the grid, either.  Our beautiful, fresh, clear water comes from a well operated by an electric pump.  With no electricity, we’d have to go to bottled water (or else install a hand pump, which I can’t see happening).  Since the object of the exercise is to experience a more natural living style, that would be a step in the wrong direction.  So, the electricity stays on, the water pump stays on.  The fridge and deep-freeze would also stay on.  Part of our natural-living lifestyle involves lots of home preserving, and much of that is stored in our deep-freeze.

But the stove and the microwave could stay off.  We’d live on raw foods, fresh foods, and barbecue (charcoal, of course).  Maybe experiment with a solar oven!  The TV would stay off, and the computers, obviously.  The radio?  Oh, that’s a hard one.  But just for a week.  It will be all the sweeter when the music comes back on, and in the meantime we’ll just make our own.

We’d invest in a wind-up alarm clock or two.  Leave all the lights off, all the time.  We’d run the vaccuum, though… that’s essential for my dust-allergic hubby.  We might consider allowing the electric kettle as well…  And our telephones are all electric as well.

And of course, for this to work at all, we would have to do it in the summer.  No heat, dark after 5pm… doing it in the winter would just be daft.  But in the summer?  Quite doable.  Just like camping… but at home.

After a week or so of that, we’d turn on the stove again, but leave the computers off.   Maybe for another 2 weeks.   I guess we’d have to start buying newspapers to keep up with important world events.  I’d have to call people instead of emailing them — that’s hard, for an introvert like me!

Another potential obstacle — Many of my son’s school resources are online or on the computer.  And yes, we “do school” in the summer, just on a pretty loose schedule.  I’d have to print stuff out ahead of time, or just take a break from some of them.  Intellego Unit Studies, for instance, ONLY work with an internet connection.

But it would be a most intriguing experiment, one we just might consider doing this summer…

Saxon Math 5/4, Homeschool Third Edition (2005).  630 pages.  Just the student textbook.  Some exercise numbers are circled in pencil, otherwise no marks.  Very good condition overall, some wear here and there.  $30.

Easy Grammar: Grades 3 and 4, 1996 Teacher’s edition.  480 pages.  A few pencil marks, no writing.  Cover shows wear, first40 or so pages are dog-eared.  Otherwise in good condition.  $15.

Easy Grammar: Grade 4, 2006 Teacher’s edition.  585 pages.  Excellent, like new condition.  $25.

A Reason for Spelling, Level D, Teacher’s edition.  355 pages. Front cover missing, some dog-eared pages, otherwise good condition.  $15

Birthing from Within, England and Horowitz.  Paperback.  Excellent condition.  $10.

Enjoy!

Okay, I wasn’t going to get into this whole “Tot School” thing, since we’re not really doing all that much in terms of formal schooling.  But, she did a few really cool things this week, and I know that “Tot School” isn’t supposed to necessarily mean “formal schooling” anyway, so I decided to jump on board and share.  Maybe next week I’ll take more pictures too…

First, art.  I’ve been getting Waldorf-y lately art-wise.  I’ve just read Painting with Children — I’ll post a review of that another time.  I’ve also broken down and ordered Stockmar watercolour paints and some accessories (painting board, paint jars and holder)… We’re still awaiting those, so I decided not to do the typical early Waldorf painting experience, where we would start with just one colour to fully experience it.  Pomme loves drawing great details — even though she’s only 3, she draws people with hair, eyelashes and eyebrows, toes, teeth, clothes… she draws a baseline too, which is apparently very unusual for her age.

So I decided to do a Waldorf-inspired “child copies the parent” painting.  I started with a light wash on part of the paper, for the grass, which she then imitated.  Then another wash for the sky.  Then we added a tree, apples on the tree (using a different brush technique), a sun in the sky, and a few people around the tree, all of which she duly (and most excitedly) imitated!

Here is my finished model:

According to Waldorf art principles, the people are deliberately simple, mere suggestions of people.  Here is her finished work — she had a bit too much water in the tree paint, so it ended up spreading and fading as it dried, obscuring just how amazing her tree looked originally.  But it still looks pretty cool!

Notice that her people are more detailed than mine — she tried to add faces, hair, etc, which didn’t work as well with the thicker paintbrushes, but she refused to just to basic shapes like I had.  The taller person is daddy, apparently, and the shorter one is her.  Then there’s a mere suggestion of a person on the other side of the tree — that’s one of her imaginary friends!

This was such a fun and simple activity.  We’ll definitely do this sort of thing again.

The only other thing we did ‘formally’ this week was math.  We’re working through Right Start level A — nice and slow, she’s only 3!  But she gets it and she loves it, so why not, eh?

So far, she’s learned to recognize quantities up to ten at sight (when grouped as “five and something”), using fingers, objects, tally sticks, or the abacus; instantly count aural taps up to ten; parallel and perpendicular; squares, rectangles and triangles (which she mostly already knew, but didn’t know a square was also a rectangle!); and repeating patterns with up to 4 elements (ie, Red Red Blue Green).

Rather than using the “bead cards” (reproducible in the appendix of the book) as a manipulative, I decided to make Montessori-style bead bars — like the golden bead bars, but using the 5-and-something patterns of Right Start, and using natural wood beads à la Waldorf.  Here’s one finished set:

I’m actually really proud of how these turned out.  I plan to make another post describing how they’re made, with more photos, and a video of Pomme helping!  She instantly recognizes each one, it’s so cool.

This week she did her first official math worksheet, as part of lesson 10.  This was writing tally marks to match the number of objects shown.  She’s only 3, so her writing is not great, but I think it’s darn good for a 3yo… (today she wrote “mom” on her own…)

Ain’t she something?!?

We actually started a little form drawing — just curves — the last couple days of last week.  And it’s obvious how much he needs this.  A simple, regular, large curve from him is alternately too narrow, too pointy, too small…

There was also a nice confirmation on Friday of the effectiveness of including story in the work, as recommended (nay, as insisted upon) by Waldorf methods.  When I wanted to do one more form (consisting of a half-dozen curves in various locations) and he balked, I started relating the curves to dolphins, his greatest love.  This one is a dolphin leaping out of the water, this one is a dolphin diving, these ones are two dolphins kissing.  He grinned, lost his grumpiness, and eagerly drew the form himself, telling me the story of his dolphins as he went.

Great for form drawing, and for everything.  I need to remember this, it obviously works for Flipper.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the day goes.  We’ll probably be experimenting with the plan for a little while yet, but basically we’ll do form drawing for at least an hour, along with his math and french and spelling and call that a ‘main lesson.’  Then after lunch, we’ll do some art and some knitting and some pottery — he’s eager to try a kid’s pottery wheel we just picked up.  Music time and a walk in the morning as well… and a visit to nanny and grampy’s… Yikes!  I’m exhausted already!

At the same time, the cushion I had started was also left aside, never to be picked up again.  My foray into learning to knit came to a halt.  But I’ve always wanted to get back into it, and also to get Flipper interested again as well.

With all my Waldorf research lately, of course knitting came up again, in a big way.  According to Donna Simmons of Christopherus, if you do no other handwork at all, at least do knitting.  With Flipper’s issues of focus, hand strength and coordination, patience, perfectionism, electronic/plastic toy addictions, knitting seemed like just the ticket!

So I picked up a Waldorf-based book of knitting for children, which includes rhymes for remembering the different stitch techniques as well as some simple projects — little toy lambs, elephants, horses, dolls, etc.

My plan has been to start including knitting in his ‘schoolwork’ starting tomorrow, Monday.  So this weekend while he was at his dad’s, I pulled out the box of knitting supplies and got to work re-learning the techniques myself.  There was a skein of fun fluffy pink yarn, so I decided to work on a scarf for Pomme as practice.

I also had my “hook” for Flipper all set.  On Friday, we volunteered at a fundraiser bake/craft sale.  There were some fluffy handknit scarves, and Flipper wanted a blue one.  I told him he could knit his own, and he thought I was joking at the time.

Tonight, he saw me working on Pomme’s scarf.  “Is that a scarf???”  “Yes.”  “Cool!”  Now here I’m expecting him to say “can you make one for me, too?” and I would answer, “I could, but instead I’ll teach you to make one by yourself.”

What he actually said was:  “Can you teach me to knit a blue scarf myself?”

Hallelujah. That part was easy, anyway.

In fact, he wanted to start right away.  So I gathered up the book, some needles, and some practice yarn — with the promise that when he’s got the hang of it, we’ll go to the craft store and he can pick out his favourite yarn for his scarf.  And we started casting on.

Right away we had problems.  He kept wanting to lie down on his right elbow, which obviously can’t work.  He kept trying to use his left hand to do the work.  And whenever there was a problem, he would throw it down and cry!  I had warned him ahead of time that casting on was the hardest part, and that it would get easier after this.  But he kept crying, and wouldn’t let me help him, just kept trying it his way and having the same problems repeatedly.

We ended up having a talk about how you need to keep trying, not everything is easy on the first (or second or tenth) try, but that doesn’t mean you give up.   And that you need to let the people who know how to do something, help you.  I came this close to losing my cool and blowing up at him, but thankfully I kept my self-control this time.

Eventually, of course, he started to get it, and it’s just mind-boggling how his mood changed.  “Oh, I’m getting the hang of this now.  Heh, this is pretty easy.  Look mom!  I can do it!”  Oy vey.

We took a break when it was time for his bedtime routine, and took it up again for his quiet time.  He had cast on 25 stitches so we decided to start a row of knit.  This, of course, was much easier than casting on, so things went along swimmingly.  When it was time to go to bed, he asked if he could continue knitting while I read to him.  I figured, why not?  It’s better than him fidgeting, squirming, biting his covers and cracking his knuckles constantly.

When I told him that knitting was going to be part of his schoolday tomorrow, he was excited.

He knit in bed until he started to get drowsy.   Before he put it down, though, I had noticed every so often him mumbling to himself “get the sheep… off we leap… under the gate…” — from the verses used to learn the stitches.  It works!

But occasionally, she stays in her room until we go in and get her (or she comes to get us, saying “wake up mommy!”).  Last night was one of those nights.

So I got a good night’s sleep, right?

Wrong.  Exhausted and looking forward to a great slumber, I ended up with an all-nighter IBS attack.  No pain, just nauseous and unsettled enough so that I couldn’t sleep.  Then I’d have to run to the loo and spend some quality time there.  When I start falling asleep on the pot, I head back to bed for a quick snooze.  But 1/2 hour later, I’m awake and dashing back again.

Sometimes this goes on for a couple hours.  Then whatever was causing the trouble passes… and I sleep peacefully the rest of the night.  Other times, like last night, I’m back and forth until 5am.

I’ve learned to roll with it.  I don’t fret and despair, I just take a book and camp out in the bathroom for an hour at a time.  But seriously, 5am?

So I’m functioning today on about 3 hours sleep — not consecutively.  The rain all last night was very pleasant to listen to, though now there’s a swamp in our back yard.  Pomme’s in great spirits today after her long sleep.  I guess she stole mine.

So it was with a fair bit of nerves that I went about my morning duties.  Would I catch the parade commander’s cues to march off the colours?  Would we be in the right place at the right time?  Would I be able to hear them announce the hymns?

Adding to my nerves was the fact that this service would probably be more watched than usual, thanks to the idiots who vandalized the cenotaph a few days ago.  This is, by the way, the official provincial cenotaph, not just the local one.  Here’s a great video by Charles Leblanc showing the damage:

But in the end, Remembrance Day isn’t about me, is it?  I gathered up my guts, had a great chat with the parade commander before we started who set me straight with a cheery smile, and off we went, without a hitch.  Well, no major ones anyway, but if you didn’t notice then I won’t tell. 

Flipper and Pomme came to watch, of course.  Here in New Brunswick, Remembrance Day is an official holiday — schools are closed (not that it makes a difference for us, but for most families it certainly does), offices are closed (so hubby was able to take the kids), most stores are closed.   Apparently there were about 5000 people in attendance, and 300 soldiers in the parade.  That’s young soldiers, not counting the elderly vets who were also out in great numbers.

Flipper took a great video of the parade arriving at the cenotaph.  I’m so grateful to him, since I never get to actually see parades anymore!

Not bad for an 11-year-old with a cheap videocam, eh?

Charles also captured a nice picture of the spectators showing Flipper (in the grey jacket with yellow shirt) and Pomme with daddy (sitting down beside Flipper).

We started off the day with a new approach to managing our daily schedule — writing it on our big whiteboard, which I appropriated from the downstairs playroom for this experiment.   It worked pretty well, until Pomme erased it around lunchtime… But here she is getting ready for our walk:

I didn’t really want a long walk today, for various reasons (you can see all the stuff we had on our list!) – and I wasn’t sure how much Pomme would actually walk (and I wasn’t planning to take a sling, so I didn’t want to end up carrying her the whole way).  There is an entrance to a trail just a few minutes’ walk from our house, but I actually didn’t even know where it was.  Flipper does, however, so my suggestion for today was for him to take us to the trail entrance, then we’d come home.  We also needed to collect a few nice leaves for today’s art project.

Here, Pomme goes into the ditches beside the road and brings out a big handful. 

When we got to the trail entrance, everyone was keen to continue on, especially Pomme.   So we went in.  No sooner had we ventured into the woods, than Flipper made a cool discovery:  a woodpecker, in a tree right above him!

Our next discovery was not so joyous.  A great swath of trees has been chopped down.  Apparently whoever actually owns the land this trail is on is going to be doing some development.  This area is literally right behind a row of houses, so I’m not sure exactly what they’re doing, but that’s what I’ve heard.

Still, this was only in one area.  From there, the trail went on into the woods, and it was lovely.

It wasn’t overly long, either.  It ended up in this large field, which is also apparently somebody’s private property.  So we didn’t stay.  The kids checked it out then we turned back.

Later in the day, we did our art project with the leaves we collected.  Here‘s where we got the idea from.  As you can see we did things slightly differently.  Flipper loved this project.  He didn’t have time to completely finish and is looking forward to getting back to it.

We ended up not getting absolutely everything on our schedule done today, in part due to our extra-long nature walk.  But it was just so perfect, in so many ways exactly what a nature walk is supposed to be.  And with my crazy kids, the way things are “supposed” to work in homeschooling often is nowhere near the reality.   So in the end, I didn’t mind.  We may not have practiced his Reading Detective literary analysis or reviewed the virtues via Aesop’s Fables, but we experienced a great learning adventure nonetheless.

The left hemisphere perceives the world in bits and pieces and loves to organize and categorize… It also gives readers “that little silent voice” inside the head while reading. Math also is a left hemisphere activity. In conclusion, the left side of the brain is the “try” side. When trying a new activity, it is the left hemisphere that comes into play.

Flipper hates to try new things.  He is not good at organizing.  He is conceptually good at math, but struggles with practical applications and basic things like remembering the times tables (though he has fully understood the concept of multiplication since he was 6 years old).

The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and is quite a bit different than the left side of the brain. The right hemisphere is responsible for movement, especially automatic movement. Many right-brain dominant students are in perpetual motion, especially when concentrating. Movement allows them to keep the right side busy so they can function in the left side. As previously mentioned, America’s modern schools are judging students primarily on left hemisphere activities. As the right-brain dominant student wiggles and tries to stay in the left side of the brain, he/she will often be misdiagnosed as hyperactive or having ADHD.

Hm, that’s a very interesting hypothesis.  I’ve certainly seen it mentioned in many sources that ADHD and SI kids wiggle when they’re trying to concentrate, and that we should allow them to (give them safe outlets for fidgeting) because it does actually help their concentration.

The right hemisphere likes rhythm and music. It is attracted to shapes, colors, and patterns. The right hemisphere makes pictures in the mind while reading. In addition, it is the emotional side of the brain. Many right-brain dominant people have a tendency to get “stuck” in their emotions. They may have temper problems or get their feelings hurt frequently.

Flipper has always been a natural at rhythm, and his music comes straight from his soul (disorganized though it may be heh).  He prefers art to writing.  He most definitely gets “stuck” in his emotions, with temper problems and hurt feelings!

As for “pictures in the mind while reading”, here’s an interesting anecdote.  I am reading Lord of the Rings to him for his bedtime routine.  We’ve spent over a week now at the Council of Elrond (those council guests sure do talk a lot!)  At one point, there was some comment made about seeing the waterfall and hearing the birds and Flipper said, “Wait, they’re outside???”

Well, yes, I said, and flipped back to the beginning of the chapter where it explained they were on a porch.  He had apparently missed that little detail, and believed it was indoors.

He had constructed an entire visual scene in his head, and described it to me.  “I thought it was in this big white room!”  Knowing now that it was outdoors, he said we needed to stop while he “fixed” his picture, he couldn’t continue until he had it sorted out.  Burying his head in his pillow, and scrunching up his eyes, he asked me question after question… “Are they sitting on chairs?  What kind of chairs?  Is there a table?”  Once his scene was reconstructed, we were able to continue.

Fascinating.

Anyway, I’m exploring their videos and “brain training” tools.  Many things are free.  I’m wondering if anyone reading this has any experience with this system (or something similar).  Did you actually get positive results?  Is it worth a try?  Is it just a big scam?

Elizabeth May, leader of the federal Green Party of Canada, was coming to town to speak at a Conservation Council of New Brunswick event.  Various other events were therefore scheduled around this, including a talk at UNB.   As a member of the local Green Party EDA (Electoral District Association) board, my family and I were invited to a meet and greet dinner on Friday.

The dinner got off to a bit of a late start, as Elizabeth was taking a live interview via telephone for a radio station in her new riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands.  It was only supposed to be a few minutes, but stretched to nearly an hour.  As impatient as we all were, we could hardly begrudge an interview like this.

Finally, though, she was free, and to great applause and smiles she joined the party.  There were probably 50 people there, adults of all ages and many young children.  Hippies, preppies, and businessmen alike.  And so we set to eating.

Her time was very limited, so there wasn’t time for everybody to have indepth conversations.  But we did manage to grab her for our few moments, and to snap this photo of her and Flipper:

What a great homeschool field trip that was!

In our all-too-brief conversation, we found Ms. May to be genuinely warm, personable and sincere, not just the polite vote-for-me civility of most politicians.  We told her about how hubby ran for the Greens back in the 2004 federal election (when we were living in Ontario), to help meet the ground-breaking goal of having a candidate in every riding across the country (something that the mainstream parties don’t even always accomplish!)

If you haven’t considered voting Green before, now (between elections, but with one possible at any moment given the current Parliament) is the ideal time for you to do a little reading on why you should.   Apparently, Green is the majority party of preference among young voters, and is the second-choice party for a vast number of Canadians of all ages.  Not to mention, the millions of voters that would like to go Green, but feel the need to “vote strategically” instead, giving election winners a false sense of the strength of their mandate (lesser of two evils rather than legitimate preference), and further indoctrinating the undemocratic fallacies of our first-past-the-post system.  It’s a self-perpetuating vicious circle.  As more people are afraid to vote their conscience, it drives even more people away from their preferences as they feel their votes becoming more and more ‘wasted’.

No vote is ever wasted.  Every single vote for a “losing” party provides funding for that party, to strengthen them for the next election.  And it sends the message to the winning party that they are not all that popular, not as much as they think they are, anyway.  And if the losing party you vote for receives more votes than it did in the last election, the growth will not go unnoticed, and more people will be confident enough to vote for them next time.  And lo and behold, before you know it, this “losing” party is now winning!

No, I’m not at all passionate about electoral reform, couldn’t you tell?