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I have odd parents, and that is what I love about them.

My father was a Texan geologist turned yacht salesman, and also a professional classical musician. He was the type of man who told the same jokes over and over again, and no one seemed to get them. My mother I’ve given the nickname ‘posh Brit’ because that is exactly what she is: an English woman with a love of the designer clothing and jewelry, as well as great food. However eccentric they were when I was growing up, they still had facets of being very conservative. They were Catholic and my mom has a thing with being super, super clean. She can cook almost anything, and all of us delight in the feasts she spends hours preparing.

I, on the other hand, have never been conservative. I sleep in late, can’t clean to save my life, and never pictured myself being a parent. I had taken on my father’s love of the arts but didn’t want to have the rigidity that the school system pushed. I wanted freedom and choice. And for some reason, I believed that family was a ‘cop out’ and not something that interested me. Indeed, boarding school had made me believe that an academic career was the most important thing I could achieve.

Now that I am a mother, I look back on that image I had and feel saddened. I went off to school in the 8^th grade and basically grew up 24/7 with other kids, in a very strict academic world. We all felt suffocated and on top of each other, with no privacy. Kids were scared to emote for fear of being ridiculed. It had its perks, but the downside was very apparent.

I loved reading, and still do, but eventually that environment lead me to where I am today: an unschooling mother and family activist.

When I was just twenty and had moved to the States, I met my husband and was engaged by twenty one. This was something I had never envisioned, that I could have such intimacy and trust with someone so soon. I pictured myself as a rogue archaeologist, living in a tent somewhere. Instead, I had moved to LA and gotten married soon afterwards. It was the best surprise I could have asked for! We’re inspired by travel and living outside the box and yet we value the traditional family model, in the sense that family is first.

We don’t schedule it in, we schedule everything else around it.

Nowadays, to have such a view is indeed rogue. To not send one’s kids off to day care and then school and pursue a career is almost frowned upon.  Kids have become used to spending little time with mom and dad, and as one homeschooling  mum put it ‘ home is like a hotel, where kids check in and out’.

But things are changing.

Old school family values are becoming trendier (really!!) with mom blogs popping up all over the place, sharing their day to day routine with the world. One blog in particular infuses the radical notion of actually enjoying motherhood above all other pleasures, and it attracts readers who are not only single, but also hard core feminists who for one reason or another find themselves attracted to the image of a happy, smiling, and religious family.

Because of the internet, blogging, and social media, people can connect with eachother like never before, and learn from one another’s preferences. Magazines like Bust interview women who ( gasp) love their arranged marriage, despite catering to a feminist, women’s lib loving crowd. We are hungry to learn about other lifestyles, in order to properly discern what is right for our own, instead of shutting the door on anything outside of our comfort zone.

Nie Nie Dialogues is an inspirational read to check out, showing how a maman of 5 balances her desires and her family’s needs, as well as being an airplane crash survivor and burn victim. Her book Heaven Is Here is out of April 4^th and shows her heroic journey of recovery to physical and mental wellbeing, after having been in a coma for 3 months. I feel uplifted reading about her daily life and how she views the role of motherhood, and it certainly drives me to complain less about my own life and responsibilities.

The Wiegands is another motivational blog about a young artistic family of 4 living in Texas. Casey Leigh chronicles her life and the losses and hardships she has encountered on her journey in parenthood. Readers comment on how she makes the ups (her new pregnancy) and downs ( her miscarriage, her son’s asthma) so touching and real. Her writing is accessible and her story shows how we all struggle, but how we deal with it is what matters.

Are you unconventional yet drawn to the traditional? Where do those two ideas collide in your family and how do you make it work? Where do you find your inspiration?

This article was written by Elizabeth Kelsey: Wife to William, Mama to Kaya, currently writing from Phuket, Thailand where her family is living and learning together.

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The Energetic Learner.

You know the one… you probably have one at your house.

It came as such a surprise to me, after a couple of years of schooling my very academically compliant daughter to have our school room invaded by a loud, bouncy, seat-work-challenged boy. Why is it so often the boys?

I have at least two that would be candidates for medication if they attended “out school,” as they call it. It is not that they have an attention deficit, it is that their attention is divided. They are interested in so many things at once that sometimes focus is our biggest challenge.

I prefer to call them my “energetic learners.”

The ones that have to move and groove. The ones who rarely, if ever, finish a printing lesson with both cheeks planted on the chair. The ones with a million questions about a million things I’ve never even thought of.

Do you have one? Does schooling him (or her) drive you crazy? Me too. Especially in the winter.

One of the great blessings of having the ability to home school my children lies in the freedom to craft an educational experience that is unique to each child. Hannah’s school need not be Gabe’s and Gabe’s need not be Elisha’s. The content remains the same, the method of delivery varies. I am far from having this all figured out for each of my children, but I have learned a thing or two along the way that might be of use if you too have an energetic learner at your house: (more…)

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Teaching Writing to Young Children

For many parents, simply that title is enough to strike fear into their hearts.

Writing:

• That hated high school subject.
• The chore most dreaded following Christmas (WRITING those thank you notes).
• The most nebulous portion of the SAT (how DO they actually grade those essays?).
• The college class we all put off until the last possible moment and yawned our way through.

Writing.

Some say it can be learned. Other’s say it’s a gift. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, although leaning strongly toward the “learned” camp.

In the new millennium, few people truly write.

• E-mail doesn’t count.
• Neither does your grocery list.
• Nor does that note to get your kid out of gym class… no matter how creative your explanation of his sprained ankle was.
• Most of us don’t even write letters, much less memoirs, or articles or books.
• Most of us sit down at a computer, or stare at a blank paper and ask the same question we asked in tenth grade: “What do I write?”
• Or, we know what we want to write, but are disappointed with the end product because we lack the mechanics as well as the art to really do our ideas justice.

It is difficult.

It is bad enough to struggle with one’s own writing. It is entirely another thing to, with great fear and trepidation, try to teach our children to write.

It is one of the most frequently asked questions. One of the greatest concerns of home educators: HOW can I teach my child to do this terribly difficult thing that I myself find mortally painful and am only marginally successful at?

The 3 R’s

The answer, is blessedly simple. I call it the three Rs (no, not those 3Rs)

They are as follows: Relax, Read, Respond. Of course, this is a highly simplified version, but it will carry you quite a long way.

RELAX!

The first, most necessary thing, is for parents to take a deep breath, and relax. If your children see that you are terrified of this and that you think it is the hardest thing ever, they will adopt your attitude and you’ll all be miserable.

• STOP looking at what curriculum everyone else is using.
• STOP freaking out about what kind of assignments your child is NOT completing.
• START engendering positive feelings about writing in yourself and working towards a “print rich environment,” as the professional educators among us would call it.

Attitude is everything. Relax. You can do this.

READ!

Next, read. Read, read, read, READ to your children. If you’re pregnant with #1 read to her. If you’ve got ten around the dinner table, read to them.

Whether they are toddlers and it’s picture books or they’re middle aged kids and it’s Ben-Hur and the Colonists (our two right now, though not in the same book, of course!) or whether they’re young adults and it’s the Wall Street journal for dinner time debate.

Read to one another.

This is perhaps the single biggest factor in teaching a child to write. Why? Because it is through reading that vocabulary is developed, that the differences in style between Mark Twain and E.B. White are appreciated, and that the flow of good language washes over the ears and into the hearts of young children.

Writing styles are not developed in a vacuum.

A teacher cannot expect a child to find his voice, literarily speaking, if he has not first listened to the voices of many others.

It is the same as teaching a toddler to speak. They listen for nearly two years before they find much to say for themselves. Why do we expect children who have not “listened” adequately to be able to “voice” themselves on paper?

Do not make the mistake of assuming that once your child is functionally literate and is reading “Captain Underpants” or some such pop-culture nonsense that your job as family reader is over. It is our job as parents not only to direct the literary diet that the child himself consumes, but to continue to spoon feed him (force feed if necessary!) the good stuff as long as he’s under our roof. Even adult children like to be read to… I know, I am one!

RESPOND!

The third R is Respond. Having been read to in a relaxed environment, the child should, after a period of time, be asked to respond.

This does NOT necessarily mean in writing.

• A four year old can respond to a paragraph long passage from Aesop’s Fables by retelling the moral of the story.
• A seven year old can retell a whole chapter.
• A nine year old a whole book… if you have enough time to listen!

The first response that ought to be required of a child is oral.

Have your little children narrate (re-tell) what they have heard you read. Then ask them what they liked best and why. In this way they will parrot the style of the author, use new vocabulary in context and form a personal connection with the literature. Make it relaxed, light hearted, and fun.

When children get a little older, say seven or eight, they can begin writing short paragraphs. It is at this point that most kids start to cry, and some mothers too. The child, if he has been read to enough, will have lots to say and an active imagination… but the mechanics of writing will still be difficult.

What’s a mom to do? Stand over the child and yell? Steal the joy of writing by making him rewrite fifteen times to dot all the Is and fix punctuation?

No! It’s so much simpler: have the child tell you what he wants to write, you faithfully transcribe his words, and then, he copies it neatly into his writing book.

In this way a child enjoys the creative aspect of writing. He learns proper form (by copying yours). And he has none of the negative reinforcement of that dreaded red pen that haunts you to this day. This approach should take you through the first several years. After fourth or fifth grade, the child will quite naturally start writing on his own, for fun, and at that point, you can begin a formal writing course, without fear.

Until then, Relax, Read and allow your child to Respond. Relax.

What has worked (or not) in your family to inspire your kids to love writing?

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NaNoWriMo isn’t the newest gadget or latest dance craze. It is a marathon for writers: a contest which challenges participants to write one novel of 50,000 words in the month of November.

As a writer and marathon runner, this contest appealed to my thirst for out-of-the-box, yet fully attainable challenges.  Like completing a marathon, winning NaNoWriMo is a goal that requires a dedicated effort and a no-holds-barred mentality.

And, it’s for all ages.

In addition to NaNoWriMo for adults, the National Novel Writing Month also has a Young Writers Program, which is a perfect way for home educators, who also happen to love creative writing and slightly crazy challenges, to make NaNoWriMo a family event.

Young writers have the option of selecting the appropriate word count, based on grade level or ability. From pre-readers, who only need a few words, to teens, who can write 30 to 50 thousand words, the contest is open to all. The web site suggests word counts for all levels and offers free curriculum from high schoolers to pre-readers.

Not only does NaNoWriMo give advice and support for young writers, but educators can set up a virtual classroom on the YWP site, free of charge. Many libraries, schools, homeschool groups, and community centers offer writing workshops throughout the month of November.

Most of my children love writing, but not all, so NaNoWriMo is a perfect way to get them to use their imaginations and expand their vocabularies without the fuss and stress of English grammar. The mere act of writing (and finishing) will spur their creativity, which will translate into other areas of life, even if they don’t become best-selling authors.

In NaNoWriMo, the focus is not on grammar or editing or even having complete sentences—and diagramming is absolutely out the window. Rather, the point is to increase language skills while having fun (editing can come later).

The contest is all about the flow of ideas, building of plot and wrapping things up in a happily (or not so happily) ever-after conclusion.

NaNoWriMo is designed to jump start the writing process and to spill those thoughts and dreams onto paper. The time crunch and word count work together to keep the writer focused on moving the story forward, rather than getting stalled by linguistic technicalities.

I have a lot of goals for myself, for my kids, and for their friends in our homeschool group, who are taking this writing journey with us. Hopefully, our class of writers will learn to…

Not be overly critical.

It is easy to spend hours on one paragraph, but the NaNoWriMo challenge won’t allow this. Writers have to plug away regardless of whether the product is pure garbage or Nobel worthy.

Save editing for later. After writing my master’s thesis, I began at page 122 and worked backwards, sentence by sentence, editing all the way back to page one. I’m pretty sure training monkeys to type would have been more enjoyable. And most young writers probably feel the same way.

Grammatical rules for the English language can be confusing and daunting, and trying to make every sentence perfect can hinder the flow of creative output. This is why so many children never finish writing stories they begin. Granted, editing should be done at some point, but it’s just not vital in this mad dash to the NaNoWriMo finish line.

Use strange, new words. The thesaurus will become my best friend, and hopefully, my children’s best friend too. Who doesn’t like to hear their 7 year-old use words like “jauntily” or “flounced?”

Spew words like a lidless blender! Analogies, similes, metaphorical language: we are going to reach for the stars! Metaphors are like digital photos: out of the 749 you snapped on your trip to Paris, only 2 are worth keeping for later use. The process of using analogies and metaphors will get writers, young and old, to paint word pictures, without using the obvious adjectives.

Utilize action. Even when I write middle grade fiction, I find myself spending way too much time painting the scene. The clock will ensure that I don’t spend too much time Austenizing my work for 10 year-olds.

Meet a high goal. So often in life, we settle for what is easy. I want to present my kids with a high, yet doable challenge. Many times my kids have come up with great stories that remain unfinished. The challenge presented by NaNoWriMo will inspire them to finally finish something they have started.

Have fun. A lot of kids are not enthusiastic about writing. And I admit, it’s not always a joyously inspired act. Sometimes words come out painfully slow, as you stare at that blank page. But NaNoWriMo presents a different spin on writing. The goal is merely to write, no matter what, and to have fun with the story.

While I am forcing all of my kids (and a few others) to participate in NaNoWriMo YWP, the results will be worth the effort. But more importantly, the journey itself will be a quest we undertake together, without leaving home.

For educators and young writers:

www.ywp.nanowrimo.org

For adult novels:

www.nanowrimo.org

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The Report: It’s Not Good

Monday, June 20, 2011, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean released this report: International Earth System Expert Workshop on Ocean Stresses and Impacts. It is a must read and only takes a few minutes.

Conclusions are:

The participants concluded that not only are we already experiencing severe declines in many species to the point of commercial extinction in some cases, and an unparalleled rate of regional extinctions of habitat types (eg mangroves and seagrass meadows), but we now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation.Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of climate change, overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean. It is notable that the occurrence of multiple high intensity stressors has been a pre–‐requisite for all the five global extinction events of the past 600 million years (Barnosky et al., 2009).

What can we do? According to the report:

Technical means to achieve the solutions to many of these problems already exist, but that current societal values prevent humankind from addressing them effectively.

My Personal Dilemma

What one little thing can you do to reduce your impact?

My family will raise our thermostat, better plan our car trips, and take at least one less car trip a week.

Who am I and why do I want to do this? I was an award-winning environmental planner and lobbyist in Florida. My focus was manatee and ecosystem protection, a contentious effort that taught me the realities of our political process and the impact we can have on it. I spent 20 years working in government, for an environmental non-profit and as a private consultant. I have helped bring
lawsuits against government and defend government from frivolous lawsuits. I have drafted legislation and lobbied at the local and state levels, and this year I had two health care related legislative victories in North Carolina.

And I will have to decide which battle I am going to fight – health care freedom or environmental protection. Environmental protection clearly is more fundamental and critical, but it is a battle I fought for 20 years. I did my time and I am not sure I want to jump back in.

This year I waged a couple of health freedom battles in the North Carolina legislature (and won I might add). The return on investment as far as my human body energy output is concerned is much greater in these battles, and I enjoyed them. Environmental battles, in contrast, became a grind. Maybe taking the last five years off was the break I needed?

“What to do, what to do?” As my wonderful calculus professor used to say in his cool Polish accent.

I had human race survival concerns when I was little – the commercial of the Native American walking through the trash on the shoreline always upset me.

My earliest belief has always been “We need clean air and clean water or we will not survive.”

It is why I became an environmental planner and fought hard for 20 years. It is why I stood up to those who lied and threatened and stomped on the planet and then threatened my family, resulting in police protection for my home and family.

I have had a quiet five years in North Carolina and loved it. Now I have a decision to make. I am no longer into being an environmental martyr, and I have relatively buried my head in the sand. I love being a homeschooling mom! But what good will that ultimately do my son?

Who knew that a little girl in the 70s would be reading this Oceans report? Hopefully my little boy from the 2000s will not see it come true.

What Can You Do?

If you are wondering what you can do, just do something. People do not understand how easy it is to influence society and the political process.

You could:

• Stop buying crap and stop supporting the stores that sell it
• Take one less car trip a week
• Call your federal and state senators and representatives and actually write them letters. Calls and letters have more impact that emails and petitions
• Have your children send letters and pictures to these same elected officials
• Start your own local small group of people to take action. Don’t do it under an umbrella organization such as Sierra or Audubon. Just do it as yourselves with no group name. That was a new technique for me this year when dealing with the North Carolina legislature, and it was far more powerful than working for an organization.

I am sure you get the idea. Be creative and make your voices heard.

Revolution 2011 Club

Now move forward one day to June 21, 2011, when I created Revolution 2011 Club for kids.

There is nothing like a little time to reflect and develop a way for me to combine all of my loves: homeschooling, environmental activism, and teaching others how to affect government and shape their communities (see State of the Ocean Report – Time to Act).

I started the Revolution 2011 Club for my homeschooling group. Hopefully we will take it national and make it available to other homeschooling groups or other kids groups in general. So far 21 kids are interested. We will be up and running soon, with a website, wiki and whatever other cool stuff they develop. I will keep you posted.

Here are the basics, which may be useful for some of you who might be interested in doing something similar with kids (regardless of whether or not they are homeschooled):

1. I want to teach kids how to become involved with and influence our government and their communities to make changes they think are important. I am planning this Fall to lead a group of kids (14 years+) to work on a city or county issue that requires the city or county commission to take action. We would start from identifying the issue, researching it, preparing our arguments in support and preparing to defend against opponents, and ultimately lobbying the local government to take action. This knowledge is such a fundamental part of ourcountry’s history and it is being lost much to our detriment.
2. I want to start a group or two (or three) groups of homeschoolers to take action regarding the 2011 Oceans report. I blogged about it which may  help you understand where I am coming from.
3. I want to have it open to ages 7 and up, but may divide it into two or three groups, depending on the age of our participants. If it breaks into multiple groups I will need some help facilitating them all.
4. If you are interested in participating in one or both of these groups, please drop me an email and let me know the ages of your interested children.

Thank you for taking the time to read and consider these calls to action, I hope to hear from you soon!