The power of boredom

It's hard to be with bored kids. It brings out the worst in them and the grown ups.

There is an assumption that parents ought to entertain their children. I'm not sure where it came from, but it seems to be a default setting that parents feel responsible for amusing their kids and kids often expect to be amused. Wherever it started, advertising certainly feeds it and feeds on it.

It is especially tiring to be with a person, or people, who lean on you for amusement all day every day. So I refuse to be amusing. I love to relate with my children and do things with them, but I refuse to fix boredom. It is my children's own responsibility. It is a life skill they need to learn. I couldn't home educate if I felt I needed to entertain five children all day. But it is a messy skill to learn.

Our culture assumes boredom is bad. We're a busy society. Perhaps slowing down feels like failure? We're also an amused society. People make lots of money from fueling an insatiable desire for amusement. We confuse amusement with happiness and are led to believe that we can buy it. It starts in babyhood, with thousands of toys which do all the playing and performing for the baby. I guess it takes new forms at every stage of development and every stage of life.

Have we dis-empowered kids by training them to rely on complex objects and other people for amusement? Have we taught them to depend on goods and services which need to be bought? Have we robbed them of the opportunity to work out how to amuse themselves freely? Have we accidentally taught them that the imagination is not enough, that it is boring?

On the days when the children are twitchy and bored, I am trying to see the great opportunity before us. If  we slow down and let ourselves get bored, then we have made space for some interesting, creative and unexpected skills to grow.

Trevor Cairney has a great post on Stimulating Children's Imaginations: Creating Time, Freedom and Space

What Do We Plant When We Plant The Tree?

What do we plant when we plant the tree?

We plant the ship, which will cross the sea.
We plant the mast to carry the sails;
We plant the planks to withstand the gales --
The keel, the keelson, the beam, the knee;
We plant the ship when we plant the tree.

What do we plant when we plant the tree?
We plant the houses for you and me.
We plant the rafters, the shingles, the floors.
We plant the studding, the lath, the doors,
The beams, and siding, all parts that be;
We plant the house when we plant the tree.

What do we plant when we plant the tree?
A thousand things that we daily see;
We plant the spire that out-towers the crag,
We plant the staff for our country's flag,
We plant the shade, from the hot sun free;
We plant all these when we plant the tree.

                                       Henry Abbey (1842-1911)

We have been enjoying this poem. I wonder what we are planting as we parent? How exciting and terrifying!

Zines: Kids taking charge of their own writing

I hardly know a thing about zines. I was never cool. It's pronounced, "zeens", if you are as ignorant as me. Zines are little, independent, low budget, self-publications. A bit like a photocopied blog, from an era when blogs didn't exist. They can be about anything, usually combining images and text, and then run through a photocopier. Black and white mini magazines ready for an audience.

In trying to understand the zine, I found a handy little tutorial on how to make one from a single piece of paper. The idea is, you can do the layout of the entire zine on one page, whip it through the copier and fold into a booklet. It fits in an envelope, ready to post to all your eager, cool fans. Ours are micro, as I only had A4 paper. Click here for a complete tutorial.

image from experimentwithnature.com

It appears that children write best when they initiate and care about their own project. I have started folding a batch of zines so the kids can make up their own little publications. One child in particular is quite into it.

I wonder if we can make an Advent Calendar out of 25 zines...or maybe Christmas card zines?

Learning super powers

I'm learning that education is built from really basic bricks, but which ones are essential? What do our children need to learn? There are some things which technology and a changing economy are making redundant. So, what is absolutely essential, regardless of change?

At the moment, I think our kids need to be able to read, think, imagine, evaluate, and communicate. 

So, they need to be able to read. I mean more than decoding words. I mean enjoying making sense of what someone else is communicating.

They need to be able to imagine. They need to be able to use what they have read and experienced in the past to see what is real and true and to have an expanding picture of what may or may not be possible.They need to be able to find new ways to solve new and old problems. 

They need to be able to evaluate. A world of rapidly increasing information and communication demands that our kids be able to work out if something is important, true, beautiful or useful.

By "communicate", I mean taking whatever is at their disposal (words, print, imagery, actions, objects) to say whatever they need to say to someone who can benefit from it. Kids need to be able to write, to be able to put words together in a way which is meaningful to themselves and someone else. They need to be able to talk, listen and ask good questions. 

Skills. Super powers. Tools to chip away at life with.

Will they always feel like they are learning super powers? No. Sometimes skills start to come before motivation. At the same time, the way we learn these skills must not slaughter kids' pleasure in using these skills. I am finding this is something that someone else cannot teach us. It's not the same everyday. It's not in a curriculum we can buy. It is a product of studying our own children and trying out new things together.

I'm finding that becoming fluent in these super powers is messy, relational, unpredictable, sometimes ordinary, sometimes spectacular. The skills grow in fits and starts as they are used. The skills are learned in a culture of joyful doing; fun reading, eager talking, attentive listening, inquisitive questioning, wild making, free playing, real writing. 

Next time we are labouring over that word or sentence or problem, I'm going to remind my kids, and myself, that we are growing super powers.

What is on your list of "essential things for kids to learn"?

image Nail and Twine Photography

What is school for? Seth Godin on education

Seth Godin writes great stuff. I haven't read enough of it. I won't summarise what he's on about, you can easily enough look at his blog and work it out.

After enjoying Godin's insights for a while, I was glad when a virtual acquaintance sent me a link to his manifesto on education. You can get a copy in a version that suits you, for free, here.

Good questions: Science and history

Our approach in home education is not so much to shovel content into our kids, but to help them develop skills to find and make sense of "content" themselves. Asking good questions is at the heart of this approach. History and science are disciplines which rely on asking good questions.

I have appreciated  The Christ Files: How Historians Know What They Know About Jesus, by John Dickson. Among others, it is a book I will be reading with my kids in years to come because of how it models historical inquiry. Although written by a Christian, it doesn't smell of reactionary self protection. In fact, it is not trying to prove anything. As the subtitle says, it explains how historians, from all sorts of religious (and non religious) backgrounds, know what they do about Jesus. And, it is accessible for people who don't earn a living in the history department of a university.

Here is a short clip I also found useful as summary of our own approach to Science as Christians. We will be making lots of use of the Centre for Public Christianity,  for our history and science learning in time to come.

Make your own Ranger cloak and cross bow

As I mentioned here, we have stumbled across all sorts of interesting things from reading the Ranger's Apprentice series. The eight year old is keen to make his own Ranger cloak using this pattern,

 

Soon after starting archery, the eight year old found a design for making a (harmless) paper cross bow. Here his finished product.

Here are the instructions

An 8 year old's accidental history of weapons and warfare

Our 8 year old started archery classes earlier this year. Dozens of home ed kids have a class for an hour and a half each Tuesday. He had been desperate to learn for months. I had postponed the activity for some time, feeling like it was a bit obscure, and not really one of those essential life skills. But, it is so cheap and convenient, that I thought we could afford to have a go.

On the eve of starting, some friends (who also home educate and do archery) suggested he read the Ranger's Apprentice series, by John Flanaghan. So we found the first book and he started reading. He ploughed through them, and Steve set about trying to catch up, to 'supervise' the reading experience. The joy of reading races between father and son are the stuff of another post.

The boys eventually persuaded me to join in. Ranger's Apprentice is a real page turner. The first book starts like a fantasy, with some mythical creatures. As the series progresses, Flanaghan switches into a much more realistic mode. The settings are all fictionalised, but resemble the environments, races and cultures of Europe, North Africa, Asia and the British Isles.

It is set in a pseudo medieval time frame, but with post modern values and politically correct attitudes (and quite a few Australian idiosyncrasies). So, a whole lot of anachronisms really! The writing and descriptions become repetitive, but each plot and setting in the twelve part series is so different that I couldn't resist them.

The great thing about this reading experience was the ongoing conversations between Steve, the 8 year old and I about the books. Even the weaknesses were a catalyst for learning and developing our own thinking and writing.

One thing we all especially loved were the details and explanations about weaponry, training, tactics and strategy in warfare. Flanaghan managed to teach us a whole lot about real historical developments and technologies through a completely fictional world. It so happens that the bow and arrow are the primary weapon of a Ranger, so it has fitted beautifully around our new archery class.

Quite conveniently, last week, we enjoyed a morning with a medieval re-enactment group. Kez documented it here. It was fun to have all sorts of weapons, fighting and technologies demonstrated which were familiar to us from our reading. It added another dimension to our web of learning.

Then, we have jumped on YouTube to find more of the same. Here is a favourite.



Ranger's Apprentice has inspired some creativity. I'll share that later this week.

Is school obsolete?

An amazing story and fascinating research. Inspiring for our own parenting. Inspiring for our interactions with children in our communities, local and global.



TED

Birthday cake cheating

I do not love baking. After a few years of feeling guilty for being so unenthusiastic in the birthday cake domain of life, I learned to cheat. My new rules are simple:

1. Buy a cake that people would like to eat.
2. If necessary, ice with pre-made icing.
3. Dump a whole of of visually exciting stuff on top.

So, here are a few birthday cakes from the last couple of years.

All the cakes have been simple, delicious, low cost cakes bought from a bakery nearby. Lamington cake, butterscotch cake, apple tea cake, red velvet cake, mud cake, Jam and cream sponge. Anything.

A tower of bakery cakes, stacked and secured with bamboo skewers.

Pre-made icing with food colouring added.

Cake mountain iced (note the rugged waterfall spilling down the side!).

A pile of treasure chocolates on top for the toy dragon (seen here from behind) to sit on. That is what dragons do, after all.

After cutting, kids just chose their preferred layer of cake (as opposed to having a tall skinny piece of three types of cake).

This was a plain, iced bakery cake.

Roses from our garden arranged on top.

Old tea cup and saucer, with toy bear seated inside.

A few silver cachous scattered for sparkle.

Our trusty bakery had this one decorated already. 

I added the butterfly and the silk petals (from the discount store)

Yes, this was excessive! I bought the top three layers from the supermarket (oh, red velvet cake is delicious!), Again, all held together with skewers.

The bottom, square layer is my trusty gluten free layer (a favourite choc/hazelnut cake). This is the only part I baked, if you call using a Thermomix baking!

Chocolate ganache poured over it all. Maltesers, sprinkles and smarties added.

We gave a lot of cake away after the party.

Each of these were very quick. I just made them up as I went along, which I found far less stressful than following someone else's design.

The other idea we tried once, was baking several plain cakes, then letting the birthday child cut them up and arrange them into a structure of their own choice. We fixed it in place with skewers. Then, they iced it and decorated it with lollies themselves. It was good for the preschool aged child who was into construction craft. Can't find the photo though...

The beginning.

Steve and I are learning how to learn again. Parenting is great for that. This is a place for us to share resources we are finding useful. Let's see what we discover...

image by Nail and Twine Photography