Creative Days

Teeny has friends coming to visit from the U.S. They will be arriving tomorrow and she is very excited. She has planned their whole itinerary for their time in Costa Rica. Their first visit will be early Sat. morning when they will head to Manual Antonio beach for two days.

They will come home to rest Sunday night and then head up to Monte de la Cruz for a campout Monday night and Tuesday. After a day of rest they will head up to Arenol volcano for a overnight at what we think is one of the most beautiful places on earth!

This will be her first trip as a tour guide and she is very excited and nervous that everything goes well. No matter what it will all be Pura Vida for sure.

The best part for us was all the great cleaning and organizing she has done on her bedroom, it looks great!

Today she took her little sister with her to get the dog her vitamin K shot and they went to have ice cream. They had taken both dogs and while they were at the park the little guy tried to jump up on a wall and knocked himself silly. They were about to head back to the vets place to get him checked, when he finally got his head back on right.

It was a really nice day weather wise and they had a great time hanging out and eating ice cream.

Concentration

The excitement mounts as we prepare for painting the walls! It is amazing that this little girl can get so excited about something we put off and put off! She is already asking when we get to scrub the cabinets!
Today was also the day she announced to all of us officially that she "quit" school. It was funny because she said it kind of quietly first then louder and louder until she was shouting. Her sister gave her high five and she felt like it was o.k.
I still think she was holding out because she thought I really wanted her to go. For the past few days she kept trying on different ideas. She had one idea to go twice a week, only on late school days. Then she said one day a week. And then she finally came around to where she really wanted to be.
This is possibly the first time I have seen her take control and do something she really wanted to do.
Another landmark for has been she is crying now. that has taken six years. The thing she will cry about? When she has to get off the computer. Not the cartoons, not the friends, not go to bed, nah only get off the computer. Excellent!

It started out pretty focused and actually lasted about three walls.

My older daughter has been the family sushi maker. Actually her hubby was the maker, she was just the idea person. He makes great sushi, but since he is in Hondurus we had to make our own. It was a fun adventure and teeny is making it again today with her friend.

Unschooling Then and Now

Thirty years ago I was about six months pregnant with baby numero uno. We had just met a friend in Texas where we were living who exposed us to all kinds of really cool stuff. The first one was home birthing, and it was like the first in a long line of dominoes.

Once we started studying about home birthing we became convinced that we needed to step up our nutrition. Hubby had been a vegetarian before we got married, so slipping back into that life style was not a problem for him or me. I did not ever really like meat anyway, so no sacrifice on my part.

Of course once you fall into the rabbit hole of nutrition it is a hole that you will pretty much stay in forever, and we have.

Next came our discovery of home schooling. We knew when we read about it it was something we wanted for our children. The book "School Can Wait" by Raymond Moore was the first book we read and I loved it. It just resonated with me to my core and I knew this was something I would do.

When we told people about it they would laugh and say, "yeah just wait until they get old enough to go to school, you will change your minds". I didn't but hubby did, many times in fact.

People were pretty negative with us back in the day, but now it is amazing how different people are toward the whole homeschool topic. I should clarify that, they were accepting in the U.S. Here in Costa Rica they are not at all accepting, in fact they think we are crazy.

It is like the early days of homeschooling our older kids, only now we are dealing with it all over again with the younger kids. It is just not really accepted here because once again it is not understood. In the U.S. there has been enough publicity to make it understood, but not here. I guess once again we will be the pioneers and expose people to a new idea that they have never heard of and maybe open some minds.

Mainstream Media's Attempt to Understand Unschooling

If you are a "homeschooler", you have no problems. In fact most people will look very kindly on you and think you are a saint or something. They will ask what curriculum you use and how many hours a day you all put in, and how many support groups you belong to. All this makes you very acceptable to them and to the educational world as a whole.

But whoa, tell them you are an unschooler and you will be slammed. Try this one on for size. This incredibly brave family did something I could never do.

They put themselves on the chopping block. And in a big way. I was so impressed with the parents as well as the teens in their answers and very confident responses. My children have always been a little more like me, a closet unschooler.

In fact I have always told people that we homeschool. When I was asked all the above questions I would tell them about all the curriculum that we had sitting home on the shelf collecting dust, and all the groups that we hadn't seen in years due to the fact we were busy living!

As for the hours put in? Why of course every waking hour is spent learning in our family!

Give Me Six Minutes

You may be asking yourself, "why six minutes?" My reasoning it that this would be about the attention span of my six year old. Honest truth and I bet you would find the same thing with your child. They seem to be able to really put their whole heart and soul into something they really are not too interested in for about the length of time they are old.

This does not mean she cannot play a computer game for hours on end, which she can. It also does not mean she cannot take a shower for about an hour, which she does. It just means that she cannot really put forth
hard, concentrated effort for more than about six minutes.

For some reason I tend to forget this with subsequent children, but it really never changes. I see the same with my 16 yr. old. She can do her math pretty seriously for about 16 minutes. At around that time she has to get up and get a drink, make her some matte, or go to the bathroom. She will chat online for hours, but remember that is not concentrated, focused work.

It used to drive me crazy when my kids did this break thing. But I have been paying attention to it in myself. You know what? About 48 minutes is all I'm good for, if that!

As a side note, the cell phone that my teen gave a great chase for last week is now history. Yup got it ripped off at her "friends" house last night. I, not being the supportive oh I'm sorry mom that I am, reminded her that she was not supposed to be at that friends house anyway. She did not get any sympathy from us, which made her really mad. As she put it, madder than getting her cell phone ripped off.

She enlisted the help of our neighbor and had him drive her to the police station. They drove her to the guy's house, that she thought took the phone. He swore up and down that he did not have her cell phone, that it was two other guys. He even told the cops that these other two guys had taken his computer key as well as something else from him. I told her it was gone. She still went to meet a couple of friends today to try and beg them to give her phone back.

Her statement which I believe expressed the sentiments of all us living in Costa Rica were, "just because I live in Costa Rica does not mean I want to get ripped off". The people laugh at her and say "you are in Costa Rica, get used to it".

This great shell site: is the site we are using to divide up our shell collection. As you can see we are coming right along with it, but are having trouble id.ing a couple of our shells. We will keep searching. Baby loves dividing up things and has really enjoyed putting her many shells in some kind of order.



And lest you think she is all work and no play, here you have the future surf champion of Costa Rica! This chick can play at the beach like none other, can even go under the big ones now, with no fear. Yeah surf lessons are in the future for sure.

Still on the Fence

Unfortunately for baby this week is "exams". Again unfortunately for baby I am still "undecided" about what to do with her in regards to school. Everything in me screams to take her out. Everything, and everyone outside of me screams to keep her in. The argument being an old one for us-what about her socialization? You would think after thirty years of homeschooling I would have an answer for this, and more confidence that it does not count for anything.

I have decided to interview each of my children who have in fact been un/homeschooled and share that with everyone. They all have very different views as well as memories of their school days. I was surprised in talking to them that they actually have very positive things to say about schooling, and no regrets. O.k. maybe some regrets, but mostly on their parts for things they did not pursue.

In the meantime I will continue to dress baby everyday in her silly uniform and march her off to her good catholic school where she will learn to conform and fit in. Augghhhhh it is killing me! As you can see it won't last long. She is one of the most creative children I have had and I cannot let them stifle that out of her. They are already all about coloring in the lines and using many different colors, and make sure you put torsos on your people etc.

Today she made up her own art. She found that when she sharpens her colored pencils, which is quite often, the shavings make a really pretty flower. She has about sharpened her colored pencils down to nothing making flowers for a collage she is working on. I will post a picture of her flower art when she gets it done.

On the teen end of things we have been doing lots of talking and gentle leading to encourage some kind of learning to take place during the day. She likes to blame it on the fact that many days she has to demo dog for us with our massage student. I am trying to figure out how to fit laying on a massage table, listening to your headphones into a learning corner and having trouble. I have been having her do more cooking, which at least gets her thinking in a math oriented manner at some point during the day.