Instincts

When we moved to Costa Rica my daughter and I always joked about her hubby's "inscinctos". He could tell if someone was going to try and take his backpack, or had bad intentions. Of course his instinctos kind of failed him when he got his bike ripped off in the middle of the day in downtown Heredia. Parked it outside the store and took my granddaughter in with him to check on something. Looked out the window and there was his bike riding away down the street, under some crazy thief.

I had the instinct that we were supposed to go to the beach yesterday, and I am really glad we went. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we three girlies got to enjoy some girlie time, besides the texting which makes me really crazy of course.

We took off bright and early and I almost changed my mind because it was pretty cloudy. We went for it and got on the 9:00 bus to Jaco. Teeny will never forgive me though. She ended up across the aisle from the gay guys making out all the way there and behind the barfing guy that dropped his barf bag and it splashed on her foot LOL! Other than that it was a great bus trip. Oh yeah and they do not take the Super Highway on the bus. Too many stops in between I suppose. So it is still a two hour bus trip to get there.

Once there we went to Mega Super and loaded up on picnic food and found a nice shady spot at the beach. Man if I was a surfer the waves would have been perfect! Since I am a swimmer I just played around in the shallow and stayed away from all the surf boards flying around. Do you get the idea there were lots of surfers? There were tons!

Baby ended up making a new friend. A little local boy who was just as daring as she about the waves. They were getting pretty roughed up and trying to outdo each other on the daring scale. I just stood ready to grab them if they got pulled out. The poor boy took a pretty good roll and ended up with a bleeding back from the rocks.

Ah yes the rocks. We have renamed Jaco, Rocko! The rocks were so bad where we were. We were not down by the "tourist" area just because we were too lazy to walk down there. We stayed up north where all the rocks are.

For the last hour baby made friends with two little girls that spoke English. That was such a treat for her to be able to play with friends who spoke English it did my heart good. I was sad to leave, but alas we had a bus to catch for home. Thank goodness we did not get the same seats near the same people on the way home!

The minute that bus rolled out baby laid down and crashed all the way home. As we were getting off the bus I heard the gringo behind us say to his buddy," that little girl slept all the way here."

Unschooling Adventures

I believe that I have the best of both worlds here in Costa Rica. Last week we decided we would take a day and spend it at the beach this week. Low and behold got a call from the teacher saying there would be no school today or tomorrow. How is that for service? I am still waiting for baby to give the words, "I don't want to go to school anymore."

I read with interest the story about the woman in NY who let her 9 yr.ride the subway by himself. I could not really see what all the hubaloo was about. When we moved to Costa Rica we walked all over the dang country. My daughter was 13 and would walk about a mile or two on her own to school. My son was 16 and took a bus ride cross country to meet up with some friends who were spending time at the beach for spring break.

Sometimes I think I am just too trusting. But then I look and realize that I am really just not afraid. My kids have for the most part faced some pretty scary situations and come out pretty tough for it. They have learned Spanish and could wander all over Central and South America if they so chose to. A couple have been to Hondurus and one lives there now with her family.

The realities are they are as safe here as anywhere if they keep their heads on and their eyes open. Like I have told the story before of my 21 yr old who got his cell phone taken at gunpoint. He had too much to drink and was not in the right place at the right time. There are rules to teach you kids if you are going to set them lose on the streets.

We took a family with us to Nicaragua one time to show them how to do a border crossing. It was the only time we have ever had any problems and they were all because this family was so dang gringo! Now I am gringo, blue eyed, blond dreaded gringo all the way. But they had a ton of luggage, number one nono, and they were dressed in their traveling best, number two nono, and they had really expensive backpacks number three nono.

To say we stuck out like walking targets is an understatement. The guy swore he got pickpocketed, he did get ripped off by the guys changing money, and they got stopped by the border cops. This was just on the way in! We were just shaking our heads in awe. I had told them before we went, travel light, wear less expensive clothing, and take dollars not colones. They did not listen to one word I said and they paid the price.

Not that I know it all or anything. Let's just say I have done that crossing a whole lot of times! Now my 16 yr. old it talking about a bus trip to Hondurus. 15 hours on the bus, three border crossings and a pretty crazy neighborhood there. Will I let her go? Heck yeah she will have a blast! I am hoping she can get her friend to go with her, but if not I will put her on the bus, her sister will meet her at the other end. And in between? Good thing she speaks good Spanish. My son did the trip without any Spanish and he did great.

He did get pickpocketed at one of the border crossings. Again bad choice. He wandered off from the bus to have a smoke and a bum asked him for a cigarette. He handed him one and the few limpuras he had left from Hondurus. A couple of minutes later he was standing there and a whole group of people brushed past him. He immediately went for his pocket only to discover his border crossing money was gone.

Turning to the crowd he yelled some profanity and told them to give him his money back.The bum who he had just helped out came over, walked up to this chick put his hand out and she handed him my sons money! Now that was street smarts there. Making friends never hurts.

No Excuses

It is the technological era. Every kid knows how to use a computer. Maybe all they can do is paint, and email and chat, but they know how to use a computer to find information. In this day and age is there any excuse not to take your child out of school?

There have been so many people, literally thousands upon thousands to keep their kids out of school. They have proven that these children can and do get along quite well with their peers as well as the rest of the planet, most of the times better!

"Ah", though they say, "your children will not be socialized". Now that is enough to scare the desire right on out of you. Your thoughts turn to Edward Sizzor Hands and other really scary home schooled kids. You begin to doubt yourself and think that maybe you really are not cut out to do this and maybe the teacher that spent four years in college partying their brains out,could do a better job. After all they have a (drumroll please) CERTIFICATE!

Holy cow how can you possibly compete with that?

Ah the answer is staring you right in the face, the almighty internet.
Want an activity to do on a rainy afternoon with the kids? look here
Want a great science experiment to do with the kids? look here
Want to connect with some other desperate homeschoolers? look here


Those are just the tip of the ice berg. There are so many resources available to us that we only need take the time to look. I find homeschooling my youngers so much more fun with all the world available to us at our fingertips.

Closer to Unschooling Baby

I have been letting Baby call the shots on her schooling. I am trying to trust her to make the right choice about what she really needs at this point in her life. She has been great so far. She goes to school about three or four days a week. I do have her decide the night before so that on the three early school days she is not just staying home because she would rather sleep.

Yesterday when we were walking home from school she mentioned that she did not have very many friends at school. I asked her how many she has. She counted three on her fingers and said the other kids don't really play with her.

She has had to contend with racism in a big way, as well as the language barrier. Her Spanish is pretty good, but the older the kids get the more they want someone with better Spanish they can converse with.

There is also a new girl in her class that she is really afraid of. She has not had any run ins with her, but I think she is afraid the little girl is going to come after her next. This little girl sounds like a piece of work. Screams and eats in the classroom and takes other people's stuff.

Today baby got the infamous stomach ache that she had last year. I suggested that maybe we should not go to school today, and miracle of miracles she was healed. She also announced that she thought she should stay home tomorrow and sleep late. This afternoon her teacher called to tell us there is no school tomorrow.

Here if the teacher has an appointment or something they cancel class for the day. So far since we started school in Feb. we have yet to have a full week of classes, fine with us. Since they only go for five hours a day it is really amazing they learn anything.

We did figure out they teach them to read by sight. The reading book we bought teaches them two words at a time. They memorize the words and move on. Maybe that works better with Spanish I don't know. I do know baby certainly prefers it as that is how she does her English reading lessons also. For her it is much less work to memorize than it is to sound out words.

Looks like a pool day for us tomorrow for sure! And then off to check out the gymnastics gym and see if that is something she wants to try. We have checked out dance, too boring, music, too boring and now gymnastics. She does love skating so we will go do that next week. This is too fun.

Teeny spent the day at the pool with our student. They have hit it off well and been enjoying hanging out until our student heads to Nicaragua to work for awhile. Seeing that she was also a unschooler I think that helps them get along better. In fact the majority of our students have been home or unschoolers. Cool beans!

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!

Cleaning

When is a good time to get children doing chores? We have had them start as soon as they can walk, all the way up to never doing chores. Some could argue and fight so much better that we could not begin to have enough energy to get them to do them.

I think the best method that worked for our family was that they were all assigned a room. In the morning before breakfast they had to make sure their room was cleaned and swept or vacuumed. In the evening they had to do another quick clean before dinner time.

That seemed to work best for our family. Yes we tried chore charts, awards, rewards, you name it. The only thing that really worked was just, get your assigned room clean everyday. Less arguments and I don't forget who has what chore, works great.