Girl Scout Camp Pictures

Pictures

It's been a while since I posted pictures so here's a bunch!!
For some reason blogspot is not cooperating with me and I can not line up the captions with the pictures so here's a brief explanation of the pics........

-Our silly little (BIG!) kitty, Taco, taking a nap (he's so like Garfield!!!)

-Halloween Pics (Brenna (cat), Nanny (clown), Brendon and me)

-Stack of books that Brenna read in ONE week

-Camping at Choke Canyon a few weeks ago (tent site, Brenna doing dishes, walking by the lake)

As always, you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Good Stuff

http://www.odemagazine.com/blogs/readers_blog/6725/how_do_kids_figure_out_who_they_are_and_what_they_love_to_do

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/who-gets-to-decide-what-you-learn-questioning-the-traditional-school-system.html

Hello again..... finally

Wow. It's been a while. I looong while since I posted. That seems to be my opening sentence in quite a few of my posts. I'm not very original huh? LOL I do think about posting on my blog every day but other things just seem to come up and before I know it I'm off to bed and another day has passed without any word from Brandi. I have good intentions though - I just don't follow through. I get on the computer quite a bit to check my email but then it turns into researching things that have been my 'obsession of the week'. I have found myself being very curious about things lately and wanting to just know stuff. The past few weeks has been an obsession about vaccinations. It all started with this stupid H1N1 vaccine (horrible stuff! please don't get it!!) and then just escalated. Some of the things I have read just make me cringe. The saying, "What you don't know won't hurt you" is very true. LOL If I ever have another child there will be much more thought put into vaccines then there was with Brenna. I'm not so much anti-vaccination, just a more delayed schedule I guess. But I could go on and on about it so I'll just leave it at that.

Well we finally got Brenna into a Girl Scout troop and she is lovin' it! She's only gone to one meeting and we just went camping this past weekend. She had such a good time and gets along with all the girls. When I was little all my best friends were from my Girl Scout troop and I have such wonderful memories. The troop that she's in this year is pretty big and it seems like they do a lot of stuff. In a few weeks they will be having a Cookie Kickoff and celebrating it with a big sleepover at the school's gym. Everyone who reads this and lives in our city - beware! We will be hitting you up for cookie sales soon! :)
Camping this past weekend was a little different then what I remember and some things kinda made me open my mouth in disbelief. I had to work extra hard at biting my tongue (not easy for me by the way!). That was tough. LOL Apparently the Girl Scouts have now decided to start using Boy Scout juice! For those not savvy with Girl Scout terminology that is another word for lighter fluid. That used to be unheard of! Taboo! To say the least, I was very disappointed. Almost sad. They also had their own little twisted version of the "buddy system". It was mentioned at the beginning of camp but was never enforced. That was a jaw-dropper too. During the first few hours of camp I was constantly getting after Brenna and Kayla (her BFF and "buddy") - they finally got the point and didn't go anywhere without each other. I was very proud. But that's how it's supposed to be. I think I might be sending an anonymous letter to the Girl Scout Council very soon. That will be my way of opening my big fat mouth. And yes - I DO have a big fat mouth. LOL

So basketball season is now in full swing in the Spear household. Brenna has had practice twice a week for the past month or so and her first game is this Saturday. I love, love, love going to games every Saturday. They are very stressful though. Those poor girls hear all kinds of instructions from both sides of the court - parents and Coach. It gives me such a headache! Parents yelling, coaches yelling, girls looking all over trying to figure out who to listen to...... I just smile and watch and think to myself, "These poor girls are only 7 and 8. Give them a break!"

So this week is the last week for co-ops with our homeschool group. It has been a pretty successful 6 weeks and everything has been running very smoothly. Mom's chats have been much more helpful this time around then in the past (1/2 the moms chat the first hour and the other half have a class and then we switch for the 2nd hour). We've talked about recipes, kitchen tips and books we've read. I've acquired lots of wonderful information! In the past the conversations have mostly revolved around curriculum, which does not pertain to me at all. It's rather difficult being the only unschooling Mom in the entire group. I would give anything to have a relaxed (unschooling) homeschool group here. The closest one I have found is in San Antonio, which is about 4 hours from here. I am a member of the Yahoo Group and really hope to attend one of their park days or field trips someday soon. I just think it would be so awesome to actually meet other moms who do what I do. I have TONS of friends on Facebook and through email who unschool and that does help a bunch but I think it would be kinda cool to actually get together with some of them.
Speaking of unschooling - something kinda cool happened at Girl Scout camp this past weekend! The girls worked on a few badges and were in groups and did little activities. One activity they did was learning about habitats. They were given some little books and were told to pick an animal and draw a picture of it on the front of an index card. They had to get up in front of everyone and tell a little about the animal. As I was observing the girls I saw that Brenna had flipped over her index card and was writing something on the back. She had taken it upon herself, without being told, and jotted down a few sentences about the orangutan so that when it was her turn she was very prepared to give her "speech" about the animal she had chosen. None of the other girls had done this. The leader of the group had to probe the other girls for information and my little Brenna just stood right up and read her card and gave her presentation perfectly. I thought that was pretty darn cool considering she'd never been "taught" to do that. For a kid who doesn't do school that sure was a pretty clever (and schooly) thing to do.

Things like that is what solidifies my decision to keep doing what we are doing.

I was a very proud Momma. (ok, so secretly, yes... I wanted to shout to the world - "Yep!! She's unschooled! See! See how they can actually think for themselves and do things without being "taught" how to do it!? LOL)

Well it's about dinner time so I guess I better get off the computer so I can feed my family. :) I'm hoping I have the bug now to post more often again. Tonight I will post some pictures I have if I have time.

Till fingers and keyboard meet again......

M.I.A.!

Geez, I was so good there for a pretty long while with posting on my blog regularly and now I'm back to being a little sporadic. My apologies to all those who check my blog on a regular basis and have been seeing very few posts recently. Brenna has really been hogging the computer lately and I can hardly even check my email! We subscribed to this very awesome website called brainpop.com and she's on it all the time. There are tons of videos on science, math, social studies, ect.....very schooly with quizzes and everything but it's something she really wanted to get. Then there's Club Penguin of course, which is her alternate life. LOL
We've also started co-ops again with the homeschool group and that's every Friday morning for the next month or so. Brenna's group has been playing kickball and this week they are going to start on dodge ball. She's also taking an art class, which she looooves! It seems like this year she has really formed a little 'clic' with some of the other girls. I see lots of play dates in our future. :) Don't know if I can handle many more.....LOL

So this weekend we are going camping! Yea! We're going to be meeting Dea Jae and Dave at Choke Canyon State Park and staying for only two nights. I looked at the forecast and it's supposed to be in the 50's at night and around 80 during the day. Beautiful camping weather! Nice warm camp fire to keep us toasty. I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures to post when we get back. Today I have been getting things ready. Every time we go it gets easier and easier and the less we have to buy. Actually this time that's all we have to spend money on is food. Camping is so cheap for us now and I love it!

Okay, well Brenna is pretending to play ToonTown in real life and it is getting very difficult to try and keep up with her and type at the same time. So I will end with a quote tonight......


"When we adults think of children there is a simple truth that we ignore: childhood is not preparation for life; childhood is life. A child isn't getting ready to live; a child is living." John A Taylor

It Works!

As most of you who read my blog know, we don't "do school" in the Spear household. There is no curriculum, no tests, no quizzes, no sitting at the table and doing worksheets or writing spelling words. There is no assigned reading and no unwanted lectures. But yes, this is still learning happening in our house everyday!

When I first started on this journey of natural, child-led learning I was very nervous and very apprehensive. I worried that she wouldn't learn anything unless I forced her (and THAT surely wasn't working!). I worried that she would be 10 years old and not know what a noun was (not the case because she's 7 and knows what a noun is as well as an adjective and a verb LOL)or know how to write properly and spell or do difficult math. I loved the whole idea of unschooling and it made so much sense. I just poured myself into books about it and read as many on-line articles as I could get my hands on, but I was afraid to put it into action with my own child. I did take baby steps and did find myself doubting things but the more I stepped out of my comfort zone and just let go the easier it became and the more I started realizing, "Hey, this does work!" The brainwashing that I had succumbed to that says children will only learn when made to or that children have to know certain things at a certain age flew out the window and I was finally able to relax and feel at peace with our life. Which brings us to the present time....

Brenna has really been amazing me lately, especially with her spelling capabilities. She learns how to spell a new word just about every day and has been requiring less and less help from us these last few weeks. It's like she's really starting to 'get it' and this thing just clicked in her head. But the thing that I love the most about this is that she's doing it all on her own and learning how to spell not only because she wants to but because it is actually a very useful thing to know! She loves to make books and cards and chat with her friends on Club Penguin. In doing those things she has picked up the art of spelling wonderfully. Brendon and I were gone this past weekend and she stayed at her Grandma's house. When we got home she had home made cards for both of us that she did all by herself. The inside of mine said something like, "I missed you Mom! You are the best Mom in the whole world!".
Yes, she still needs quite a bit of help with bigger words but then again, she's only 7.
And the math that little girl can do in her head is so cool! She has this shirt that says "60% Angel 40% Stubborn (or something like that). Brendon made a comment the other night when she was wearing that shirt and told her that he thought it was the other way around. They both laughed and Brendon kept teasing her with different percentage combinations. It then turned into asking her things like, if she was 80% Angel then what would the other percentage be? She was getting them all right just by doing it in her head. She even figured out 85%/15% in about 5 seconds. We thought that was pretty cool. :)

Every day I become more and more convinced that natural learning really works. How can a child NOT learn?? It's impossible and I've had that proven to me over and over.

(Since you've read this post, you may find this one interesting to read again. I went back to last year and found it. Kinda neat to see how much things have changed and how far I've come......
First post on contemplating to unschool or not)

Video on kids and food

It's been a while since I posted and this will just be a short one. We've been pretty busy but I will post another longer one soon.
I just wanted to put a link to a video that I found on a board that I frequent. Very good video and I suggest anyone with kids or grand kids to watch this.

Video - a must watch!!!

Life is good

Things are going pretty darn good in the Spear household. This week I have really been realizing how grateful I am for everything that we are able to do and everything and everybody we have in our lives. I think it's important for people to re-evaluate their lives every once in a while, to realize all the good things. A lot of times people, me included, focus on all the things they don't have or all the stuff that's going wrong but I think that's human nature, really. I tend to do that a lot.
But I am grateful for so much right now. Especially Brendon. :) What would I do without that guy? We've been married almost 10 years and and I'm still madly in love with that handsome man. :)

Tomorrow we are going to the beach for the day. My Dad and my brother are in a fishing tournament and we will be going to the weigh-in and then spending some time on the beach and maybe going out for dinner. I tried looking for a hotel today, thinking we could stay the night but everything is so expensive! I just can not justify spending $90 for a place to sleep when we live only 30 minutes away. I guess it's the frugal, tight-wad person coming out in me. I wish that sometimes I could just say "Who cares!" but it's so hard. LOL

Hopefully I'll have some beach pictures to post next time. Those are always my favorite. I guess it's the sun and the sand and the water - they always come out so perfect.

I DID IT!

Four and a half months ago I began my journey to lose weight.
I started eating a lot better and started walking four miles almost every day (sometimes 8 miles in one day!).
My first major goal was to lose 20 pounds.

Today I finally hit my goal! WOO HOO!!

Now I only have about 10 more pounds to lose before I'm at my final goal and my ideal weight. Such empowerment!! :)

CAN IT WORK IN THE REAL WORLD?
by Sandra Dodd

If unschooling can't work in the real world, nothing at all can. People will say,
"How will they learn algebra in the real world?"
Is there algebra in the real world? If not, why should it be learned? If so, why should it be separated artificially from its actual uses? "Why?" should always be the question that comes before "What?" and "How?" There is a Sesame Street book called Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum. There is a "things under the sea" room and "things in the sky" room, but still each room is just a room in a museum, no windows, everything out of context. Then he opens a big door marked "everything else in the whole wide world" and goes out into the sunshine. There is unschooling.

Book

I know that I've been quoting a lot of things on my blog lately and posting links to various web sites. I guess I go through little spurts of being infatuated with other people's words and thoughts and ideas. I suppose it also greatly depends on if I'm reading a book at the time. LOL

I'm in the process of reading this amazing book that I mentioned in my last post called Deschooling Our Lives. It is a great book that makes so much sense to me and really solidifies my passion for creating a child-led learning environment for Brenna, who is doing so, so great with it and is really flourishing as a person. She learns so much every day. Just the other day Brendon was watching a show on TV and they mentioned Big Ben. Brenna immediately told Brendon, "Hey, that's the big landmark in England - that big clock!". Not sure where exactly she learned that from (probably one of her websites she frequents) but we were both pretty impressed. She surprises us with things like that all the time.

Here's a paragraph from the book I'm reading that I thought explained things very well.

"People are learners. They are born already working on their education! They are born curious - and striving. How else can you explain the unbelievable development in the first few years of life from a pretty much helpless infant, with only the most fundamental communication skill, into a walking, talking toddler whose universe expands exponentially from month to month. They are born creative. No one at all has to explain learning processes to an infant. You can't stop them, and each one learns differently: how to roll over, or how to sit up, how to explore with their fingers, to stand, to walk, to say a few words and then a few sentences, and then express an infinite number of thoughts, many complex and abstract. Infants begin life learning in the ways we all use when we are learning for our own pleasure. They explore. They imitate. They experience. They build more complex world views from trial and error. It is simple to understand, but terribly difficult to accept, that the individual is best served at every age by allowing that native curiosity and creativity to be undeflected and uninterrupted; that the best schooling may be the schooling that least impedes the mind's free exploration of the environment."

Summerhill School

It's too bad we don't have places like this in the U.S. This place seems pretty amazing with the way that kids are respected and treated as equals and have such freedom! I'm reading a book right now (Deschooling Our Lives) and read a little about this school and thought I'd do more research about it on-line.
Just wanted to share for anyone who's interested.

http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/

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Well I guess I should have kept reading my book because I found out that there ARE schools like that in the U.S.! How inspiring and refreshing!

The Albany Freeschool

Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts

Another Great Read

I was reading this article on-line today from Psychology Today titled, Seven Sins of Our System of Forced Education. This really stood out to me (and of course I liked it because he mentioned unschooling LOL)
Thought it was worth posting on the blog. You can read the entire article here.


7. Reduction in diversity of skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking.
By forcing all schoolchildren through the same standard curriculum, we reduce their opportunities to follow alternative pathways. The school curriculum represents a tiny subset of the skills and knowledge that are important to our society. In this day and age, nobody can learn more than a sliver of all there is to know. Why force everyone to learn the same sliver? When children are free--as I have observed at the Sudbury Valley School and others have observed with unschoolers--they take new, diverse, and unpredicted paths. They develop passionate interests, work diligently to become experts in the realms that fascinate them, and then find ways of making a living by pursuing their interests. Students forced through the standard curriculum have much less time to pursue their own interests, and many learn well the lesson that their own interests don't really count; what counts is what's measured on the schools' tests. Some get over that, but too many do not.

Fall Garden

Well the brutal South Texas sun baked my Spring garden about the middle of July and I had to pull up all of my dying plants. I guess not being able to grow for only two months out of the year isn't too bad. It could be worse I suppose.
So it's now time to re-plant and start my Fall garden. I am so excited and can't wait to start harvesting again. Nothing quite as awesome as sitting at the table and eating fresh veggies that you grew! No pesticides or fertilizers and all natural.

I planted my first round of seeds last weekend and everything is starting to sprout. I went outside this morning and saw tiny little signs of life in each square I planted in. This season I am growing tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, romaine lettuce, sweet lettuce mix, peas, green beans, squash and spinach. I've decided to space out my planting this time so that everything isn't ready to harvest all at once.

With the help of my brother-in-law, Kenny, I built a huge trellis for my green beans. Thank you Kenny!! He is my garden-growing side kick. LOL Can't wait to have my new trellis full of green beans! I think I will have an over-abundance of them since I planted 8 seeds but I have been reading up on freezing vegetables.

Anyway, here's a few pictures I took of my garden. I will be building another 4x4 or 4x8 box before next Spring. When I built these two boxes last Spring I told Brendon that "this is only the beginning honey!"


Before planting, with freshly composted soil.

















Green bean trellis




















Picture I took this morning of one of my little green bean plants. I think I just might have squealed a little when I saw that they had sprouted. LOL :)

A Person for Everything

Everyone has those people in their life who they can talk to about certain things. I feel so lucky because I have many who support me in all different areas.

Well my someone who I can talk openly to about attachment parenting, green living and unschooling is my dear friend, Tara. She totally "gets me". She is just amazing and is the epitome of what I should have been as a parent from the get-go. If only I had known better.... If only I had known the things that I know now.... things would have been so different when Brenna was a baby and a toddler. I'm just now figuring out the things that she says, "Yes, of course!" to and she has a daughter who is only one year old. How lucky. :)

She sends me so much great stuff via email and I love every bit of it. Articles, blog posts, tips for green living (which I am slowly incorporating in my life and loving it!!).... I look forward to all of it. Here's a great article she sent me a couple weeks ago that I thought was worth posting
http://zenhabits.net/2009/08/education-needs-to-be-turned-on-its-head/
It does a great job explaining how and why children learn so much more when they are not forced and how much benefit they get from that. Really makes you think a little about how schooling completely crushes a child's desire to learn.

Anyway, thanks Tara for being that person I need in my life right now.

Things You Find in a Homeschooling/Unschooling House

Tables always full of books!















Bird nests and cool leaves hanging in baggies in various places

















Table of Elements hanging in a 7 year old's bedroom (cuz she thinks it's cool!)

















Gallon Girl!




















A shelf full of more books and various art supplies




















Messy room means creative play, which means learning
















Map to keep track of and learn about where our fruit and veggies come from
















And yet more books......

Recess (LOL!)

It poured down rain yesterday and Brenna had a blast playing in it. She was appalled when she found out that kids at school don't get to just jump up from their desks and run outside when it rains. LOL
(Pictures are kinda dark cuz my flash wasn't doing a very good job outside - should have just turned it off...... You can click on them to make them bigger.)

No wonder....

It's no wonder why some people think homeschooled kids are not normal and neither are their parents. With all the negative news media portraying homeschooled families, I'd think they were all a little weird too if I didn't have first-hand experience with it.

Last week I read the article in the paper about the man who kidnapped that 11 year old girl in California (she was recently found after 17 years) and at one point he claimed to someone that he was homeschooling his kids. The article went on to explain how odd the children seemed, wearing long dresses and not hardly speaking at all and looking like little robots.

Last night I watched one of my recorded episodes of 20/20 and one segment was on parents who are way too involved in their kids lives. The mom they had on as their main interview person was one of those 'helicopter moms' and called her kids in college like 30 times a day, read their emails, sent them schedules she had created and drove 2 hours every month to do their laundry, grocery shop and clean their dorms. Guess what? Of course, she homeschooled her kids and they made sure to point that out right away.

Even on the reality show "Wife Swap" they've had a couple families who homeschooled. Were they seen as normal at all? Of course not. They were portrayed as these crazy, hippie people who seemed like they were missing a few parts of their brain.

This stuff is what most people see as homeschooling. For someone who knows nothing about it, they watch these shows and then assume that all homeschooled kids and families are a little out-there. It's frustrating to watch.
With as much as homeschooling is growing I just wish that I would turn on the television one day and see a great news segment on how wonderful and NORMAL homeschooling is. I'm tired of all the negative association with it.