Moving to unbridledlearning.com

I keep going back and forth about whether to keep this blog here or at unbridledlearning.com.  I've been using both most recently, but since with my own wordpress install I have more features and flexibility I've decided to focus my energies there.  If you are subscribed to this feed, change your subscription to http://www.unbridledlearning.com/wp/?feed\x3datom  While you're at it, you may want to subscribe to my "Recommended Reading" feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/UL-reading.

I will continue to post links here to the Unbridled Learning blog when new content appears (one of these days).

Warning: very sad! Paul Gravett: Article - China Earthquake

Paul Gravett: Article - China Earthquake

Purty teeth

I got my braces off yesterday after almost three years! Just a reminder, what my teeth looked like before (this was actually after a month or two of braces on the top; at first they couldn't even put brackets on my incisors because they were so twisted and crowded):

And after...

Summer has flown by!

I can't believe we're nearing the end of August already.  Where did it go?  I don't think I rested for a second, unless you count 2 weeks in Hawaii as resting... it was awesome, but also exhausting!  Someday I will post pics of the last few days in Oahu.  I finally ran out of steam I guess.

I got a new position at my charter school in July, and have been crazy-busy getting ready for the new school year.  I am having a lot of fun with it, but it is a lot of work!

William is back at school already, and gearing up for football.  Kevan just tested for his blue belt in tae kwon do.  He will be starting 7th grade in a couple weeks, studying Algebra, Life Science, World History, and Language Arts. Ben will be starting 3rd grade, and is already far ahead in math.  Ben, William and Will recently started playing Everquest again after a long break (two years long I think).  Hardly anyone is playing on there anymore.  Kevan and I started some characters together on Guild Wars, not wanting to pay the monthly fee for a game.  That's been fun.

Well, that's all for now.

Planet Earth

We are watching it.  It is gorgeous in HD.  Our favorite part so far was the segment (I can't remember which episode) that showed the baboons walking through the water upright, wading in and looking just like humans.  We were cracking up!  I found a link to that section if you haven't seen it: http://www.mypartypost.com/watchvideo/5022/Planet_Earth-_Baboons_in_the_Water

Interesting sidenote.  Kevan had a friend over during the friend's Spring Break.  We were excitedly going to watch the latest recording of Planet Earth.  I asked the friend if he had seen any of them yet.  He looked down as he said, "Yeah, we watched one in science class."  I asked if he had enjoyed it.  His response… "It was long."  Needless to say we decided to postpone watching it until the guest was gone.  My son would have been in the same place had he stayed in this child's class last year and this year.  I could see it happening; that's why we started homeschooling.  Of course it's not just Planet Earth; I'm sure there are plenty of schooled kids that enjoy it.  Its just so obvious that when something is done in school it loses its joy and beauty.

Giving Thanks

I didn't intend to write a Thanksgiving thankfulness post, since it seemed almost cliche.  However I was inspired by several that I read, including this post at Mental Multivitamin and this blog I ran into through one Carnival or another, where Karen is in the middle of listing 1,000 things (gifts) that she is thankful for.  Her goal is to complete this by next year but she is already off to an impressive start.

It is good medicine for the soul to think about and meditate in gratefulness and just the beauty of life more often than I do.  I have been blessed (some would say lucky rather than blessed) far beyond what makes sense to me.  In the day to day grind I so often forget just how incredible life is!

So... I am thankful for

My Spirituality - which has been through the highest of highs and the absolute lowest of lows.  My path has gone from childhood fundamentalist Christianity to complete disillusionment to exploring everything from Native American spirituality to atheism to Catholicism, Judaism, paganism, wicca, various forms of Christianity, agnosticism, etc. ad infinitum, and has finally leveled out into just being my path.  I have absolute peace with my faith, and I am grateful for all of the pain and soul-searching and anger and desolation that it took to get there.

My Family - I have been blessed in so many ways.  My husband is smart, happy and successful in his career, an excellent cook, an involved and caring father, a good provider, and my best friend.  My kids are the most amazing, adorable, talented, and sweetest people in the universe (to me ;).  We have grandparents nearby for the kids, including an amazing grandpa (my husband's dad) who was widowed two years ago and is just SO involved with the kids - attending sports and other events, taking care of them when I have to go to meetings out of town, buying special food, movies, and video games for them to keep at his house, fixing dinner for them to visit every week, bringing us sushi when he goes shopping at the base, the list goes on and on!

Homeschooling - After working in a classroom for four years, and having my kids in my school, it was so exciting to be able to bring them home to learn.  I became more and more dissatisfied with the education that they were receiving; they were starting to hate learning and to just get through the school day.  They were not learning much at all, they were doing tons of busy work and they were not thriving as I wanted them to.  I had been so anti-homeschooling when I met my husband (that's another long story and has to do with my experience homeschooling as a kid) that it took a couple years to convince him that it was a good idea.  The timing was perfect.  William was finished with 8th grade, so he would be leaving the private school we were all at anyway; Kevan was going into 5th, which is when the other kids started to really form cliques and band together against other students; Ben got to try kindergarten and get a taste for what school was like.  It has been, and will continue to be, a huge learning process to constantly adapt to each child and find what works best to reach them and light their fire.  As much as it may never be done perfectly, at least someone is trying!

My home - I love the town I live in (not everybody does though, lol)!  There are always gorgeous sunsets over a riverbed and cliff right outside my house, a 2 mile trail along the riverbed, a park a couple blocks away, plenty of stores, a great library (for a small city), and we can get to the beach in 10 minutes, to waterfalls, snow, desert, mountains, lakes, whatever we want within an hour or two max.  I love our house, a beautiful (well, before WE moved in it was more beautiful lol) 2700 square foot 2 year new house with plenty of room for our stuff.

My job - I love my job.  I work from home in virtual education.  I get to do what I love - teach and create teaching materials - from the comfort of my home and teach my favorites students of all, my own kids.  Even though it can be a challenge to "do it all", I am so blessed to be able to continue to build my skills and experience in my chosen field while homeschooling.  The second income provides many things that we could live without but that make life more pleasant - the larger house, the lessons and activities, cable, high speed internet, Netflix, Audible, books, video games, gadgets, etc.  I don't feel that it is a sacrifice to work for my paycheck because I love the field and it is exciting to be a part of it.  Ten short years ago I was a "starving student" and single mom when I met a "starving student" and single dad and we fell in love.  We were a starving student couple for a few years, and then starving working people for a long time (it seemed at the time although in total it's only been 10 years since we got together) before we got to where we are now, which is comfortably tight but planning and investing for the future.

So, tomorrow when my dad, stepmom, brother and father-in-law come over to join us in gorging ourselves on an over-abundance of food in our warm home with our comfortable clothes, our adorable pets and our myriad of entertainment options, I will try to capture the feeling of abundance and blessedness like a snapshot that can be referred to time and time again throughout the year when things don't seem to be quite as perfect as they really are.

Whee! We got a Wii!!

My brother bought a Wii pre-order a few weeks ago, intending to sell it on Ebay.  This morning he called and said he decided to give it to us for an early Christmas present instead!  I didn't tell the kids.  Here is arriving.

It's wrapped in his jacket.  The kids unwrapping it.

Seussical

Kevan, Ben and I  got to see an incredible rendition of this musical that interweaves a lot of Seuss's writing into one amazing story.  We were enthralled throughout, and since Will got us a copy of the soundtrack we have been listening quite a bit.  We also picked up quite a few (16 I think) Seuss books from the library.  Since our kids are beyond the picture books, they are packed up in the garage and I couldn't find them for the life of me!

It was such fun to sit together on my bed reading picture books again!  We do sit and read in bed pretty often, but rarely all three of us together, and rarely a picture book.

Quotes not to forget

Friday we visited Pinnacles National Monument.  I will write more on that another time hopefully because I don't want to fill this post with that.  It was such a beautiful time and place together, that I said something like, "This is the coolest place in the world!"  Ben's reply?  "Mom... have you ever been *home*?"

About a week or so ago, Ben randomly declared, "I always wonder what it would be like to be one of those kids whose mom and dad yell at them.  I just always wonder that."  This has been a period of sudden awareness of self for Ben; he is often wondering what it would be like to be various people.

Yesterday we were driving by the private school my kids used to attend and that I used to teach at.  Kevan started pointing and joking, "Ha ha, they're still in school!" (he still has friends there).  I laughed and said, "Ha ha, those teachers are stuck there until 4:00!"  I felt bad suddenly and said, "That's not very nice to laugh at them like that.  Well actually, the teachers have a choice about whether to teach there or not; the kids don't have that choice."  Kevan said, "They could decide they want to go to a different school."  My response (from experience teaching there) was, "Some parents don't really care what their kids want."  Ben replied without hesitation, "Our parents do!"

These were so heartwarming!  I wanted to write them down before they fade away.  Ben's comments are so out of my own frame of reference of experiences, thoughts and feelings as a child, but they tell me that we are at least doing *something* right. 

Magnetix

Ben (7) got some magnetix for Christmas last year; I had seen the commercials with Ben, knew he would like them and told my dad about them when he asked what to get.  He was excited to get them, played with them briefly, and they've been gathering dust on his shelf ever since.  This weekend I pulled them down, and went around gathering some other various magnets, wires, batteries, a bulb, etc. because Ben was getting ready to start reading about magnetism and electricity.  At night, Ben and I are reading a book about chemistry and the elements, and he wanted to try the experiment in which you split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which involves some batteries and wire.  In addition his science covers magnetism next.  It is always a good starting point but never close to in-depth enough for him so we always use lots of other material. 

So I put all this magnetic and electronic stuff in a pile so it would be ready.  Well, it was ready all right... for about two minutes.  Then Kevan and Ben became little Magnetix fiends as if they had never seen the things before or knew they existed.  They literally played with these things for several hours straight that afternoon (Sunday).  I was working all afternoon in my office, on work stuff as well as getting their week planned out.  They were right behind me with those magnets all afternoon and evening.  They built cubes, pyramids, houses, ferris wheels, merry go rounds, spinning tops...  My husband and William (16) came down and played also for over an hour.  Yesterday, they were still going.  Every five minutes it seemed like they were back at the magnets building things. 

Last night in between gymnastics and tae kwon do my husband asked if anyone could make a five-faced, five-sides on each face figure.  Like a cube only made out of pentagons.  Being completely non-visual (can't picture pictures in my head hardly at all) I tried hard to imagine such a thing and stated that it was not possible .   Then spent the next 45 minutes (until we absolutely *had* to leave for tae kwon do) trying to prove it.  William (16) and I worked on it separately, and then together.  Once we decided it couldn't be five-faced, we tried to see how many faces it would take.  I almost had a soccer ball going, but then something fell apart and I had to get going so it was not completed.  My husband was just glad it was impossible, because he said he had tried to do it for an hour and couldn't do it.