Art & Books

Sagra: Celebrating Seasonal Foods

June 20, 2016 by Rebekah Leave a Comment

In Italy, a Sagra is a local festival that celebrates a certain food coming into season. I was recently introduced to these food festivals near the end of my reading of Under the Tuscan Sun. It sounds like such a lovely concept:

Sagra is a wonderful word to look fro in Tuscany. Foods coming into season often cause a celebration. All over the small towns signs go up announcing a sagra for cherries, chestnuts, wine, vin santo, apricots, frog legs, wild boar, olive oil or lake trout.

I like the idea so much I’m going to create some special meals, and maybe even the occasional small dinner get together, to celebrate our own harvests and seasonal foods as they come into season.

In our home, I credit much of the success of our unschool flow to the fact that we are very connected and in tune with seasonal rhythms. These guide our days, months, and years. Incorporating this idea of a Sagra into our seasonal rituals seems perfectly, and deliciously, fitting.

Today is Summer solstice and we celebrate this as midsummer. On this longest day of the year, with the sun about to burn a hot 94 degrees today, and a full moon waiting for us when the sun does finally set, the garden is exploding with the promise of great bounty. Tomatoes, while still green, are already starting to hang heavy. Cucumbers have sprouted long strands from there blossoms overnight. And the zucchini promise to crawl, sprawl and overtake the whole show.

Soon we will celebrate our very own little harvests and enjoy food so fresh you would’t dare disturb it with a recipe.

I’ll leave you with a little peek of our garden, as she grows, on this midsummer day.

Wishing you a happy Summer Solstice and much bounty as we move towards the dark half of the year.

Sunday Book Review: The Most Magnificent Thing

June 5, 2016 by Rebekah Leave a Comment

I spotted “The Most Magnificent Thing” while doing research on children’s books that talked about the process of making, tinker, and creating. What a gem. [Read more…] about Sunday Book Review: The Most Magnificent Thing

Reading is the Reward

June 2, 2016 by Rebekah Leave a Comment

Yesterday we ventured to our local farmer’s market as we do every Wednesday to grab some dinner…and the occasional maple bacon donut (good lord these are good-if you are local to South Jersey, these beauties are from Farm and Fisherman). With food in tow, we ended up sitting next to the public library’s info table. I love that the library has a table at the farmer’s market. As we ate, the woman working the booth approached the table and asked if we were members. Of course we are, and we go to the library weekly. Awesome.

She handed me their list of summer programming for kids and then…

“are you part of our reading for rewards program?”

oh no. I have super strong feelings about reading for rewards folks. And they are not good feelings. Not wanting to stir the pot while we ate dinner, I took the sheet that promised my son a variety of silly rewards for each “milestone.” Read: large amount of books he could read by a certain time.

“1,000 books before kindergarten. Then they can be recognized!”

and my smart ass, “recognized by who?”

“well, the library.”

“oh.” I stopped myself. I really did! It was hard.

While I LOVE the library and I love the idea of kids everywhere reading millions of books, I have a big problems with the idea of reading for rewards. Here’s some of them:

I truly believe that when you present reading to kids in this competitive, finish line, get your sticker way, you are embedding in young people that the value of reading lies outside of the actual experience of reading. It does not. As all of us who love to read know, the rewards for reading a good book far surpass a gold star, toy, or recognition that you have completed said book. Confession time: when I finish something by Proust I do crack a bottle of wine and celebrate myself, because dang, those are long and difficult, but I digress…

These programs also glorify quantity over quality. No bueno. Some months I read one AMAZING book. and I don’t want to read anything else. I want to ruminate on that experience- journal it, think on it, live with it- before I move onto the next book. Some months I read a really BAD book and I sit with that, sadly. Wondering who the heck let that go to publishing. Some months I read a whole bunch of books-whole books, half books. It depends. I believe young people should have the same experiences. My son often reads the same book for weeks straight. Some times he reads something once loves it- or doesn’t- and moves on.

If we want our young people to truly love reading, for the sheer pleasure and passion of reading, if we want them to come to us when they are young, book in hand, saying “will you read this to me?” randomly, in the middle of the afternoon, we need to stop pressuring them with programs like these. Take then to the library, ask them what they would like to look for today, show them the sections where things they are interested in are located. Bring books, books, and more books into our homes. Sprinkle books everywhere-leave them in every room, take them outside with you, leave them in the car. Read yourself and let them see you- for pleasure, for a recipe, for directions, for inspiration, for information.

Like so many other things in life we don’t need to shove the value of reading down our young people’s throats. Just live the love of books, they will see it, they will WANT it-if that’s is going to be there thing. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but in their own time, in their own way, they will read what they want, how often they want, because they want to and that will be reward enough ( I once awoke to the horror that my children might not grow up to be book fanatics. After the cold sweats were over I realized it’s ok-not everyone would spend every waking minute reading if they could. I guess…who are these people? Just kidding.)

Solutions? I love the idea of library’s designing more programs for kids that help them delve into their own personal interests using books and library resources. But more on that at another time.

Have a great Thursday, and happy reading (or not- it’s your choice 😉

Markiem Arts Creative Playtime

February 18, 2016 by Rebekah Leave a Comment

Today, just a few snaps from our latest visit to Markiem Arts Center creative playtime. These natural, free-form blocks are by far mine, and one of O’s favorite building materials. We also did some print making, and painting. I appreciate how this is set up as “stations” so the kids can come and go to materials as they choose. Markiem offers their creative playtime as a pre-registered class and also as a drop-in on Mondays and Fridays (preferably with a confirmation before hand so they can prep materials). Materials are rotated to keep it fresh, and drop-ins are $15. Such a nice option for cold Winter days.

We love the flexibility of being able to drop-in to these kinds of classes without having to make a monthly commitment. They also have a great roster of adult classes (hello Spring pottery class!)

For those local to South Jersey, here’s the link to Markiem Arts Creative Playtime. They are located in Haddonfield.

Let Them See You Sweat

February 14, 2016 by Rebekah Leave a Comment

Last week we took home this gorgeous pop up book called Welcome to the Neighborwood from out library. Seriously, maybe the coolest pop-up book I’ve seen to date.

After the first reading and a little discussion about how these animals all work alongside each other in their “neighborhood” my son declared, “let’s take the wasp out of the book so we can play with it”

welllll, no. We can’t deface property, and mom’s soul dies a little when people tear things out of books. But being an unschooler, I wanted to find a way to “yes” to his desire to play with the wasp while still keeping the book intact.

Enter my suggestion that we make one the next morning.

Saturday morning arrived and we set up shop at the table, with much coffee, ready to craft a 3 dimensional potter wasp.

Turns out this was a great opportunity to let my son watch me do something that I am not very good at, or in unschooling lingo, an area in which I m underdeveloped. So we worked together, but I did do most of it. He watched me mess up, struggle to understand how certain things were supposed to go together, and make a joke about howe when I try to think of things in 3-D I can actually feel my brain hurting.

“are you just joking mom?”

“kind of…but I swear I can feel it growing.”

We sat with that for a minute.

It was a fun activity and a great opportunity to show him that mom also has to tackle things that she doesn’t completely understand or particularly enjoy in order to achieve a desired end goal. As an unschooling mom, I am often asked, “If your kids don’t have to do things they don’t like, how will they ever learn things like, math, reading, writing? What if they don’t like them?” The Answer? Of course they will learn all of those things when they need them to achieve something they want.

I think John Holt has a great explanation for this when he was asked by a reader, “Without school will they have the opportunity to overcome or do things that they think they don’t want to do?”

“I’m not sure what this question means. If it means, will unschooled children know what it is to have to do difficult and demanding things in order to reach goals they have set for themselves, I would say, yes, life is full of such requirements. But this is not at all the same thing as doing something, and in the case of schooling usually something stupid and boring, simply because someone else tells you you’ll be punished if you don’t. Whether children resist such demands or yield to them, it is bad for them. Struggling with the inherent difficulties of a chosen to inescapable task builds character; merely submitting to superior force destroys it.”

This Q & A is from John Holt’s book, Teach Your Own, a great resource is you are interested in, or considering unschooling.

So, the next time you are tackling something that you struggle with, let your kids watch- Because kids just love to see their parents struggle! Just kidding, it’s a great opportunity for them to see that grown-ups have a hard time with things and have to overcome challenges, just like they do.

Happy Sunday!

Library Finds

January 30, 2016 by Rebekah Leave a Comment

We’ve recently re-instated our weekly library trip. it’s been a great way to break up long Winter days and strengthen our ask a question/look it up process. O’s questions have been flowing very freely, as any four year old’s do, and they are becoming much more complex, connected, and interesting!

Before we head to the library we talk about what things we have questions about and/or what things we would like to learn about. We also leave room for fiction stories and talk about what types of stories we may want to explore.

This week he had questions about airplanes and things that fly.

This book is one of the I Wonder Why series. We really like these. This book goes beyond flight and also talks about how and why other vehicles work as well-why cars have tires, how do air balloons fly, ect. We have also explored crocodiles, reptiles, snakes, and dinosaurs in this series.

A few of our other finds on flight are below.

We lucked out this week at the dollar a bag book sale. They had a bunch of kids books that would make great additions to our life learning library. (sorry this is sideways!)

another score from this week’s library came in the form of some info that O shared with me about why he us usually doesn’t enjoy story time at the library or the book store. Not surprisingly h shared he didn’t like story time at these places is because “you have to sit still and I don’t have anything to do with my hands!” totally get it. When we do story time he is free to walk around, do quiet hand activities (lacing, beading, ext.) as long as he is listening and engaged (if he isn’t we simply stop the story and go back to it another time).

On our way out he noticed a boy doing a craft. We helped ourselves to the supplies the library had offered and he loved listening to me read the story (twice) while he created his colorful fish.

The book is Rainbow Fish Discovers the Deep Sea. His excitement of the combined craft and story has inspired me to incorporate this into our late afternoon book time.

Next week I’ll be sharing how I am creating our new daily rhythm at home, some supply orders (and wish lists!) and more books and activity fun.

Happy learning.