If you look for it, stuff actually is all around.
I've been asked where I'm getting my materials and the answer is everywhere. At the fair that we went to in Maine there was a building full of displays with tables full of take-aways. We had no shame in filling our pockets: booklets that can be used to teach summary analysis, charts and graphs that can be used for math lessons, plant/fungi/nest/fish identification sheets that can be used to discuss grouping/organizing... all of it can be used for art projects...
Before we left on our trip I was in Muji (a slick "cool" store that I doubt many would consider a hotbed for home schooling...) and picked up a three-pack of notebooks for the kids to use as trip journals -- for under $3.
Instructions for the journal: they needed to try to fill all the pages with not just facts/lists of what we did, but also ideas and pictures. The journals turned out brilliant. On Monday night the kids took turns reading out loud from them and they were happy.
Today, I went through each journal and found words that they had misspelled and wrote them on the old school elementary lined paper. Before we started our little lesson that incorporated both spelling and handwriting we gathered around the computer and discussed two caveats:
The kids are familiar with Pablo Picasso -- specifically they are drawn to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. A year or so ago I went on a museum walk with a brilliant woman whose background was in art history and I returned home bursting with my newly acquired knowledge. Back I went to the MOMA, with the kids in tow, and shared what I could remember and what I could decipher from my notes ("Look how this one is making eye contact and this one looks like a mask and this one..."). Since then they like to visit that painting and share details that they remember and notice. Knowing that "Picasso" readily summons that painting for them I pulled up examples of his early works -- they were intrigued. We compared these examples with the "poor dears" (as Sister Wendy calls the prostitutes).
"Did Picasso paint her face that way because he couldn't paint a "realistic" face?" Apparently not.
The discussion wasn't belabored, just a quick exploration of this idea: we learn the basics that everybody learns and then we are prepared to understand and create our own style. I even said that I hoped that their handwriting wouldn't look like everybody else's when they got older, but for now we learn how to maneuver the pencil -- make it do what we want it to -- and having a standard to use as a goal is helpful. While many parents here on the Upper West Side of NYC are sure their children are geniuses (and perhaps geniuses don't have to learn the same boring stuff as the rest of us), I am pretty sure that my kids will have happier and more successful lives if they learn the value of practicing.
Caveat 1 (handwriting): we learn established practices so we share a foundation with society -- but hopefully they will have their very own handwriting eventually.
Caveat 2 (spelling): if the choice has to be made between getting an awesome idea out on the paper and spelling something right, by all means spell it RONG! But for all other times, and when we go back to reread our awesome ideas, we need to be spelling things according to standard practices -- using the dictionary if necessary. Unlike handwriting, spelling isn't enhanced by creativity.
Aside from creating ready material for school-type lessons, our trip was also critical in another way -- being outside a lot. This article that was in the NYT scares the snot out of me, as does this one for that matter. I'm not sure that being scared snotless is going to help anyone, and so I scrabble around and find solace in this. I discovered the book Last Child in the Woods at Eaglefest last year...
If you look for it, stuff -- to teach, to help as we try our best to raise our kids, to keep our chins up when the worry gets really BIG -- actually is all around.
(I won't lie though -- it is a full-time job weeding through it...)
On another note -- music appreciation!
While this was happening:
Two other things were happening:
1. The kids wrote really cool little stories.
2. All was right in my world (I *heart* the Gotham Jazzmen).
