Spring boredom has arrived for me - mom. Boredom with routine, a disdain for workbooks and all things curriculum looking. With the emerging crocuses and daffodils comes a desire for the truly great and inspiring. This week we declared “Writing Inspiration Week”. It was a great title because anything that had to do with writing was allowed. We read the first few pages of several great books in the morning to gain momentum, then attempted some work of our own. Throughout the week, we read a short story here and there and one morning studied one of my favorite poets, Robert Frost. By the miracles of technology, we even were honored to hear Frost himself read a few of his poems to us via the internet. We finished the book “Spy for the Night Riders” about the trial at Worms and Martin Luther. A pretty good read aloud (3.5 out of 5.0 was the official grade by the kids) made better by daily popcorn with parmesan cheese. During reading this week we worked on puzzle maps of Europe and the world.
My oldest son, 10, was inspired to personify baseball. He wrote three poems: The Bat, The Ball, and The Game. They were short, but full of vivid imagery. I was pleased. Next we talked about illustrating those poems and what it might look like. I drew a picture of the ball from his description. “It’s just like I pictured when I wrote it!” he commented, feeling surprisingly successful. Thankful that my unschooling methods of the week were working for me, we finished the week having done more describing of everything we saw than writing anything down. We described the butterfly that emerged from it’s cocoon in the mason jar on the shelf Thursday, making words described how it felt to be a new creature, in a completely new form. I was not in the mood for books to describe how to teach this week. I tried, but when I attempted to follow their plan, it just killed the wonder and joy of teaching writing. So we continued to describe things orally.
By today, we’d discussed a lot and boys were now much more motivated to research and read than they had been in previous weeks. They spent the morning gathering encyclopedias and nature books. I caught up on the cleaning that didn’t happen according to the chore list this week. When I checked on them they were studying a map of Africa and all the places they would have to go to stop poachers from destroying wildlife. They were also wondering what could be done about all the water quality in the Mediterranean and other bodies of water that I can’t now remember. Happy that science, community and geography were occurring without me, I decided I had no excuse not to scrub the tub.
When their brains were full, we all teamed up to get the chores done and headed off to the neighborhood indoor pool for a swim. What will we call next week? Another adventure.
