Thursday, January 15, 2009

sleeping with the enemy


I think they just might become friends in the very distant future, or maybe not. Tortus was sleeping at the top of the chair, and Shiva was very tired, so she had to crawl ever so slowly onto the chair without waking the cat. She made it, and I got this great pic of them. If only they got along like this when they were awake!

Sky's teeth



Sky is loosing teeth left and right. She lost her 4TH tooth last week. I thought it was really neat that we took some pictures of the tooth hanging by a thread, then 15 minutes later it was out. Enjoy the pics!!!

Our AWSOME Capri Sun bags!!!


These bags are the coolest things EVER!!! I love them. We first encountered them last spring at an earth day festival in Mass. We were very excited to make them ourselves, so we saved up lots of empty juice pouches and kind of put it on the back burner for a while. Now that its freezing out, and we have been stuck in the house quite a bit lately, we decided to sew them into bags. Matt made the small one first to get the hang of it, and then made the tote size one on the left. I made the large tote today, it was my first one, and I am very proud of myself. I think it came out really well. I have been getting a lot of compliments about the small one I have been using for the past few days, so I'm sure to get more using the larger one.
Its great that we can sew them into very useful bags instead of just throwing them into the trash. One mans trash is another mans treasure!

Friday, January 9, 2009

Unschooling


What Is Unschooling?

This is also known as interest driven, child-led, natural, organic, eclectic, or self-directed learning. Lately, the term "unschooling" has come to be associated with the type of homeschooling that doesn't use a fixed curriculum. When pressed, I define unschooling as allowing children as much freedom to learn in the world, as their parents can comfortably bear. The advantage of this method is that it doesn't require you, the parent, to become someone else, i.e. a professional teacher pouring knowledge into child-vessels on a planned basis. Instead you live and learn together, pursuing questions and interests as they arise and using conventional schooling on an "on demand" basis, if at all. This is the way we learn before going to school and the way we learn when we leave school and enter the world of work. So, for instance, a young child's interest in hot rods can lead him to a study of how the engine works (science), how and when the car was built (history and business), who built and designed the car (biography), etc. Certainly these interests can lead to reading texts, taking courses, or doing projects, but the important difference is that these activities were chosen and engaged in freely by the learner. They were not dictated to the learner through curricular mandate to be done at a specific time and place, though parents with a more hands-on approach to unschooling certainly can influence and guide their children's choices.
Unschooling, for lack of a better term (until people start to accept living as part and parcel of learning), is the natural way to learn. However, this does not mean unschoolers do not take traditional classes or use curricular materials when the student, or parents and children together, decide that this is how they want to do it. Learning to read or do quadratic equations are not "natural" processes, but unschoolers nonetheless learn them when it makes sense to them to do so, not because they have reached a certain age or are compelled to do so by arbitrary authority. Therefore it isn't unusual to find unschoolers who are barely eight-years-old studying astronomy or who are ten-years-old and just learning to read.

John Holt


Shiva

Shiva is getting so big. She graduated from her puppy kindergarten class and knows sit, down, stay, and paw. It seems like she had doubled in size since we got her. She is 5 months old now, and going to be spayed in a few weeks.


She really got along well with one of the kittens from our last litter of fosters. His name is Mr. Claws, you can see that Shiva loved him, they would sit next to eachother and the kitten would rub up against Shiva's legs, it was really cute. The other kitten hissed every time he say her.
She loves playing in the snow, its so funny to see her trying to catch a snowball that is thrown to her. It usually lands on the ground and breaks apart, and then she tries to eat all the broken pieces of snowball, while creating even more mini avalanches with her paws by pouncing on snow. She is a riot.

Our backyard skating rink

Sky and Lilly skating for the first time on the new rink.
Skylar is really good!

So cute!!


Matt built a skating rink in our backyard for the girls. Skylar loves skating and we thought it would be awsome for her to be able to skate whenever she wanted to. We try to go on Fridays to the homeschool skating in Hartford, but when we can't make it she can skate at home. she has gotten so much better at skating this year.
We built it out if 2x4s and plastic sheeting, its about 6 feet by 12 feet I think. It took about 5 days for the water to freeze into skatable ice, but now that its finished its a lot of fun to use.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

pictures of the Mom and babies

Momma Hope
Babies


Here are a few pictures of

our new foster kittens and momma kitty