A Girl is a Girl is a Girl

Lately, I've been seeing the enlightened denizens of the internet spreading post after post praising young girls who are defying their traditional gender roles.  Now, while I love what these girls are doing, these memes are starting to get my feminist hackles up.  Why? There's no balance! Every single one of these articles or memes I see glorifies the tom-boy but not a one glorifies the strength of a girly-girl.  Worse still, the comments are all filled with adult womens' vitriol towards dolls and dress-up side by side with their praise of girls who want to play sports or do math...

Daydreaming: Literacy Among the Visually Impaired

I'm a daydreamer.  I like to daydream about futures that will never be and realities far from my own.  Sometimes, I like to daydream about awesome things that could be:

The Authority Trap: Admitting When You're Wrong

One of the toughest things about being a parent is being the authority, the one in charge.  You are both congress, the police, and the judicial system: you have to make the rules, enforce them, and mete out appropriate punishments when your rules are inevitably broken.  Not only do you have all the powers of government without the checks and balances, but you also serve as the figurehead: the moral authority on whose behavior your children rely to learn how to behave themselves.
It's not as if we are prepared in any way for this massive responsibility before we become parents - it just happens. Our kids happen. We happen. Our kids misbehave (of course they do - they're still learning ). We misbehave (yeah, we're still learning, too).

Super-Saturated Learning Solution: Unschool at the Nature Center

The first day with a chill in the morning air, a hint of my favorite season coming around the bend, we decided to scrap our day's lesson plans for a visit to our local nature center. 

We could  have spent the whole day there.  In a way, it felt like we did. 

Lemon Balm Sugar: An Experiment and a Recipe

It all started with a vague memory of having read somewhere that you could make any herbal sugar or salt by combining fresh herbs and the medium of your choice in a sealed container, shaking daily until dry-looking.  I had a large amount of lemon balm that needed to be harvested and enough sugar to make a lemon balm sugar for teas but I was missing some key information: the ratio of herb to sugar.

So, I devised an experiment. Granted this experiment would not pass a test of scientific rigour, but we are talking about a product with an extremely high margin for error, after all.  Now, without further adieu, and in super-short science report form, I give you the...

Harvesting Wealth

The best thing about harvest time isn't eating the ripe foods, but finding ways to use the extras, preserve them, and create the wealth that comes from having a taste of the harvest in the winter months.

Steppin' Into Second

our mascot, drawn in our school colors

I am proud to announce that our first week of second grade is finished and went far better than I could have expected! The J-Rex has had some kind of huge leap in maturity and her behavior all week has been 10x better than her best days last year. On her pre-testing (something new I'm trying this year - more on this in a later post), she broke the rubrics, demonstrating a command of language well above her grade level. Most importantly, we had more fun learning together each day this week than we ever did last year!

...but why?