Picking apples

Today was our first field trip. Ever. We joined our homeschooling group for a tour of a local apple orchard and came away full of cider, donuts, and good, fall fun. Our group is large enough that we divided by age, us belonging to the group of young children, of course. We took a tour of the enormous fridge full of apples (that's a big fridge, and actually that many apples in storage don't smell all that good—apple overload), then we got to watch them run the press used for making cider, and the sorter used to wash and, of course, sort the apples by size after they are brought in from the field.

The tour was standard—exactly the kind of field trip I remember from my own school years, complete with donut, cider, and coloring books. I loved the guide, who talked about how important the bees were and encouraged the kids to be respectful of their presence, not freaked. She also shared a number of interesting nature and apple tidbits with the kids before setting us loose on the orchard and allowing us to pick five apples each. At 85 degrees it wasn't exactly fall-like, but they had beautiful trees that made me happy, and Calvin got a real kick out of picking the apples.

In his words:

Fall weekend

Tailgating, football, cider mill, and a little seasonal clothes shopping. Though last week was miserably windy and cold, and yesterday's early morning tailgate left a little to be desired, by noon the sun had come out and the air was warming to an enjoyable fall temperature. It was our little village's fall festival celebration, with hay rides, cider, ponies, you name it. I missed it because I was lucky enough to be at the game, but the boys  had a great time with all the activities while I enjoyed the trouncing at the stadium. And the weather looks promising for the rest of the week, too.

This busy life

A day of pleasantly warm sunshine to break up days of chilly fall rain. Although I've always thought of September as being the month to usher in fall, this is the first in a long line of years that I remember it being quite so chilly and actually fall-like. This isn't really a bad thing, although since the new furnace doesn't go in until tomorrow there were a few rather chilly nights in the house last week when temperatures outside dipped below forty degrees. Brrr.

Today I was faced with the bare fact that a discussion of evolution must bring with it a discussion of mating. Years of conventional thinking causes a spark of indecency when this lesson comes to mind, and yet I see nothing unnatural in the progression towards that topic. For now, though, I am going with the time tested tradition of providing information on an as needed basis. Steve Jenkins, in his book Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution, says simply that "Many living things reproduce sexually. This means that there is a father and a mother and that each baby has a mixture of the qualities of the parents." For now this has answered our needs and sparked no further questions.

We re-watched BBC's Walking with Monsters, penciled in a timeline of life on earth, and read a few books on the subject, most notably the above noted. We also went to lunch with family, shopped for winter clothes, groceries, and craft items, went on a nature walk, practiced the piano, tried out some map scaling worksheets, took notice of the warm sunshine, and straightened the house for the sake of the people who are coming tomorrow to put in the new furnace. October is a lot closer than I keep thinking.

A day of rest

We had a quiet Sunday. A day as long and busy day as yesterday was calls for a day of rest to follow. No chores, no yard work, no much of anything. Just some quiet reading, an Antarctic craft, and some pretend play in a tent in the sitting room, of course. With Jon home I actually drove over to the Metro Park to run on the paths—it's such a beautiful time of year for it—and on my way I passed our little local cider mill. Open. Must be closer to fall than I thought. So when Calvin asked for afternoon snack, how could we not go down there for fresh, hot donuts and fresh cold cider. Oh heavenly.

No plan

Somewhere, between the late swarms of mosquitoes that sounds like summer and the early changing of the trees that looks like fall, is the essence of now. Somewhere, between my longing for an extension of hot summer days, to spend at the lake or the pool, and my desire for the golden weekends of fall, to spend tailgating or raking leaves, is my ability to just be in the present. There is nothing more valuable than this moment right now, which outside of the cliche is painfully obvious given the myriad of things that pull at my time and demand my attention at any given moment. Take this minute, for instance. I have two books I am longing to read, laundry that needs to be put away, a variety of odd household chores to be done, and some hefty decisions to make about the coming year.

I hate hefty decisions—they always make my thoughts difficult to balance.

What they boil down to, though, and really they're not as hefty as they seem, is an inability to define the homeschoolers we'll be. Having decided that I need more of a structure to get through a week I sat down to peruse the Currclick site tonight, looking for unit studies (which are mostly on sale) to help me make a fall plan. Since he's so intrigued by penguins right now I asked him if he'd like to study Antarctica this week, and then I downloaded a unit study on exactly that. Could I have made my own? Probably. Do I really want someone else to have written a plan for our exploration of that continent? Mmmm...maybe not.

And the doubt creeps in.

But I kept going. With Thanksgiving right around the corner (just ask the commercial sector, which is already stocking for it) I sought a set of studies on US history and geography and downloaded those as well. Then I started looking at the Five in a Row book units I typed up, while borrowing the book from the library last winter, and started distributing those books throughout the fall months, coupling them with the activities in the unit studies.

Midway through writing that calendar I hit the brakes and quit with a big sigh.

I haven't fully given up on my desire to unschool, to let go and follow. I feel safer—more grounded—when I have a plan, but when I look at the studies and my calendar I see exactly what we wanted to avoid with home learning—a plan leaving just one way of doing things. We had wanted to provide many ways to reach a goal. In my ensuing panic I realize that I'm right back at square one, which is the point at which I have to decide what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. Even leaving a door open, through which I can go to change my mind, I have to have a path to follow before I can even get started.

How much guidance to give? How much planning to do?

Of course I am the problem. Calvin is thriving in his learning environment, no matter what I throw at him, be it the FIAR book studies, an Itellego unit study, or a general freedom to seek answers on his own. Is a mixture okay? And where is the fine line between planting a seed of interest, nourishing it with information and encouragement, and letting it take root, and creating an interest that would not exist were it not for external pressures, i.e. planting a water lily in the desert and keeping it alive where it shouldn't be merely by excessive attentions? The answers have not been forthcoming, and lethargy (my own) is setting in.

Which is not to say that I am devoid of excitement about this process. Quite the opposite, really. I sent messages out today to two different local homeschooling groups and we will meet them at the end of this week and the beginning of the next. We've made a new nature table and study center upstairs in our office/learning room, we've re-organized and re-shelved the books, and I still have that calendar I started earlier today. Maybe, as the mosquitoes leave and the trees turn, I'll use it. Maybe I won't.

I can't close this one up neatly. I want to be honest in sharing about our journey, and right now my head is swimming and I feel a little unbalanced and lost, so all I can offer are my thoughts, without a logical conclusion. My guess is that, as much as I desire a plan and a clear, distinct goal, only time will really tell me how our path will go. We'll get there, though, even if we get a little lost along the way.