After barn chores this morning we went out for breakfast and then on to grocery shopping - we can do both in our little home slice grocery co-op.   I chose a ham and cheese biscuit because I'm smart like that.  The kids chose a delicious tub of full fat vanilla yogurt to share.  After eating a while Henry asked Riley, "Is this tub half full or half empty?"  Riley paused and then answered with a shrug, "It's the same either way."

Which, okay, is so totally obvious.  But I've never heard anyone give that answer before.  That answer warms the cockles of my Buddhist soul.  It suggests a person who sees life clearly, accepts reality, and is willing to enjoy what is.  Henry and I just looked at each other across the table and smiled.  

In case no one has noticed, I love these people.

A rainy day in your lean-to, napping under the herbs you've put by and snuggled in a warm nest of leaves.

Body Condition Score of Dairy Cattle - trying to learn

Elderberry when she arrived here last month.  (Sorry I don't have better.)

Elderberry today.

All bcs estimates or thoughts appreciated, here or on the forum.  Thanks y'all.

I'd bust off them mud daubers and re cane that rocker if they'd give me half a chance.

We are in a drawing club that meets outside once a week.  The kids run and play and draw as they wish.  Yesterday, one mother pulled out watercolors and set to work sitting on her blanket.  Later, I looked over my shoulder and she was surrounded by 10 kids - including both of mine.  In another hour I was ready to leave.  I looked over my shoulder and those kids were all still there, heads bowed over paper, engaged, still, earnest, working.  They worked until they were ready to stop - I had long since been ready to go. They worked independently but together, without competition, grades, or thoughts of time.  Later, they called it fun.

Someone asked me how I deal with doubt

Well, I always have moments of doubt.  I think, because the children keep changing, the need for doubts keep changing.  One can never say: "I have now definitively proved to myself that my child's needs are being perfectly served by our education choices."  Because the kids needs keep changing.  At least, I think that's what goes on with home/unschooling doubt.  Because, even with the strength of my conviction and the continuing proof that home/unschooling nurtures the intelligence and spirit and even solid core knowledge of children amazingly effectively, I occasionally doubt.

Henry just turned 11.  Two nights ago Joe and I went a couple of rounds together with our doubts.  Is Henry REALLY learning enough?  And we started talking about him and what he does and who he is and what we know he knows and then we must admit he's fine.  Better than fine.  And way better off - farther along on the most important levels - than he would be if he were in school.  Then we relax.

Lately I've been thinking about education theory.  I'm trying to step back and look long and hard at what any human might definitely KNOW FOR SURE about how to make growing human brains smarter or as smart as they can be.   This is a crucial shift just because, I think, we all go along assuming that the current system was based on some strong evidence that some brilliant person or entity laid out on exactly HOW FOR SURE to make children as smart as they can be.

But that is not so.  If you look, you can't help but notice.  Our system evolved for many reasons and many of those reasons had nothing, whatsoever, to do with solid evidence-based information about what makes children smarter. 

So if the system is not based on facts we know about what makes children smarter, then ............... wow.  What is that big industrial machine doing to all those poor little children?   That's question one.  Question two, in my mind, is why on this great beautiful green and blue earth that humans seem to be so effectively trashing, why should I pay much attention to the standard curriculum of this huge industrial machine into which most people seem so intent (and most hideously - even RELIEVED) to put their children?  Of course, there are small reasons why I should pay some attention.  I try to match my level of doubt and concern against those small reasons. I say, as often as I can to anyone who wants to listen, the current system of industrial education is arbitrary.

Well then, how do we grow the smartest children?   I find these answers for myself: 
1) love and ethics
2) healthy food and sunshine
3) appropriate exposure to our complex and beautiful world
4) supporting the pursuit of curiosity

When people doubt or challenge our curriculum, I can only reflect on this list and compare it to the standard industrial curriculum.   I find it very difficult to care much, in the elementary years, about any body of knowledge - the linear and progressive study of any language including mathematics or music, history, science, or geography - any body of knowledge anyone might list.  If the children are as smart as they can be, any body of knowledge will open before their own curiosity or need like a well oiled hinge on a heavy and well balanced wooden door and in perfect harmony with their current needs of the moment.  Kind of like breast feeding, really.  I can't hope to offer my children more than that.  So, I make sure they read as well as they can and I attend to our curriculum.  Noticing that the information embedded in the industrial curriculum of any school to which anyone anywhere might point, is contained within our unschooling curriculum.

Then I say, top that bitch.  Because doubt is a bitch.

Ry made a lean-to today.  Then she photographed it.

Hey, Gerald, thanks.  A Russian mother's essay, I'll link it here with the last line:
"And we just cannot understand why a normal person would want to go to school."

The thing about photography is that its just so done.   Our culture is image saturated. That, and photography produces so much product.  In fact, the product actually gives me the creeps when I think too much about it.  Our generation is so documented.  We are up to our eyeballs in documentation.  And it feels narcissistic, somehow.   Does that stop me from keeping huge plastic tubs of photos of my children?  Of course not.  Does that stop me from keeping back up hard drives devoted to family photography?   No.  Still, it creeps.*

What I love is the process of taking the pictures.  That's the goody!  And today is one of those increasingly rare days of rain the way rain can only be in North Carolina.  We used to get these days for weeks at a time.  Rain rain rain and rain.  Last year's musty flannel cold on the shoulder saturated soft greened gray on and deep to the well bottoms of the bare feet of our huge trees see the heron on the rock get used to it rain from the bright sky land of deciduous and wet and chilled and back inside where a fashion magazine could only smell obscene.  Where is the cocoa?  Now, we are living IN the good land.  I need only the smallest excuse to get out there.  A camera will do nicely.

I've been sick.  I'm so over being sick.  They keep telling me to rest.  The cow is milked.  The kids are snuggled upstairs playing with friends.   Dinner is simmering for tonight.  The cream is set out to sour for butter.  The milk is chilled and tucked into the refrigerator.   I just saved the almonds from over toasting.  Maybe pasta with butter, garlic, the last of the fresh basil (rain washing right now) topped with toasted almonds.  Lunch.  Only one thing missing.  Hurry home through the rain, my love.
* uh, much like blogging