Holiday Fun

One of my favorite parts about homeschooling is that we can set the pace of our lives. Some days, we are scientists collecting, visiting museums, and making predictions. Other times, we are bakers or artists or dinner party hosts..or, a combination of all of these throughout the day.

From mid November to New Years, we have a lot of festivities. This year, we spent Thanksgiving with 2 sets of families and then took advantage of many fun holiday events. In addition to the ginger house we built, we enjoyed visiting the many holiday train exhibits around Baltimore. Here's one of our favorites at the Kennelworth mall:

It takes up about half a room and takes about 4 full time people a month of work to assemble. We visit this place every year and love to press the buttons making things work.

We also took advantage of several holiday shows. This month, Jess and I saw the Nutcracker at the Hippodrome. One of our friends was in the show and it was extra special to watch her. We saw "A Christmas Carol" and today, a local marionette show with homemade puppets.

We also love the special time of year visiting friends. While we don't celebrate Christmas, we love seeing all of our friends' trees and their special decorations.

Happy Holidays and a Peaceful New Year to all.

Port Discovery: Gingerbricks

This year, I helped organize a "House of Ginger" for the local museum. The whole family got involved. Jess and I went to work late one night to make 1200 gingerbricks.

Everyone in the family helped for the next few steps: bagging candy, sealing frosting bags, and helping kids make gingerbricks.

Jess and Henry even made quite a few bricks themselves.

This past weekend, we were supposed to build a the house, but instead, we got 2 feet of this:

The museum closed, which is really rare.

Nonetheless, we were determined to build the house, so Jess and I, along with several volunteers did this yesterday.


If anyone is going to Port Discovery, please stop by and see the house. The staff will also be handing out the remaining 900 bricks we didn't get to use due to the storm.

Updating for the year!

Been busy. Need to make my book for the year. Will update now.

December Snow

We've had a bit of snow this month, something unusual for Maryland. We made the best of it: long fires, snow painting, snow creme, snowmen, snow forts, snowballs, sledding, shoveling, and cuddling. Here's a few more pictures of our adventures:


Even our cat tried to go outside. She had nowhere to go though so she came in pretty fast.

If you're nearby, hope you are staying warm and cozy. We are expecting even more snow in the next few days!

Enjoy Life Unschooling

I've always wanted to attend an unschooling conference and this September we attended one that was local.

The conference was at a wonderful campground with hiking trails, rocks to climb, and cabins. We skipped the sleepover part, but went for each day.

Jess and I enjoyed the conference, but Henry didn't like it very much. Fortunately, Kelric was nearby and drove Henry home so Jess and I could stay late into the night roasting marshmallows and talking with new and old friends. We went for just a little the next day and Henry found a few kids that were interested in playing Super Mario on the DS.

For Jess and I, the highlight of the trip was being able to connect with several unschooling families in our local group. We realized that both the moms and kids had many shared interests and it was fun hanging out together.

It was also fun for me to meet some new faces and attend a few of the talks. I really liked hearing about people's perspectives and how they unschooled in their lives. Homeschooling and unschooling is so unique to all of us!

Jess led her own funshop called "No Sew Doll Clothes." She has been making all sorts of doll and Webkinz clothes for her dolls and shared this with mostly tween girls. Her funshop was really well received and she will likely do something like this again. We also brought glow sticks to share and Jess organized a rather large parade around the campground.

We learned all sorts of new information: how to Henna, species of flora and fauna, how to make the perfect Hula Hoop, how to roast a marshmallow over a very large fire, and how to just relax and enjoy life.

Ironically, I came away from this conference realizing that the math and language arts we do in a formal way were really good for *our* family. I also realized that while I was slowly trying some more concepts of Radical Unschooling, we were needing more structure in our lives. While I love the idea of natural learning and I do love to support my kids many interests, I have come to realize that for now, we are all happier with a more structured approach. Our first priority is still play and connection, but we are benefiting greatly from *me* being more clear about meeting all of our needs and goals in an organized way.

We all still love our unschooling friends and hope to do more of these fun types of outings in the future.

I'm Sorry

Last year, I read about an interesting Jewish tradition called Tashlich, where you cast your sins into the river in the form of bread crumbs.

As with most things, we made an adaptation to this by throwing crumbs in and saying we were sorry for what we did. We did this for the second year in a row and it was really nice to say out loud what we'd like to do better.


Then, we had a nice hike and a very enjoyable afternoon.