Unschooling NYC

This is off topic, but too good to resist.   Did you know that the world is going to end tomorrow evening?    Yep.   According to Harold Camping and his followers, we’ve got less than 24 hours.   Or rather, believers have less than 24 hours before they are all swept up to heaven.   Us non-believers will have to endure 5 months of war, famine, earthquakes and plagues before the earth is ultimately destroyed sometime in October.

The other day I saw a homeless guy on the subway carrying a sign that said, “Judgment Day May 21, 2011”  but he was still asking … Read more

It’s the hardest thing for parents to do.   They hear about what other kids are doing and immediately compare them with their own children.    This is particularly true when it comes to what the kids are learning or the things they ‘know’.   When we first started going to our Wednesday playgroup, which is comprised of homeschoolers and life learners, I would come home exhausted from fighting off my school brain.   School brain got stimulated during these afternoons by the group of moms who would sit around and either compare curricula or talk at length about the types of things their … Read more

Our apartment is currently ruled by Lego minifigures and Nanobugs (or Hexbug, Nano as Ben has repeatedly tried to tell me).   The Nanobugs are ingenious little things that look a little like robotic centipedes.  They run on a watch battery that caused their rubberized legs to vibrate, and them to run around.  If they fall over, they right themselves.   Ben makes mazes for them with his blocks, and though you’d think they’d get stuck in corners or always go one direction, they never do.

A few days ago Maya got two of them for herself, and now she and Ben … Read more

Since we only get one shot at life, (even if you believe in reincarnation you can’t remember your other lives, so same thing) wouldn’t it be prudent to try and make it one wherein we are most happy?    My very prescient daughter recently posted the following quote on her Facebook page:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy”. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment.I told them

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Yesterday the Times ran an article titled, “Fast-Tracking to Kindergarten?”  all about Kumon, which is a Japanese imported ‘math and reading enrichment’ program.  Kumon has tutoring centers in storefronts all over the place, but have recently been emphasizing their Junior Kumon program, starting for children as young as two years old.    Kids are drilled in writing, reading, grammar, math and are rewarded with stickers.   They do timed math drills and can name past and present tenses, complete with grammatically correct examples, by the time they are 6.

“Little Kate Wattenberg, a 6 year old who recently graduated from Junior Kumon,

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Remember the story about the stork delivering babies?   I don’t know if any parents ever told their kids that in earnest; I suspect it was more of a way to avoid answering the question of ‘where do babies come from’.    But I’m sure there were kids who didn’t get the joke and wondered why Mom’s stomach got so big right before the stork delivered a new baby brother or sister.    I’m not sure why adults seem so universally embarrassed to talk to their kids about anything regarding sex and reproduction – maybe it’s our puritanical roots – but the lengths … Read more

Because it is Saturday night and what was supposed to be a leisurely evening spent with Joshua doing my writing at our store while he worked became instead a session of looking up addresses all over the city (don’t ask – the explanation is far too long) and then waiting for designers who were supposed to arrive at 7pm but instead didn’t show up until 8pm (they are going to re-work Joshua’s office so that it is more like a place you’d want to be and less like solitary confinement under the glare of flourescent lighting);  because of all that, … Read more

We like the number 13 in our house.   Ben’s birthday is March 13, and Joshua’s is today, May 13.   Except for the year I turned 40, when Joshua went all out and flew people in to the city to celebrate, we tend to do very low key things on birthdays.   (Mine and Joshua’s, not necessarily the kids.)   The kids make cards and we give gifts, and that’s about it.   When it comes to Joshua, the gift part was always a challenge.   This is mostly because when Joshua wants something, he goes and gets it.    A few years ago I started … Read more

My friend Jane Kellner emails a quote to everyone on her contact list almost every day.   She calls it Daily Zen.   I save my favorites in a file, and have used them, on occasion,  in past blog posts.    Yesterday she sent what may be the best quote in the history of Daily Zen, from writer Christopher Morley. It goes like this:

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading.  Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.  Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.  It is bad for the mind to continually

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Wednesday afternoons are park days for us.  We meet with a group of fellow homeschoolers/life learners in Riverside Park.  While the kids disappear into the trees or run around on the rocks, the Moms hang out on the benches.   The kids are not always visible, but within earshot, and periodically show up to get snacks or beg money to go buy hot dogs or ice cream from the vendor who parks his stand just outside the playground entrance.

Today, one of the Mom’s who is new to the group asked us what the kids do for the almost 4 hours … Read more