Shhhhh...Artists at Work.

Slime Time!

Our Egg Rolls...Kinda

This is our first attempt at making egg rolls. They turned out alright. We learned from some mistakes we made. For instance I knew they cooked fast, but it was MUCH faster than I expected so some of them a slightly more that golden perfection. The other thing is that I have allow more time for it to drain off from frying in oil. We used olive oil. All of them were stuffed with that broccoli slaw mix that you can find in the grocery store, but Sunshine and Spike had leftover chicken from a birthday dinner chopped up in theirs.

Sunshine preparing the egg rolls to go in the oil.

Spike trying to get over being sick. Yes, he still smiles a lot when he is sick. At least more than most kids I know. LOL

The taste test. They passed. I think because she made them. Deschooling is kind of fun, huh?

What I've learned so far deschooling

1. I have learned that the behavior of others should not dictate my behavior.
2. I want to be able to actually have conversations with my children.
3. I want to know what they are interested in.
4. I need to focus on the positive aspects of my children rather than riding them about the things that could be improved.
5. I need to include them in daily living so that they will model those behaviors.
6. I need to have behavior that I don't mind them modeling.
7. I can't throw my issues (ie, anger, uncertainty, frustration, etc.) off on them.
8. I can decide what kind of parent I need to be in order to have children that are autodidactic independent thinkers that love to learn.

I will continue this journey of self discovery, but I have to admit that I am really enjoying getting to know myself and them. Sunshine and I even played this game that I bought from a game company called Simply Fun. It is just a keyring with conversation starters...or more like questions that you might not ever think to ask. LOL Anyway, we talked for about an hour just playing around with that. For the first time I feel like we had a real conversation. She is quite a wonderful girl. To bad it took me this long to really figure that out, but we are on our way to a much better relationship.

7 am Epiphany

I am still awake from my last post. So this post may not be totally coherent.

When I was younger I enjoyed writing, drawing, pottery, ceramics, painting, clay sculpture etc. I wanted to try gymnastics and piano (my aunt was going to let me use her piano) really bad and really consistently.

While I was at a session at the homeschool conference, due to a conversation that we were having, I realized that I don't really have a passion, hobby, or anything else that is just mine. I thought that natural hair was my passion, but I think that it is just something that I happen to be good at. How in the world did I get to be 32 years old and not know who in the world I am? At some point I must have just put the passions that I had to the side seeing that they were going to be realized. I feel really sad about that. I guess while we are all being deschooling and probably subsequently unschooled I will explore my learning styles and multiple intelligences along with my children and hopefully rediscover my passions along the way.

Deschooling...Karen was right!

Karen Davis (google her) told me in the beginning to allow my children to decompress, detox, and deschool for a while. I DID NOT LISTEN! In my usual way, I was going to learn the hard way. My children don't need deschooling, after all, they have me. That was just the problem, they were stuck with their stiffneck stubborn Mama. I wasn't going to do it the way that thousands of successful homeschoolers had done it before me, I didn't need to glean a thing. HA!!! Yea right.

Well, today I have been humbled. We will be deschooling at least until January. It still sounds really scary. I have learned through other dealings that I have problems when it comes to trusting processes so, y'all just pray for me...pray for us. We will be going more, doing more, and reading more but it just won't be so schoolish.

Here we go!!!