Gub

I love my kids they are so funny and creative. Many times I need lots of time and retrospective thinking to "see" them clearly. My vision definitely improves over time.

When Shea was a baby in 1995/96 he was allergic and super unhappy. I was having a hard time with everything, really. I forgot who I was. Ironically it was one of the early steps toward unschooling. I had to be really tuned in and focus on positives rather than cruise on auto pilot. Shea loved words/ meanings and was an early talker. Some favorites were "red", "truck", "up", "out", "good" and "boy". Basic. Meaningful. We connected.

Speed up 3 years, Kaden was born in 1998, and Shea liked to talk to him saying "good good good" and "good boy", among other things. Kaden is active, less talk, often he made sounds like "gub" which was very funny to Shea. "Gub" was actually more than a sound, it meant "good boy", it took some time to figure out, but soon we all began using "gub" as a word.


When Riley came in 2001, we discovered he is quite literal. In time he found out this was a made-up word, he says "I am not a gub, I am a boy."

Alphabet Numbers

This week Riley is playing Jump Start 2nd Grade on the old olde imac, he loves it. But he cannot read yet so we all take turns reading the instructions to him. It's okay, I am usually sitting directly behind him at the other desk when we use computers. I see he likes to stay on one game at a time, I think it's because he knows it's hard to get someone to help when he changes games frequently. Kinda sad, I will try to help him more cheerfully so he won't feel badly.

One of his fave games is putting Roman Numerals in order so these cartoon penguins can hop across the newly formed bridge. Riley is so funny, he says, "I'm really good at Alphabet Numbers!" And he really is good at it, he learned that number system quickly.

Dreams, Cycles, Relativity, Percentages

We never eat breakfast, it's usually too late. Brunch we eat. No Lunch, it comes too soon after Brunch, but we are hungry for Tea [LOL], and dinner we eat late.

Today during brunch we ate what's left from dinner, something I call Aphid Surprise, it's delicious! I put together garlic, sausage, broccoli and pasta, the entire recipe is dependent on the broccoli, our broc was excellent this time.

Eating is a very enjoyable thing we do here, we eat a lot and talk freely which I love and don't get enough of in my life lately. Shea and I had a great conversation about time travel, plane travel, car travel, dreams, sleep cycles, percentage of dream time in sleep, and the physics of time. Wow! REALLY good broccoli!

Mothership is Landing

Ack, I have avoided writing here, keeping this blog for the kids, but that seems hard and unnatural. I'll switch my plans and write freely now.

On AlwaysLearning, Pam Sorooshian just posted an analogy of Unschooling being like water, jumping in and swimming or getting bashed against rocks, depending on where and when the jumping happens.

I like that analogy, and further imagine a larger system where the big water of unschooling is a refreshing vital force uniting lots of ideas and people [ie Live and Learn Conference]. At my house we adequately fill our needs each day and that would be analogous to having a trickling creek in the backyard, and we have the only backyard creek in the neighborhood, a gift we don't fully appreciate.

My quiet frightened husband scares me, he needs to see others doing similar things as us. That's not happening. Again he's unhappy, it's the same for him since we met, I am not comprehending his problems.

Andromeda Galaxy in IR

Introducing the Family: About Jules

Hi I am Jules. I'm the mom of 3 homeschooled boys, ages 5, 8 and 10 years old. Specifically we are unschoolers, but since most people are unaware of the difference, I start with the larger category of Homeschool and go from there. It's been a long time since I enrolled my kids in a progressive preschool, volunteered more hours than a 40hr/wk job and felt desperate about Kindergarten! That lifestyle drained the fun out of me.

I stayed home with my kids partly by default. I imagined someday interesting work would lure me to get a "real" job, but nothing was more attention-grabbing than my own children [that's the short version.] I have a paying job once per week [it's up and down, and the jobs vary a lot from baker/ caterer, preschool teacher, pediatric office support] but I like to have personal cash in pocket, so I sell my services LOL.

It's a challenge to make it on one income, our city is expensive and materialistic, but I think conspicuous consumption is the global standard [for now]. I remind myself how very very extremely lucky I am to be conscious of my financial, work and education choices, and more importantly to act on them. I feel much happier and focused now, I like our family and each person in it!

Mostly this blog will be about my kids and their interests, I have another blog about knitting and other topics.

~Jules.