I've been so busy with holiday prep and now General Disarray's birthday that this poor blog has been neglected. So here, have some holiday cheer! See I still love you too! Copyright(c)2011 Rayven Holmes
Professor Chaos celebrated another birthday this week. Oh how time flies. Happy Birthday Sweetheart!
As a heathen family we are in a unique position when it comes to holidays. We can take part in the ones we want to take part in and we can ignore for the most part the ones we don’t want to be a part of. Generally, we see all holidays as a learning experience, so we usually read about them, do an activity, etc. Easter though has been a dwindling holiday in our home, it wasn’t first acknowledged until General Disarray was about 2 ½ years old, that year I put together a small Easter basket of goodies and hid a few eggs. The following year since The Spouse was deployed I tried to make everything as fun as possible with an indoor hunt due to it being extremely cold where we were living at the time, egg dying, and plenty of sweets and treats. They even meet the Easter bunny for the first time that year.
After that though? Well, it has become all about what they are going to get, candies and cheap toys, and that is it, we usually don’t even know for sure what day it will fall on until we see the store displays. We haven’t seen the Easter bunny in two years since the last visit resulted in General Disarray *who was at the beginning of a very long line* pointed at the bunny taking its seat and exclaimed “Hey mom that’s someone in an Easter bunny costume!” Thankfully all the kids right behind us were too young to even understand what was going on so their parents just ignored what they heard, probably thinking the same thing I was, couldn’t they have found a better bunny costume!
Since then we have done egg hunts, given T.B.M. baskets usually bought pre-assembled and ready to go, and that is it. I have no intention of discussing the Christian aspects of Easter with them until they are much older; going over why people celebrate the brutal beating of a man is just not my idea of need to know information before the age of ten. My recollection of Easters from my childhood all center on Mass, a very boring Easter Mass and the Palm Sunday Mass before it. I actually liked those because we would sit in the pew making crosses out of our palm leaves and that was far more interesting than the service. I vaguely remember Easter egg hunts, there were the forced Spring dresses, and a thrown together Easter basket, but Mass was the most important thing. As a non-believer Catholic Mass only pops into my brain as disturbed flashbacks of old white men in orientate robes sing-talking in monotone voices, making the one holiday I directly related to it something I tend to want to ignore and watch pass quickly from store shelves.
Lately, as the store shelves have become even more overrun with Easter throw-up I’ve been discussing with The Spouse the idea of actually ignoring Easter all together. All T.B.M care about are the baskets of candy and trinkets, and I personally don’t want to focus on a day strictly for material gain. Even Christmas in our home is about love, caring, giving, and being thankful for what we receive. The Spouse though doesn’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. He loves watching the kids hunt for Easter eggs and enjoys helping them eat their way through their candy. He just doesn’t care about the religious aspect of the holiday. I feel while those things are fine we still need to actually have something we are focusing on other than the goodies.
Spring is a wonderful time of year and I would hate to watch the season pass without some sort of celebration. Since we do Spiral Scouts and are working our way through the Sabbats, I’ve been learning about Ostara for our lessons on it. It deals with renewal and rebirth, and a celebration of the Earth being at equilibrium. There are religious aspects to Ostara, and while I intend to discuss these with T.B.M. we wouldn’t actively take part in those aspects, but I do feel for our family focusing more on the time of year and what it brings will give Spring more meaning. We won’t “do” Ostara or Easter, but instead celebrate the Spring Equinox.
The Sabbats Almanac has a great article on kite making and flying as a family/friends activity to bring everyone together which I think would be a great tradition to start. Instead of dying eggs we would work together constructing a family kite, and then head out into the first Spring day with kite in hands, and watch as it flies high above our heads, soaring in the Spring breeze.
Would we completely dump eggs? I don’t think so, eggs are a figure of symbolism for Spring, and we really do love watching the boys hunt for them. We just wouldn’t wait until the “traditional” Easter to have our hunt; it would be a Spring Equinox event. We would discuss the symbolism behind eggs, and then set out in search of our brightly colored eggs. Instead of each egg being filled with candy, half will be filled with encouraging phrases or traits to focus on to help us achieve balance, move past old habits, and grow.
I think this would be a nice compromise for our family. We still get to enjoy egg hunting and goodies, but we also get to focus on family, and reverence for the season of renewal after the dark, cold winters.
Things have been quiet here on our little blog not for lack of anything to post about, just an overall lack of time. We have been very busy this holiday season! We have still been covering the winter holidays like planned though. On the 21st we covered Yule.
For our learning fun we used the Pooka Pages Yule packet, did a family ritual, and made some yummy treats (Solstice Snowballs and a Yule Log *So many things went wrong with making this, the cake didn‘t roll the way I wanted it to, the filling was far too runny, and the icing was a bit off. I‘m convinced it was me, but considering it was the first time I ever made one I think it came out ok all things considered. It was edible that is the most important part right?! One of you will have to try the recipe and tell me how it turned out for you.*).
Our Yule activities not only work into our winter holidays learning but they also help the boys fulfill one of their SpiralScouts patches. While discussing Yule *particularly during our family ritual*, I talked about the various elements in Christmas that have their roots in Yule. This of course got The Spouses attention, he always finds tidbits like this interesting.
I’m looking forward to when the boys are a bit older, so we can watch the sunrise *or the sun being born as some say* like they do in the story we read in Pooka Pages. I think that would be a great way to bring our Yule learning full circle so to speak. But that will have to wait until they are old enough to really appreciate a sunrise *without the complaints of wanting to crawl back in bed or fussing that would follow from an early morning wake-up*, for now they can sleep and dream of the sweet goodies they will receive in just a couple of days.
While that is my reflection that IS NOT my van...just wanted to put that out there. LOL. 
Well it’s that time of year, the lights are hung and the tree is up *all earlier than we usually do these things since I wanted to take advantage of a Shutterfly sale*. The kids are getting anxious, and I’m ready for our winter break that starts in about two weeks.
Even though we will be on break, we will still be getting plenty of use out of our Knowledge Books, and I will be knee deep in 2011-2012 school year prep. I’ve also been putting some finishing touches on the classroom, organizational wise which I will share more of once I have it all completed.
Slowly, but surely we are getting a grasp on homeschooling in terms of our family and what works best *not too bad for only our second official year of homeschooling as far as I‘m concerned*. It is very much a lifestyle, even the holidays can’t escape it’s educational opportunity reach.
But it fits us so well and I can’t picture having it any other way.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of good food and fabulous family and friends. We had wonderful friends over *and thought often of our family and friends back home*, because yes homeschoolers do socialize with people. *Gasp*!
*Yes, I know it’s only Wednesday night in my part of the world, but I will be VERY busy tomorrow. *
This is usually a Secular Thursday post, but since this Thursday is Thanksgiving I figured I would make a thankful post that is secular homeschooling focused.
Number One on this list is obviously that I am thankful that we have the means and ability (freedom) to homeschool our children. It is a personal choice that not everyone gets the pleasure, fear, and frustration to make.
I’m thankful that we homeschool for secular reasons (most importantly for the pursuit of facts, knowledge, and evidence that we can use to form our own opinions and grow as people). There is freedom in being able to question everything, even if the questions require mommy to stay up late into the evening hunting for the answers.
I’m also thankful for access to two libraries *one of which employs a very dear friend of ours*. Having these buildings of knowledge at our disposal has been a treat. We often find items that we have longed for *one of those items being the Life series I picked up yesterday that I have wanted to purchase but have held off on it due to the price tag*, and also items that are extremely useful and occasionally show themselves on one of our many visits. The find this week happens to be Thanksgiving themed!
The book is called Thanksgiving: The True Story and it has a wealth of information! It also lead me to track down America’s Real First Thanksgiving: St. Augustine, Florida, September 8, 1565.
I had never heard of this book until I picked up Thanksgiving: The True Story, and I’m so glad I now know about it! I tracked it down on Amazon and it also has a teaching guide/manual to go with it! It was written by a fifth grade teacher in 2007, and thankfully she was kind enough to make a teaching guide/manual to go along with it. Since I *like most Americans* had never even heard about the 1565 Thanksgiving (until now), and was only taught the Plymouth story a teaching guide/manual will come in real handy. I’m planning to purchase the set, and some other items to go along with it, and work them into our studies this time next year.
This homeschooling journey of ours has been and will continue to be a ride, but I am truly thankful for the moments we are able to create because of it. As well as for the wonderful friends we have meet on this adventure, who continue to be a source of inspiration and support.
Happy Thanksgiving All!
Now Go Eat and Be Merry!
It’s been a week since I posted! Yikes! We’ve had a lot going on, and very little of it is school related. We’ve taken days off to spend with The Spouse, then there is the holiday prep which always seems to send the whole world into a tailspin, as well as birthday prep for Child #1. So needless to say we are rather busy. What I have been debating on the school front is how to tackle the teaching of Thanksgiving. I don’t like the glossed over teaching that you often get, with the fairy tale of everything being just peachy keen. So I went looking for resources. I’ve found two so far.
One being the History Channel’s piece on Thanksgiving, naturally, and the second being Nat Geo for Kids. The Nat Geo site actually does mention some common myths surrounding Thanksgiving as well as how Wampanoag people feel about the day now, and what they do instead.
I’m currently *along with everything else on my overflowing plate* trying to figure out how to make this information into an informative but interesting lesson. Right now I’m leaning towards printing out some clip art, and playing some Truth or Fiction. I’ll have more of what I actually put into action after the insanity of this upcoming week passes.
I mentioned a few times here that we do SpiralScouts at home, I’ve even discussed starting a Circle *we currently have a Hearth due to it just being our family taking part*. We have various badges we are working towards, but the main ones are part of the Wheel Of The Year series, which requires learning about the Pagan Sabbats.
I wasn’t 100% sure as to how to tackle teaching the boys the Sabbats, and so I went searching online for things to help teach them. I came across a few books online through Amazon, but they were clearly for parents who were Pagan/Wiccan and raising their children as such. Which doesn’t work for us, so I formulated a plan. I knew what I wanted, I knew what I wanted to get out of it, so I just went ahead and made it myself.
The Waldorf Homeschooling Method mentions “Main Lesson or Good Books”, but these are something to be made by the child as a way to keep track of their work. The “books” I made could be seen as similar since they will hold work the kids will do *or have done*, but they already hold the knowledge I want them to learn *hence the name Knowledge Books*, and they were made by me, not the boys. If we update them *which depends on them being affective first off* then I’ll probably let the boys take over in the creating department.
I set off making the first Wheel of the Year book, and as I was doing it, it hit me that I could do the same thing with our winter holidays as well. This would allow for all the information to be in one spot, and the boys will have something lightweight, full of info, and readily available as we work through the December holidays. So after I got through the knowledge books for the Wheel of the Year, I tackled the winter holidays.
I’m really considering making other ones for the other holidays that take place throughout the year, possibly one that focuses on patriotic holidays *The 4th, Flag Day, Memorial Day, and Veteran’s Day*, then one for the other holidays that are scattered throughout the year. Put I’ll see how this work for us. So you want to see what they look like? Ok here you go!
Each “book” is made out of a 3-pronged folder in the boys’ favorite colors. All images were acquired though a simple search of online images. I would just plug in what I was looking for “Wheel of the Year”, “Santa Claus”, etc., and then scan through the results until I found images that I liked.
Wheel Of The Year Knowledge Books
Winter Holidays Knowledge Books
Copyright(c)2010 Rayven Holmes
