New Beginnings

As the kids get older, I find that everything about the way we unschool is changing too.

It was time for a fresh start, that better reflects what we are doing and thinking about right now.

Please join us at our new blog www.freerangeacademy.blogspot.com

This blog will remain as an archive, of use, I hope, to those just starting down the path of unschooling. Lots of Waldorf stuff here too.

Thanks and hope to see you!

HW

Thanks...

to everyone who has emailed to tell me about the problems with my header...it is a problem with Blogger, doubtless they have 'improved' something again. I am struggling with it and hissing at my laptop and will triumph in the end.

HW

Righteous Garb

Yeah, this is an ad free blog, but one has a duty to one's friends.

Shameless plug for a righteous man's grassroots enterprise - SlamShirts.

T-shirts being a staple, like potatoes, one may as well fight the power and alienate the trophy wife next door whilst in them.

Child and slave labour free, organic options available.

Lunartalks likes them too.

HW

Life Without Plastic

Thanks to Craftymama from Sweet Thing Designs for posting a link to Life Without Plastic. I wish I'd known about that place years ago. Always fretting about what could be leaching from plastic sippy cups, I switched Scoob and Baby Man to these (the all-steel 9 oz size, sans lid) as soon as they could hold a real cup.

In addition to being nice and inert, they are indestructible and can be banged rhythmically on the table, as though by mutinous prisoners, if dinner is late.

HW

Pickering Museum Village

We attended the Museum's very lovely "Christmas in the Village" thingie on the weekend. Can't say enough nice things about it. Scoob and Baby Man cavort on the path through the Perfectly Wintry Forest leading to the village. I think it was minus 40 Celsius.

The village suddenly appears after we emerge from the forest, cross a frozen creek, wonder why there is nothing but snow-covered fields for miles, and round a corner. Nice and frigid now. Hoping they have fires.


We hurl our frozen selves into the first house we see - it turns out to be a log house, with a nice crackling fire, filled with Scottish womenfolk preparing for Hogmanay, the Scottish celebration of the New Year.


Their cottage made me a little broody.


After cider, stamping to drive out evil spirits, chanting rhymes and learning that red-heads and women are Bad Luck and must not darken the New Year's door before the tallest, darkest haired man in the village, our cockles are warm enough to head back out into the snow.


As I stand gazing dreamily at this picturesque little house, the small things spy/are almost trampled by horses.



Scooby and Baby Man score front row seats, up with the drivers, and are in Urchin Ecstacy. Horse on your left is Annie. Horse on your right is Mindy.


They take us on a long carriage ride through the village and fields, often with the horses at a fast trot, bells a-jangling.


Now we're losing our extremities again, so we dive into another building, this one full of The Village Singers whose voices reverberate nicely in the sparse, chilly chapel. There is no fire, but we all press together like a herd of stranded cattle, steam rising from our backs.




Back out, we discover Father Christmas hanging out in front of the General Store. Scoob and Baby Man are suspicious of his youthful beard.


We follow The Grey Horse - a symbol of good luck and fertility - and a bunch of wassailing Welshmen - to a Welsh cottage heavy with the wonderful smell of rum and cider, where they ply the big folks with hot wassail, the little folks with hot cider, and all of us with currant cakes. Core temperatures restored, we dive back out into the biting cold and do some traditional Welsh Christmas crafts until our fingers turn black and fall off.

It's time to find another refuge, so we join Squire Jonathan's Christmas Ball for music and dancing.



The dancers perform the Grand March, the Duke of Kent & New Rig Ship, the Lancer's Quadrille, and the Spanish Waltz.


Scooby leaps up and joins the Roger De Coverly! This is the dance performed by Old Fezziwig's employees at the warehouse Christmas party.



Then we huddle desperately around one last woodburning stove, before trekking back through the beautiful forest, and heading home for some Traditional Spinach Pizza and Eggnog.

HW

Ask a Biologist

Thanks to PZ over at Pharyngula (who is also a participating scientist) for tipping me off to this great resource.

Ask a Biologist wants to take kids 'beyond the classroom' (ears pricking up) by giving them access to Real Scientists who give up their free time to share their knowledge and passion. It doesn't get any better than that. Question and answer forums, science news and a great little section called Not Just a Lab Coat. Looks like it will just get bigger and better with time.

From the site's welcome page:

"Everything here will be written by a professional scientist who is an expert in your area of interest. These people are giving up their free time to help you, so please use them to learn and enjoy science, between us we work on dinosaurs, sea scorpions, ecology, human evolution, spiders, cell biology, evolution, birds, animal behaviour, physiology, forests, conservation, genetics, fish, and plenty more besides....We want you to enjoy science and to be as excited about life on earth as we are. Simply send us a question and one of our experts will post the question and a reply as soon as they can."

HW

The Great Tree Hunt

No Winter Solstice/Heathen Christmas is complete without the celebratory chopping down of an evergreen. It is a noble and ancient tradition.



Urchins having a grand old time...


breaking stuff....


Scooby was in charge of selecting this year's species.


All aboard for the wagon ride to the fields!





Hmmmm....which one.......


Posing in front of The Chosen One.


Wresting the Chosen One from this Mortal Coil.


The Chosen One posing with Implement of Destruction.



Then, a frozen wagon-ride back to the farm, where The Chosen Ones are dropped into a very entertaining mechanical shaker, and then thrust into a baler, an enormous and very noisy machine one imagines will perform some astonishing feat, but instead just winds a little jute around your tree.


Waiting for hot dogs and hot chocolate by the fire...


We bloody love (Heathen) Christmas.

HW

Boom

Ahh, a nice patch of slippery ice.


And Baby Man is down, but he's ok, he's determined to get back in the game. Scooby is a thing of grace and beauty, strong, focussed.


Scooby still in the lead, Baby Man grits his teeth and tries again, he's been training all season, he'll recover from this.


Oh! Baby Man is down again! What a disappointment! Scooby continues to fly over the ice, like she was born to do this.


What spirit! What heart! Baby Man will not give up! He's up, he's up, he's on his feet!!


HW

The Best Mittens Ever!

Thanks to a clever knitting Grandma for these Just Fantastic Mitties. They are so goshdarn cute, they made me glance wistfully in the direction of the bags full of seven foot long half-digested sweaters jammed full of irate knitting needles that represent my failed attempts to learn to knit. Well, truth is, I can knit....I just don't know how to stop.

HW