Saturday March 19th

Woo-Long night...Bean was up a lot last night. She has a little cold, congestion thing going on, so I finally brought her downstairs at about 4am to watch Sesame Street (Praise God for DVR) she finally fell asleep around 5:30 or so, and then thing 1 and thing 2 got up to eat...phew! It is birthday party day here today, great excitment let me tell you-I am not really big on birthday parties. Family ones, yeah-we always make their birthdays a big deal, but it's usually just an intimate dinner with our La casa de loco residents. Today our cousins and some friends from church are meeting us at the park to go creeking. Hey, he's a nature baby-I'm telling you that this kid will be sitting in a fire watch tower some day working for the national parks. They are crazy if they don't start recruiting him now! Anyhoo, so off to the park this afternoon.
Did a little thinking in the shower this morning about unschooling, and natural learning. Had read a article somewhere about how the skill our children need most in this world they learn via unschooling. Tis is the skill that we cannot send them off into the world without, that they use for their very means of survival. It is amazing when I realized that we trust ourselves and our children enough to learn this ultra important skill at our sides, but don't trust them or ourselves with anyother aspect of their learning. Do you know what this skill is that they so beautifully teach themselves with our guidance? It is language. Now for some children this may not be a spoken language, or it may not be English, however it is communication. Our children started exploring their language as an infant with babbles and coos, and through our smiling and gentle help, they have come to a point of communication. A means for survival. This is natural learning at it's very best folks. No matter how many books we could have put in front of them, or worksheets we had given them-they would not have learned this skill before they were ready. We had to trust ourselves, and trust them and build a relationship to foster the growth of language, and they did it-in whatever shape, form or method it came out. Success!