More Inspiration!

Well, I am excited to report that I have just finished a cute little book of Byron Katie quotes, and, as expected, it's very supportive of unschoolery beliefs. Check it out. It's called Byron Katie on Parents and Children.

I also got another book recommended by my fellow unschooling blogger, Lisa: The Parent's Tao Te Ching. I can already tell it's going to be really inspirational about unschooling as well!

Well, I have been writing lots of posts and not publishing them because I'm not finished with them yet, but allow me to give a little update here.

Ezra has become very interested in asking me about multiplication, so I am getting him an abacus and some "math manipulatives" for the holidays. I was trying to figure out what kind of math manipulatives to get, and thought to ask Laurel up at the Waldorf-inspired toy store about it. She said Waldorf doesn't use math manipulatives, but they do use beanbags and Kapla blocks. So I am getting some Kapla blocks because I don't even know what you are supposed to do with math manipulatives, but I, myself, could have hours of fun playing with Kapla blocks! There are 200 in the set I'm getting, so that should be plenty to entertain Ezra with his math questions. Plus, he can build tall launch pads, which is probably what he'll do with it most of the time!

Every week we do "family movie night" on Wednesday nights because my husband doesn't get home until 10 p.m., and this week I got 4 episodes of "Lassie" at the library. They were awesome! It was a collection called "A Mother's Love". I highly recommend - I haven't had a t.v. since I moved out of my parents' house, so those of you with cable might not be so stricken if you often watch reruns of Beaver and Donna Reed or something, but it was so refreshing to see this woman with a totally barren kitchen, nothing to do but cook and stand by the door and wait for Lassie to come tell her someone was hurt, and with an ability to ask her son to do something and expect a quick "yes, mother!" in return. Aaaah, speaking of dreamy!

Anyway, we all enjoyed those very much. I especially liked how Timmy almost got mauled by a mountain lion and nobody batted an eye or said "don't go walking in the woods at night!"

Oh, and we finished Where The Red Fern Grows this week. I even got Ottar (2 yo) interested in listening to it. I do think it's the saddest book ever written! As soon as it was over Ezra said, "Can we read it over again right now?" But I have moved on.

This week is the mad rush for Christmas and Hanukkah gift-making. Ezra sewed his first little pillow with a rocket on it (got the idea from Soulemama's book, "The Creative Family"). He is also planning to make a little doll for his cousin Lizzy, and he's already made a flip book for his other cousin, and two t-shirts with rockets drawn on them for a cousin and someone else, and he is planning to decorate a t-shirt to look like an astronaut suit for his brother "so we can be astronauts together," he says. Ezra does continue to wear his NASA suit very frequently, and it's getting kind of scary looking, but whatever! He wore it yesterday when he went to the zoo with some extended family members!

I don't know if I mentioned he is now doing countdowns in Russian. He asked his uncle Mike to tell him, and write down, the numbers from 1-10 in Russian, and he now has it memorized. We couldn't find any Youtube video for liftoffs of the Russian Space Shuttle Buran, so he has just made up his own.

Well, I must be off to go do these art projects with him before Mr. Mischief wakes up!