Book Learning

We spent the end of February/beginning of March pursuing Natural Science. Among other things we: visited Nightowl's tree, collected and sorted seeds, started a tree seedling nursery, began a log of said nursery, and created a rotting log terrarium. Mild March days have drawn us out of doors and kept us there.

After four weeks of this (along with our other various activities such as music, reading, painting, cooking, learning to ride the two-wheeler and etc.) Nightowl came up to me and said, in all seriousness:

Mommy, we've been forgetting to do school. We haven't done school in weeks and weeks!
Incredulous I replied: We've been doing school - all this natural science plus our other activities - this is school.
It is?
Yes.
Silence.

Interestingly Nightowl has not considered most of our daily work to be school - school being the sit at a desk and raise your hand to speak type of thing she hears of from friends and reads about in books. The only work we do that she acquaints with school is when we sit down with paper and crayons/pencils and write words or work problems.

This whole notion made her a bit uncomfortable so we spent a couple of days book learning - I gave her materials and she designed, wrote, and illustrated a new Nightowl original book. Then we worked to plan out the flowers and herbs for our lasagna garden: we made lists and sketches for planting. All this writing and flipping of pages felt more schooly to her but I can tell that she's thinking things over.

For instance she now asks randomly during painting or the creation of our letter-family town or cooking or song writing: "So this is school?" When I reply: "Yes, honey it is." She chuckles and nods her head and says: "This is school."



1 - Planting, 2 - Seed cups, 3 - The found nest