Ann Leach

Project of the Week Crocheted Blue Shawl While visiting my grandma, she invited me to take a look through her yarn collection and if there was anything that caught my eye, I was welcome to take it. And not being one to turn down that kind of an offer, I gladly browsed through probably 5 large bags of yarn to come across these beautiful blue and coordinating multi-colored yarns which I thought would be perfect for a shawl I had in mind. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. What are you working on this week? Ann

Parenting a Free Child: An Unschooled Life Rue Kream Written in a question & answer format, Rue explores unschooling, helping many parents answer questions they may not even know they have. I found the book interesting and helpful as we travel down the road further away from traditional homeschooling. Rue's approach is more of a radical unschooling which incorporates a parenting style as well as a learning style for the child. And that is further into unschooling than I want to go. But I didn't know that until I read this book. For anyone who is considering or already home educating their children, I do recommend reading this book. Or even for anyone who just is looking for a different (better) way of relating to children. What are you reading? Ann

"The New! Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children" by John Rosemond John Rosemond is an old-school parenting guru and psychologist. His book is full of advice and stories of how using his advice has played out successfully for other parents. And I'm happy to say he has helped us when we were at our wit's end. That said, I don't always agree with him, but most of the time, yes, he is spot on. I do recommend this book if you're looking for parenting advice, but only if you're committed to following through. One of the biggest mistakes we parents make is looking for the easy solution. We try a method for a day and when the results don't come right away, we give up. Or we get distracted and lose focus. I know I do. Child-rearing should be simple and it's temporary. The marriage is forever. Raise your children to be adults, and keep your marriage front and center. What are you reading?

An excerpt for discussion from John Rosemond's "The New! 6-Point Plan for Raising Healthy, Happy Children."      "Organized sports would seem to be an ideal complement to the needs of this age (6 - 10 y/o), the perfect medium in which to nurture both the inner and outer self. Not so. The primary problem is adult involvement. Adults organize these programs, raise the money to fund them, and draw up the playing schedule. Adults pick the teams , coach them , referee them , decide who plays  and who doesn't, give out awards, and make up the biggest share of the audience ."      "I'm aware that children rarely play pickup games anymore. Somewhere along the line, someone (big business) got the brilliant idea that sports would be more of a meaningful learning experience for children if the games were managed by adults . The adults could see to it that rules were followed, that play was fair, that the children's skills improved through proper coachi...

"Wonder" by R.J. Palacio A novel chosen by my book discussion that I wouldn't have picked up otherwise, didn't start out liking, but ended up being a pretty good read. It's from the young adult section and as expected, the main characters are middle school age, but the parents play an important role too. The story is of a boy who up until this point, 10 years old and heading into 5th grade, has always been homeschooled, but not for the reason you might expect. He was born with a cleft palate combined with some other genetic facial deformities which even after multiple surgeries have left him with deformed facial features. And now, Mom and Dad have decided it is time for him to enter public school since 5th grade is the beginning of middle school and all the children are changing schools. "Wonder" tells the stories of the challenges he faces, friends he has, makes, loses, and recovers. It also tells some of the stories of his sister and friends, ho...

"Learning all the Time" by John Holt Our public school system and mainstream culture wants us to believe that children can only learn what they are taught, by teachers, preferably in a classroom setting, but when we sit back and observe children, we can see that they are, in fact, learning all the time. They were learning long before we enrolled them in school, preschool or started teaching them at home. We don't have to teach a child to sit up, to stand, to walk, to talk, to hold a spoon. They are born as natural learners. They observe and copy. They self-teach. Our role is to model, to facilitate, to encourage (but not overly much), and to observe and do our own learning. Great book. I highly recommend it to teachers and parents, well to anyone who has anything to do with children. What are you reading? Ann