Strewsday Tuesdsay- Spring has Sprung

Supposedly every Tuesday I am doing this, though I forgot the last 2 Tuesdays in a row- woops.

Strewing is a term some homeschoolers use to describe what I call 'setting the feast' (being a foodie, I always have a food metaphor for everything). What we give our children to spark their imagination, their learning, their play, their hearts.

And it's nice to record it somewhere so you don't lie awake at night wondering 'are they really learning?' And believe me, if you've never done that, you just haven't been homeschooling long enough!

An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life.
-Author Unknown

My little people are spending most of these beautiful days in our canyon, rock climbing, observing scat (endlessly awesome to them), catching and observing lizards, setting rabbit traps (that don't catch anything), and trying to get close to deer (I SAID DON'T TRY TO PET THE DEER!). Since we will probably be moving back to the city in a few months, I am letting them free range in our 'wilderness' as much as possible... not to mention I get to sew bibs, baby hats, and cloth diapers while the play in the dirt, which is a pretty big bonus for me.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
-G.M. Trevelyan

We've been reading a lot of fairy tales from around the world every night. We really enjoyed the Italian Cinderella, Cenerentolla, last night, and we have actually worn to shreds this volume of Grimms' Fairy Tales, my favorite fairy tale collection of all times. So I just bought a new copy.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
-Robert G. Ingersoll

Isaiah started his own blog:
www.isaiahsimages.blogspot.com
which healps me to reduce the paper clutter around here. Every week we are selecting and posting his favorite drawing of the week. Maybe other than myself as a child, I've never seen a kid spend so much intense time with a sketch book. It's good for him because he's an intense person and needs a serious outlet.

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.
-Robert Maynard Hutchins

Later today we are going to Albuquerque for my sonogram, plus a trip to Barnes & Noble, since there are no real book stores within an hour or two of our home. We spend hours in there every time we go- I'll never take a big ol' bookstore with comfy chairs for granted again. The little people are very excited to see the baby... oh, and to use our free muffin coupon in the cafe!

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.
-Tallulah Bankhead

I hope you all have a great week, full of good food, good books, and beautiful weather.

If you want to read more of my writing on education and mothering, check out Growing your Homeschool and The Catholic Nursing Mother's League blogs.

http://growingyourhomeschool.blogspot.com/2012/03/nourish-child-art.html
and
http://catholicbreastfeeding.blogspot.com/2012/03/mothers-list-of-clever-after-church.html#comment-form

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught."
-Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist," 1890