to emerge

Last weekend while I was home alone, I also spent some time getting my head in order.  Often I see how we do child-led learning and daily life here as a dance which mirrors each of us as we organically evolve; spirally outwards and back in, collecting new knowledge and skills, integrating that with what is already known and making new connections on the way.

As mama and co-creator of our days, every now and again I need a stretch of time to gather my thoughts. Taking a seat on the sidelines, I reflect on where we have been and look ahead to where we might be going.

So last weekend I spent my mornings brainstorming possible pathways which the girls' interests might follow, noted questions still unanswered and tagged resources we might need to gather. I took most of the information from the two spiral bound notebooks in which I note down interests, questions and observations on a near daily basis ( I have written a little about these before here.) These notebooks (which, by the way, sometimes resemble an accumulation of scribbles on scraps of paper) hold the  reminders and inspiration from what has gone before. Trying to hold it all in my head just doesn't work for me :-)
These mindmaps I create I share with the girls. They make adjustments; add current ideas and cross-out pathways that no longer are interesting to them. I'm ok with that. Mostly they just get excited and want to get started.
The pathways that are left are a combination of new ideas and old ones that they want to dig deeper into. These pathways may last a day, a week, six months and possibly years.

Mushrooms continue to be a fascination for Sky. This began with a poster we were given by a friend and doing a little local foraging last autumn. She now has an ongoing collection of fungi she finds in our garden and on walks. We were given a glass terrarium that she now keeps these in and monitors their growth and health. She loves to draw and write and so,  as you can imagine documentation is everywhere.  This has also led to us researching growing mushrooms (intentionally) in the coming growing season.
I won't decide when Sky is done with this project, Sky will decide that for herself.

Portrait painting also became an interest for both girls over the last couple of months after being given a few prints by Frida Kahlo.  Sticking them on the wall above the dinner table we found ourselves talking a lot about what we saw, about Frida's life and about portraiture in general. We got some books out of the library and got to work on some portrait painting. They loved it and so we talked about studying other artists' work and techniques. Georgia O'Keefe will be first up since we already have a book with large prints of her work here. What I have discovered over the years is that I begin with what is easy so as to catch the enthusiasm and get things started. When we can we will also head to the library and find places to look at others' art for more inspiration(still no chch art gallery open yet due to the earthquakes).
And so, in this way, new pathways emerge.

------------------------------------

I have reactivated the "Good Connections" list over on the sidebar. Now and again I'll add some links that I think you might like too. Hopefully this will also lead to tidying up the sidebar in general. Cross fingers.