Day 1: Orientation

We started the morning by arriving to find our schultüte and lap desks neatly but attractively displayed which caught our interest. Emily explained to us that these items were gifts for us but before they could be opened we needed to figure out what they are called, what country they come from, what they are, and why they were in the living room on our first day of school. We used descriptive adjectives and clues from the questions to google around and find the answers. It took a little time, maybe 15 minutes, but eventually we figured it out!

Answer: Schultütes, or, school cones come from Germany. This tradition has also spread to other countries such as Austria and the Czech Republic. Parents give these cones to their children on the first day of first grade as a way of celebrating the way of life. The cone contains school supplies, sweets, healthy snacks, toys, and other treats that may be useful or interesting in the year ahead. Even though today was not the first day of FIRST grade for any of us, we had not had the opportunity to have these before so we got to celebrate the first day of 4th grade (Myles), 5th grade (Matt), and 6th grade (Jackie). 

After we solved the mystery we worked together to prepare a delicious breakfast feast. Jackie made eggs with cheddar and a little bit of garlic; Emily made bacon and sausage; Matt and Myles made the waffles; and we added fruit, juice, and even coffee for those who wanted it. We were excited to share this meal to celebrate that we are excited to begin an amazing year.

As we were eating we started out talking about community agreements. We got through a few agreements such as tidiness, self-care, and boundaries around how we'll use our space; but we were honestly more interested in talking about what we would like to do tis year. We'll talk more about our agreements over the next few weeks. 

After that Emily gave everyone a Love Languages for Kids quiz. She wanted to learn more about us. We each filled them out and learned that: Matt love language is giving and receiving gifts (9). His secondary love language is quality time. For Myles, quality time was a strong first (8) but he had a tie for secondary between words of affirmation, receiving gifts, and acts of service (4). Jackie's primary love language is quality time (9) and her secondary is acts of service (7).

Next we started doing back to school interviews but that got boring for everyone pretty fast so we tabled that for now. 

We spent small amounts of time doing unstructured exploration. We'll gradually increase how much we do this as we see our tolerance, curiosity, and persistence increase. Matt worked on a maze, constructed a complex puzzle, explored a science experiment book from his schultüte, and played swords. Myles did a different maze, experimented with lots of ways to move his body within the learning space, explored the space and the resources that Emily had strewn throughout the space; and played swords with Matt. They both also spent some time riding bikes and skateboards. Jackie spent a little time reading her new book, The Secret Garden; then took a small nap (she hadn't slept well the night before); and she did some handicrafts (beading from her schultüte).

Together, we played with ideas for how to build and stabilize a lamp that we might want to build together. Emily considered this a great opportunity to learn about our creativity, communication skills and styles, problem solving, and collaboration. She also encouraged us to draw our ideas to show one another because she knows that we may have future career interests that need us to be comfortable with drawing as a communication tool. 

There were moments throughout the day in which each of us mentioned an interest that we didn't have the time or resources needed to explore immediately. Emily is still working on her system for all of this, but she managed to jot most of these down and committed to following them up very soon. These include: Matt wanted to make the paper snowflakes and identified some science experiments he wants to do from the book in his schultüte. Myles encountered the yarn and wanted to knit, but we couldn't immediately find the needles. Jackie was excited to bring crochet. Emily is excited to provide the needed supplies for three kids' interests, especially right now in the beginning of our learning journey, because she feels this is a critical time to demonstrate that she is noticing and paying attention to our interests, and that she is committed to nurturing and supporting us in exploring our own interests. She believes that curiosity will fade away when there's no reason for it to exist, so her job is to ensure there's a reason for us to have it. Her next steps: Find knitting needles, obtain items needed for those science projects, make sure snowflake paper is ready, and get crochet needles. 

After lunch we cleaned up after ourselves and then we settled in to watch a documentary called Speed Cubers. Matt already had a rubics cube and Myles got a new one in his schultüte. Emily is planning to introduce lots of documentaries this year to tempt curiosity and expose new areas of possible interest. The boys liked it but Jackie didn't love it. Still, she tolerated it dutifully and then helped a lot in the final part of our day. 

The last portion of our day was working on our Wall Timeline. We didn't get a photo but we'll definitely post some soon. We posted Speed Cubers on the wall 2010-2020 section. More on that later because this is getting too long.

Practical Notes: All three of us have very different attention spans, needs for movement or stillness, needs for stimulation, and interests. It's going to be valuable for all of us to learn to recognize our own needs and learn appropriate ways to meet them, while also learning about and respecting one another's differences from us. We did this very well for a first day and we'll be diligent about discussing this along the way.

Emily’s Reflections: (Emily has been reading about teaching and learning in a natural environment for several months in preparation for this adventure. She continues to read, research, and communicate with experts extensively along the way. This section will not be present in every blog post but is a handy repository for her reflections as our process progresses.)

I was always uncomfortable being asked as a kid “what do you want to do when you grow up?” It felt like a lot of pressure and the question expected me to have an answer based on life experience I couldn’t possibly have had yet. So, the first time I got a clear message that I was pretty good - perhaps unusually good - at something, I claimed that thing as my forever and then clung to that with manufactured certainty for a very, very long time. That thing was not my path. 

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 65% of today’s students will find themselves pursuing careers that do not exist yet. When we ask kids what careers they intend to pursue we place on them a burden that even we aren’t experienced enough to carry. I like the question Amy poses here as a replacement. 

In our little homeschool co-op we aren’t asking each other what we want to do someday. We’re asking about goals, pleasures, feelings of accomplishment, service, and even dancing around legacy. We are leaning into uncertainty in order to cultivate courage, curiosity, flexibility, perseverance, and all the skills that we’ll all need for a future we can’t yet imagine. 

Photos below from our day. We didn't take nearly enough but Emily will get better at this with practice.