Don't you just love those little things that your children do that just melt your heart? Elijah sleeps in bed with me and the other night he was fussing around a bit so I put my hand on his chest to soothe him. He then reached out and grabbed onto my arm and fell back to sleep holding onto me. It was just so sweet and it really made me feel the love that he has for me. My son and I have this crazy connection, it's nothing that I have ever experienced before. It's amazing! He's amazing.
Every day he is able to do something new, it's really fun. He's now able to sit unassisted for a few minutes at a time, he can even regain his balance sometimes! Today he discovered his ability to blow raspberries. He did it a few times during the day, but it really started full force around bed time. He just didn't want to sleep, he'd rather stay up blowing raspberries, and stay up he did. He finally went to sleep at 1am. Hopefully that means he will sleep in tomorrow!
On a completely different note there's a subject I'd like to talk about that's been piquing my interest lately: unschooling. I have some time before I have to decide on what kind of schooling Elijah is going to have, but it's never too soon to start thinking about options. Where we live is going to have a huge impact on the decision that I make. If we live in Austin still then I most likely will not send Eli to public school. Private school is expensive, and you don't have a guaranteed spot in a charter school (there's only a select few around here that I would even consider sending my child to anyway). The homeschooling laws in Texas are great, so that is a very viable option. With homeschooling comes an entire new set of choices that have to be made. Upon some mild research (with the help of http://mothering.com) I came across unschooling. Unschooling allows children to learn through natural life experiences. For example, instead of sitting down and learning geometry in a structured environment, you could learn it by quilting.
While completely unschooling might be a bit extreme for me, it's definitely something that I am going to put a lot of thought and research into. I like the idea that schooling is not "one size fits all". All children have a different way of learning and I'd like for Elijah to be able to thrive.
Regardless of whether we practice some form of unschooling, I plan on making everything we do an educational experience.
For more information or to read about unschooling you can visit the following websites:
http://www.unschooling.com/
Sandra Dodd, a prominent unschooling mother: http://sandradodd.com/unschooling
What is unschooling? by Earl Stevens at The Natural Child Project
1 comment:
edie has been blowing rasberries lately too - i waffle back and forth between thinking it's the cutest thing and wishing she would stop because she's spitting everywhere! but baby spit is about the cutest spit i've ever seen, so it's ok.
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