Journey to Excellence

I am taking a different approach to my thoughts on Part VI of Last Child in the Woods titled "Wonder Land: Opening the Fourth Frontier", which includes Chapters 18, 19 and 20. Chapter 18. The Education of Judge Thatcher: Decriminalizing Natural Play Chapter 19. Cities Gone Wild Chapter 20. Where the Wild Things Will Be: A New Back-to-the-Land Movement "When going back makes sense, you are going ahead." ~ Wendell Berry These chapters could NOT have come at a more perfect time in my life. Rick and I have made the decision to move our family from the "American Dream" home and suburbian posh life, back to my itty bitty small hometown in Missouri of less than 3,000 people. It was not something that we expected or planned to do. It just sort of happened. But the funny part was that it made COMPLETE sense to us. In fact, we knew that we would be stupid not to jump on the opportunity. When I read the above quote by Wendell Berry, it brought te...

This has been a crazy, whirlwind of a week. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the chapters read in order to post my thoughts. But I sat down yesterday in the midst of some crazy moments and read. And, just READING about Nature soothed me. I can't imagine how at ease I would have been if I could have actually been sitting by a pond with a fishing pole in my hand. I haven't done that since I was a kid. Maybe I should take it up again. (Well, that's a bummer ... I came back to add my thoughts on Chapter 16, and Chapter 15's thoughts were no longer here. So, here goes again.) Chapter 15. Telling Turtle Tales: Using Nature as Moral Teacher. "Let Nature be your teacher." ~ William Wordsworth When I was a girl, my dad took me fishing all the time. We lived in a town with a large Amish Community. My dad has a plumbing construction business, so he would barter out work in exchange for us having use of their well-stocked ponds. My dad did not hover. In...

Now we are getting to it ... What do we do about this problem??? Chapter 12. Where Will Future Stewards of Nature Come From? "[What is the] extinction of a condor to a child who has never seen a wren?" ~ Naturalist Robert Michael Pyle This question in the title of this chapter has followed me around through the first 11 chapters of the book. If children don't know nature, who will be a steward for nature when they are adults? On Page 146 it says, " ... as the acre of nature increasingly becomes an intellectual concept severed from the joyful experience of the outdoors ..." Learning vs. Experience. This was the main point I pulled from Chapter 11. Page 147 continues by pointing out that, "One overlooked value of children is that they constitute the future political constituency, and their attention or vote -- which is ultimately based more on a foundation of personal experience than rational decision-making -- is not guaranteed." Childre...

We now embark on Part III of the book titled "The Best of Intentions: Why Johnnie and Jeannie Don't Play Outside Anymore". Chapter 9. Time and Fear. I can honestly say that at times I feel selfish and lazy. I value my free time so much that I don't look for ways to schedule my kids' activities because I don't want to be scheduled. But in my heart I know that it's more than that. It angers me to see parents so hell-bent on their kids being sports stars or honor students or nationally-ranked band prodigies, or in other words, perfect at something. I often believe that it's the parents wanting themselves to look good and get attention at the expense of their kids. I have shocked parents when I say that I don't care if my kids go to college. I want my kids to do what they are passionate about and what makes them happy so that they won't dread getting out of bed in the mornings. If they can accomplish that without a college education, so b...

Hi everybody! Sorry for the late post on this week's reading. We were on vacation this past week, got home last night, and woke up this morning to a sick husband and even sicker little one. But I really want to get the points up about Chapter 8, because it's a good one! Chapter 8. Nature-Deficit Disorder and the Restorative Environment. This chapter starts out discussing something that is near and dear to my heart, since I just pulled my last child out of public school. I have been disturbed for years about the programs that are pulled from the public school day in an attempt to make our kids "smarter" and to meet the requirements of the ridiculous "No Child Left Behind" act. Page 100 wonders if it could possibly be a coincidence that at the same time schools were taking PE out of the public school day that a drastic increase in childhood obesity started to occur. I think we all know the answer to that. But I didn't know that there are schools th...

I promise I have read these chapters, but I have been pretty distracted the past week with helping my sister paint, kids' activities, my husband's birthday, and our anniversary weekend. So I'm going to go back through what I have read, and my sticky notes, to tell you about the things that stood out to me in Chapters 5, 6, and 7. Really, I just spent the majority of those chapters reminiscing about my childhood play times, and how I know that my kids to do not have the same experiences I had. It's not that they don't have the room, or nature opportunities to explore. It's just that it's a different world with different distractions, the majority of which being electronic. Chapter 5. A Life of the Senses: Nature vs. the Know-It-All State of Mind. "I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more." ~ John Burroughs Do you see nature being "packaged" for our pleasure in the commercial world as...

Welcome to our book study of Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. To be honest, I have no idea what this "study" is going to look like. I imagine that when we get together I will post about all of the things that caught my eye. And I would ask that you leave a comment, or a link to your own blog post in the comment, about what caught yours. This isn't anything formal, ladies, just a place to talk about what we have read. I have now read the first four chapters of Last Child in the Woods two times. It is just so good. Several things have specifically hit me deep, but in general I just realized that "times, they are a changin'." Things aren't the way they were when we were kids. Chapter 1. Gifts of Nature ~ "When I see birches bend to left and right ... I like to think some boy's been swinging them." ~ Robert Frost What is your definition of nature? What feelings, visions, senses does it conjure up? For me, it's not a ...

I hope that you will be joining me in my little informal and impromptu book study of Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. As some are just now getting their books, I am asking that you read Chapters 1-4 by next Friday. On Friday (or more likely Saturday), I will post my thoughts on those chapters. I welcome comments from you about how you felt about the material we have read. If you do your own blog post about it, please include a direct link to your post in the comments section so others can hear your thoughts. I breezed through the first four chapters and plan to read them with more attention this next week. But I can say that I am HOOKED and oh, so intrigued. The whole time I was reading it I had these nostalgic memories of playing in the creek that ran by our house, sitting up in the big tree that was by my friend's house, and going through the "passageway" between two bushes. I fondly remembered those rainy days when my sister and I would take our Fisher P...

The past week has been an incredibly difficult one for me in my personal life. I have been depressed, anxious, testy, withdrawn, physically ailed, and on an organization mission (to work off emotions). But what I have found myself doing several times a day, is stepping outside to water plants, pull weeds, observe my garden, nurture our new trees, look at the new mama in her nest, watch for hummingbirds, smile at the butterflies, and sometimes just wander around. And it SOOTHES me! And I feel a small amount of strength to continue on. Recently, Nature has become a hot topic for me. It's important! It's necessary! It's being lost in this world of uber-electronics. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had come across the book Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv and that I was considering doing a book study. Well, it's a go. And it will start this Friday, June 1st. I have read the first couple of chapters and I am drawn into it's truth. It is ins...

Two years ago I read Pocketful of Pinecones by Karen Andreola. It was one of the most inspiring homeschooling books I have ever read. It certainly guided my decision to go from a very structured day to one of more fluidity, one more free-flowing based on our interests and the natural circumstances of our days. Then last summer I participated in a blogging book study of The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. Although I did not end up incorporating many of the specific ideas I learned in the book, it did inspire me to make reading a major part of our homeschooling days. And it was. Reading became the cornerstone of all we did. My philosophy became, "If you can't learn it by reading about it, you can't learn it." This summer I have decided to lead a book study on my blog for Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. You can read all about this book, and an excerpt from it, by going to Louv's site . Nature study is something that always gets cut first out of...