In General

You'll find my monthly post published today at Simple Homeschool.  I've written about two things we enjoy very much; reading and the outdoors. The combination of these is a post titled, Great Books for an Outdoors Education.

Reading is something that inspires us to get outdoors more; to experience this great, wide and beautiful world we've read about. Then, after we've been outdoors and want to research what we've discovered for ourselves (ie: identifying the bugs, leaves and forest floor wildflowers) books are where we turn to find our answers. 

Just this morning I read Henry David's House to the kiddos.  Reading this very edited and richly illustrated (oh I just love children's picture books) version of the American classic Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau inspires me to follow my dreams for simpler living, leaves me pining to return to the woods (only 4 more days till our next hike) and has piqued my curiosity to read the original. 

If you'd like to find more outdoor/nature type books to read with your children you can check out my nature study shelf at Goodreads.  

This winter Damien upped the nature-book ante by reading outdoor adventure books to our family during the evenings. These are stories about people truly being in the outdoors, not just studying it from the comfort of their heated living rooms or well equipped science labs. He's got a booklist going also at Goodreads that you can see at the bottom of the AdventureinProgress mainpage. 

Have any of you read Walden, or Life in the Woods? What did you think? Would you recommend it?

PS. I know there's been a lot of posts lately on FIMBY about the outdoors.  This blog reflects my life, it's not an abstract writing project, and we've been reading about, talking about and spending lots of time outdoors. And we hope to do more.  It's a good thing but I do plan to post about other more "homey" subjects.  Maybe hopefully spring gardening, with some pretty photos. 

Over the past year as I've started to share more about our family's outdoor adventures I've gotten questions from people asking how we do this with our children.  

I think the overall vague question of "how do you do this?" can actually be broken down into several questions.  Two of them being, "how do you make the time?" And "how to you get multiple family members on board?"

As we have time to articulate our thoughts (we're actually quite busy having adventures and making time to write about having adventures is challenging) we plan to answer these questions fully. Here at FIMBY, our home blog, and ADVENTUREinPROGRESS, our adventure blog and eventually in a book devoted to that very topic, hiking with your family. 

But before we ever publish a book with gear lists, menu plans and clothing guidelines we would like to help families get started by addressing a few of the basics, one of which is making the time.

Damien just published a fantastic post on this subject. Time is such an important topic to discuss because if you are wanting to be outdoors more with your family finding the time to do so will be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome.   

Damien's post, One Day A Week, explains in some detail our family's experience with setting aside one day a week to be outdoors, all together, for the better part of the day (ie: morning till supper).  I plan to follow up on his post with more practical tips from a homemaker's perspective.   Let's just say actually getting out the door is the hardest part of the whole adventure.  Never mind hiking up the actual mountain!

When I get around to writing that I'll be sure to give you a heads up.  But to get you started you can read what Damien has to say about how to make family day a priority.

PS: With this recent "new look" you'll notice at the bottom of the FIMBY main page that you can read the titles of the last 10 posts written at AdventureinProgress.  

Today is the big day. My first post at Simple Homeschool. It only took me hours to write the darn thing. Don't let post length or brevity deceive you. I swear the more concise a post needs to be the harder it is for me to write. Writing according to another person's style guidelines was and is challenging but I'm excited about being stretched in this capacity; keeping it short, to the point and helpful.

Oh but don't worry, I'll still ramble on over here at FIMBY where I'm in charge (smile). So this is my ramble today, which is really to introduce and give more story behind the post at Simple Homeschool.

I remember a few years ago when my good friend introduced me to the simplicity of Charlotte Mason's thoughts on education. She loaned me A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning by Karen Andreola and I ate it up. It just made so much sense based on what I had already observed in my children and fit well with what I wanted our homeschool environment to look like.

Fast forward to today. What we do (or mostly don't do) doesn't look a whole lot like a Charlotte Mason homeschool. But that's ok, because it's not. It's the Tougas family homeschool. But I did learn so much from Andreola's summary of Mason's ideas; applying what worked for us and letting go the rest (without feeling too much guilt).

Recently I had the same "ah, I love this, I must chew, swallow and digest everything about this book" experience in reading Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning by Rachel and Oliver Van DeMille. This book shares a lot in common with Mason's idea but from a different angle. I know by now though that I'm not going to follow this book to the letter just as I haven't followed any other educational philosophy to the letter.

I'm going to read it, pray about it, bounce the ideas off my husband, view it through the lens of our family's goals and purposes, apply what works for our family and carry on. Further inspired, challenged and encouraged.

That's how we're supposed to feel when we read about what other people are doing in their lives or homeschools. We shouldn't feel that we don't measure up, we're doing it all wrong or that we have to run out buy the curriculum they're using (or follow the guru they follow).

My sincere goal in being a homeschooling advocate is not to say "this is how I homeschool my children, now you should do the same". My goal is to say "this is how I homeschool my kiddos (aren't they just the cat's meow). If you like what you see you might want to try some of the things that have worked for me but only if they fit with who you are as a family."

So friends between this post here and what I've said at Simple Homeschool today I think that's all I want to say on the subject, except this:

be who you are and let that light shine.

Link to all my posts (all one for right now) at Simple Homeschool.