First tree blooms — Walmart parking lot, Ruckersville, VA.

Eggs colored by nature from our friends’ spring chickens.

Early spring training; Nick Faulconer, U15 Richmond Kickers

Spring’s first rainbow, Charlottesville, VA; today.

Look closely for Nick at the top of the snowy clearing.

Today we got the biggest snow of the winter, and we’ve mostly been without power since the storm began. Last night, Nick brought in seven wheelbarrows of wood from the woodpile and stacked the wood outside the basement door, and I chopped kindling and brought it in by the woodstove, so we’d be ready if we had no heat.

Thanks to my husband’s hard work in hauling, splitting, and stacking wood (which I wrote about a few years ago), we’ve had a warm spot in the basement, and it does help to keep the chill off the rest of the house as well.

Without the usual distractions made possible by electricity, Nick did four chapters more than his goal in math in short time and started reading Gulliver’s Travels. I made tea and grilled cheese sandwiches atop the woodstove — thoroughly burning the first set of sandwiches, while we were talking algebra.

I had forgotten just how hot the top of the woodstove can get, but it worked pretty well once I focused on what I was doing.

(Funny, this is no different than when I cook on my fully modern electric stove in the kitchen. I frequently burn stuff when I’m also writing while cooking, but when I focus, I can cook passably enough).

While it was still snowing and blowing, Nick decided to try out his snowboard in our “back yard,” which is a hayfield in the foothhills near Shenandoah National Park. I snapped some photos from our back porch.

It was a bit of a hike up the hill without the convenience of a lift, and he had to do a little packing of the heavy, wet snow to make a trail. He also created a little ramp for fun — no comparison to the Massanutten Terrain Park he has been enjoying this winter, but of course you have to build a ramp.

So he got in some pretty good runs.

Today’s cardio workout: uphill runs in snowboarding boots.

Then it was time for a little hot chocolate for Nick and Earl Grey tea for me, warmed up on the stove, and he practiced guitar while I did some editing.

Even with the snowboarding, the lack of power and the snowed-in feeling do not combine to make Nick’s favorite kind of day. He’d rather be with more people and have more action.

The power just came back — thanks to the hard-working crews of Rappahannock Electric Cooperative – so we once again are in touch with the world via Internet. Neighbors say the roads are clearing, so maybe tomorrow we will get back to UVA for some pickup soccer.

Join me at THSM to read about using movies as part of a literature curriculum and creating and using a library of field guides – a great idea for spring.

I also had a piece in January that I think I neglected to mention here on my own blog, but which represents one of my favorite activities with my own kids when they were little — making an artsy homemade paper calendar.

Nick, #8, a left back, was a guest player for the Richmond Kickers U15 elite team, which won the 2012 Virginia Cup tournament in September.

For the first time since Nick was four years old, he doesn’t have a spring soccer season. He is a U15 player for a Richmond Kickers competitive youth travel team, and at his age and level, his teammates will be trying out for their public high school teams. Therefore, club soccer takes a break, with the understanding that players are getting their soccer in their community’s public schools.

In 29 other states, Nick could also try out to play on a school team. But not in Virginia — because the Virginia High School League says kids who legally meet the state’s education requirements through home education are prohibited from participating in these publicly funded athletic programs.

Last year, with this day looming on the horizon, our family was featured in a TIME magazine article which included a two-page photo of Nick– who has since gotten a much shorter haircut and much longer legs. I blogged about the details of that experience here, and between the article and the blog post, you can get the gist of the situation.

Monday, members of the Virginia General Assembly’s House Education Committee reported a bill out that would allow school divisions to make these decisions locally. The bill also has wording to address unfounded concerns about homeschoolers’ potential participation.

For example, kids would only be eligible to try out for a team at the school in their attendance zone (no “school shopping”), and dropouts couldn’t declare homeschool status just to be eligible for a team, since homeschoolers would only be eligible if they meet the state’s academic requirements for them for two full previous years. (I personally think this is too strict, since public school students only have to “take five, pass five” during the single previous semester, but I understand the politics here).

To read how other concerns are addressed and why the bill deserves your support, go to the comprehensive information compiled by The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers.

The bill will move to the full House, and it will also be considered in the Senate, all within the next days and weeks. Last year, it was defeated by one vote in the Senate Health and Education committee.

This summer, homeschoolers met with the Virginia High School League and other key organizations in an attempt to work out a non-legislative approach to the issue, but VHSL still wants to keep homeschoolers out.

It’s a puzzle to me that anyone considers it a defensible position to narrow support for public school programs by excluding families who are highly involved in their communities and who want to take part.

I mean, my family literally helped build the soccer facility in our southern Virginia town, as founding members of the board of directors of the area’s first soccer club.

Oh yes, the high school plays on one of the fields our family helped build, because it doesn’t have a field of its own.

Nick joined other homeschoolers in meeting with Delegate Rob Bell at the Virginia General Assembly last week. Delegate Bell is a patron of the Homeschool Sports Access legislation and has worked closely with The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers for its passage.

Nick and I went to the General Assembly Thursday to advocate for passage of the bill, which has been supported by The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers.

Not only do the members of VaHomeschoolers support the legislation (which we know, because the membership is surveyed annually), but 2/3 of Virginia residents favor allowing homeschoolers to play for public school teams, according to the Commonwealth Education Poll, which published its results last week.

Homeschoolers and schools in Virginia have worked together for many years, with over half of school divisions making a local decision to allow part-time enrollment in classes, for example. When caring educators and parents work together, they really can serve schools’ entire constituencies, thus building stronger communities and more support for public school and homeschooling–for education!

I urge you to contact your representatives and ask them to vote in favor of the Homeschool Sports Access Bill (also sometimes known as the Tebow bill). Ask them to talk to members of the Senate Health and Education committee about voting in favor of the bill so the full Senate can consider this legislation.

VaHomeschoolers explains what steps you can take in support of this legislation, including providing links to find your legislator.

If this bill passes, and if your local school board decides it’s a good fit for your school division, your homeschooled neighbors (whose parents pay taxes) could then be offered the same opportunity as, say, an international exchange student, who already gets to try out and play for a publicly funded school team in Virginia.

(And I feel comfortable saying this, actually having hosted an international student from South America for a year, who indeed did play soccer for a school team. See? We really are civic-minded! We even attended all his games! At the school!)

And by the way, no, there really is not a homeschool sports league or community league in our area that provides an alternative for competitive spring soccer at his level during the high school years.

(I’m fascinated by the incorrect presumption that there are all these soccer opportunities out there, without considering the rural nature of much of Virginia, where the schools provide all the competitive opportunities for teens in many small towns. If you want to talk more about this, just let me know!)

Homeschoolers, there will be a call for us to show our support for this legislation within the coming days. It will probably be early in the morning, but maybe it won’t be 10 degrees and snowing like it was when Nick and I drove to Richmond last week. Take your kids and show them the law-making process.

(But ask someone about parking and one way streets around the General Assembly building, first).

Stand up with homeschoolers — and 2/3 of Virginians — who favor allowing legally educated kids to try out for publicly funded sports teams, just as they do in the majority of other states in the country without issue.

As for Nick, he will keep training on his own and, we hope, in some creative and effective ways various coaches are suggesting. He is focused and has good support.

Some homeschooled kids wouldn’t have the ability to follow through with these ways to keep training even without a season, though. It sure would make more sense for homeschoolers to have the option to try out for their community’s team with their friends and teammates at the school just a few miles away.

Pictured are the Richmond Kickers U15 Boys players who were selected for the East West Talent Showcase, following their game (left to right): Jake Johnston, Kickers South; Miguel Pacheco, Kickers South (forward); Owen Ludlow, Kickers Central (midfielder); Nick Faulconer, Kickers Central (left back); Derek Pham, Kickers North.

Nick enjoyed the Fall 2012 Virginia Soccer League East West Talent Showcase, an all star game hosted by VSL in Williamsburg . He was one of five U15 boys nominated by Richmond Kickers coaches from three teams that compete in VSL. The group included a current teammate as well as a friend on a different Kickers team  he played with quite a few years ago for Lake Gaston Soccer Association, before either of them began playing for Kickers.

Nick is a defender, usually playing left back for the Kickers.

This year’s event did not have problems with the lights that made last spring’s Talent Showcase game memorable. Everything went smoothly, and we enjoyed topping off some great game play with a dinner out with new soccer friends and old soccer friends.

Thanks to Virginia Soccer League for sponsoring the game and giving the guys the recognition. I’m also grateful to the Kickers. I can’t say enough good things about Richmond Kickers youth travel soccer and the coaches who have provided Nick with the right environment and opportunities for continual improvement.

After a few email exchanges and phone calls to arrange pick up between snow showers, a woman and her dad borrowed a truck to come get the futon; let’s call them Helen and James.

We showed Helen and James where the futon frame needs repair.

“I’m a carpenter by trade. This will be no problem,” said James.

Rick had already told me the frame could be repaired for under $10, so any guilt I had about passing on broken stuff, even for free, was really evaporating.

Helen, who lives on a mountain road nearby, said she’d had another futon, but had let it go, and had been wishing she hadn’t. They needed the sleeping space.

“We have two big dogs, but they’re not allowed on the furniture,” I told them, answering the common question about used furniture. “No cats.”

“Our dogs go wherever they want,” James laughed.

James and my husband Rick lifted the futon frame and began maneuvering it out the front door and down the steps. James was obviously a capable furniture mover, which to some may not seem worth observing.

However, I have moved a lot, and I have learned to distinguish many levels of furniture moving expertise. It’s not just strength, of course, but learning to make the turns, not scrape your knuckles on the door knob, not take any paint off the walls. While the futon is light and not really a challenge as these things go, you can still sort of see the understanding someone either has or doesn’t have about the process.

Mostly to make conversation, which is what I do, I said, “James, you’ve done this before.”

“Life,” James said, “is the continuous movement of futons.”

Indeed.

My brain wanted to superimpose a play on words — “. . . a continuous movement of photons.” This is also what I do. But there was no improving on what James has said, and anyway, I don’t know enough about wave theory to say anything legit about photons, these particles (?) of light, these carriers (?) of electromagnetic force.

I backed up, watched the futon mattress going out the door. The mattress that was purchased in Memphis, has been with us in Mississippi, in southern Virginia, in Central Virginia, full of our boys and our neighbors’ boys, a favorite perch for our exchange student from Ecuador, host to sleepovers and video game tournaments. Broken, repaired, broken, repaired. Broken, the final time for us, in front of the fireplace at Thanksgiving here in the mountains, when three of us sat down at once.

Charlottesville Craig’s List found us a used couch. Not free, but, really reasonable, you could say cheap, and both more comfortable and far prettier for fireplace sitting than the futon. From a nonsmoking, pet free home. From a couple in Earlysville, let’s call them Joan and Mark, doing a home renovation that calls for redecorating. They talked to us about their family, about our family.

The new/used Craig’s List couch arrived, pushed the broken futon onto the Freecycle list.

A few weeks later Joan emailed me again–they’re ready to let go of the chair that matches the couch; do we want it?

When we picked up the chair, Joan showed me the progress on their home renovation, told me about their Christmas, told me how she took care of her father when he was elderly and sick, gave me kudos for homeschooling. She also gave me some matching throw pillows.

After the futon was loaded on the borrowed truck in our front yard, pregnant Helen thanked us, shook my hand. I watched the futon recede down the driveway, disappear into the mountains, become smothered in sleeping people and contented, snoozing dogs.

Life is the continuous movement of futons.

Autonomy Fuels Kids’ Passion for Sports and Music

Parents who want their children to discover a passion for music, sports, or other hobbies should follow a simple plan: Don’t pressure them.

By allowing kids to explore activities on their own, parents not only help children pinpoint the pursuit that fits them best, but they can also prevent young minds from obsessing over an activity, a new study finds.

“Passion comes from a special fit between an activity and a person,” said Geneviève Mageau, a psychology professor at the University of Montreal. “You can’t force that fit; it has to be found.”

That’s according to an article by Michael Torrice called “Want Passionate Kids? Leave ‘em Alone,” over at LiveScience. It’s an article from 2010, but it came to my attention because of a blog post Laura Grace Weldon just wrote, “What’s the Perfect Age?” about Laura’s idea that there is “an ideal age floating around in our collective unconscious.”

Covering an interesting topic in its own right, Laura’s post linked to the “Passionate Kids” article, which relates to a question I’m often asked about how homeschooling parents “get kids to do stuff.”

The assumption is that kids won’t have internal motivation without pressure, such as an institutional approach to using grades and privileges as rewards for performance and productivity, or parents’ insistence that kids practice and practice. I’m not saying external motivators won’t ever work, or that parents shouldn’t sometimes set an agenda that encourages kids to try something new or work a bit longer to push through a challenge. I’m just not that black and white.

But the evidence in the article confirms what I’ve observed in my own family and hundreds of others as I’ve worked with homeschoolers over the last fifteen years or so. Stuff like this:

After five months, the psychologists found that one major variable that predicted whether children developed a passion for music was if their parents allowed them the freedom to practice on their own schedule. The passionate kids on average scored 9 percent greater on the autonomy scale than the non-passionate kids, which is a big effect in a psychology study, Mageau said. (Read more)

If you follow my blog, you know our youngest son is a dedicated youth soccer player and a dedicated musician. I can’t say we have ever made him practice either discipline, though between the ages of 11 and 13, he went through extended periods of playing guitar as much as six or seven hours a day. He brings similar focus to his athletic pursuits, having chosen to spend a lot of time practicing, both on his own and with teams.

His dad and I provided encouragement and opportunity, but no ultimatums, no required minimums, no schedule. Different from requiring practice, and really, this is beyond semantics, we have always provided time to practice.

As much as it might be tempting to feel we were getting behind on something else, when the mega-focus was on the music, I let him be. We could still manage academics (homeschooling is nothing if not efficient), but I could never replace passion-driven practice. And, additionally, the kind of focus he was learning to harness as a late elementary/early middle schooler turns out to be applicable to the more challenging academics he’s encountering at 15, so it was good preparation.

I’m not naive enough to think that Nick does not feel some expectation from us; certainly he knows I enjoy my role as a soccer mom and that his dad–a musician–loves hearing the fruit of his focus and practice. And vice versa. I think we will always have to work on being aware of what our enthusiasm communicates, just as we did with our older sons, who had their own distinct interests.

Autonomy over sports, music, or other interests can be a hard thing for parents to give to kids — especially when there has been a financial, emotional, or time investment. I understand how hard it is. I can’t say we’ve always gotten it right.

But here are a few ideas I’ve gathered over the years that may help kids have the autonomy that seems to fuel passion:

• Get into new activities cheap. The first guitar we bought was just good enough not to be frustrating. Our first soccer experiences were inexpensive rec leagues in our community. An interest in ice skating meant borrowing skates, then buying used skates. Just yesterday, I bought a used racquetball racket at a consignment store for $10.
  
  Eventually, a little better guitar was procured, and rec soccer morphed into travel soccer. If racquetball takes, we can get a better racquet. But there is less inclination to pressure a kid’s continuing participation since we didn’t spend a fortune on equipment to get started. Along the way, our kids tried other interests that didn’t necessarily stick, but we didn’t get stuck with very expensive but abandoned stuff.

• Encourage kids to save for their own equipment, instruments, training, or lessons. When kids make their own investment to help pay for upgrades or opportunities, they may be less casual about putting them aside. When one of our kids wanted to try a new and expensive sport, we helped fund a single initial experience, but after that, it was up to him to find a way to pay for future outings. This only added to his passion for the sport. Frankly, we could just not accommodate paying for it in the family budget, which already included activities that kid did not want to give up at the time.

• Think about whether your child needs time, a schedule, or both. Some kids do flourish on a structured schedule. Not making a kid practice does not mean not providing the structure he may need, like a specific time and welcoming place he or she is offered to practice.For kids who are less enamored with schedules, protecting time in general may be the key. If you are a homeschooler with every moment scheduled with academics, lessons, field trips, and homeschool group activities, your child may not have the downtime at home necessary to practice an instrument or sport.

• Encourage kids to apprentice in connection with an interest. One of my sons was very interested in computers. Long before he was old enough to work for pay, we facilitated an apprenticeship at a computer store. Another son wanted a puppy and wanted to get into dog training — so we set up volunteer opportunities with the local animal shelter. Our young guitarist apprenticed at a local music shop when he was 12.
  
  Just last week, when he was trying out a guitar in a different store miles and years away, the store rep commented on the respectful way he handled the expensive instruments.
  
  All of these experiences gave our kids the chance to experience their interests in a world outside their parents’ world, which gave them freedom to learn from someone else. I’m glad my son has other soccer coaches and other mentors; in a homeschooling setting, I have had a lot of real and potential influence, but as he gets older, it’s important to have other people involved who are real experts in their fields — and not just providing encouragement–or pressure–as “the proud parent.”

• Give your kid an out. If a new interest is going to take an outlay of cash or time just to test the kid’s interest, make sure the child understands the expectations and that there is an exit plan you can tolerate. I’ve had young kids literally tell me that they are reluctant to try something new “because my mom will make me do it forever.” Well that’s not exactly a recipe for discovery!
  
  As parents, we need to be realistic that kids will try things and find out they don’t like them–just as we adults do. We need to be careful not to get too attached to the idea of our child’s participation in a particular activity. Often, a workable solution is to say, “If you try this, I want you to complete the season, because your team will be counting on you. But you don’t have to sign up again after that if you don’t want to.”
  
  Then, no matter how much you loved having your child in the sport, even if you’re the coach, keep your word and let him or her quit. “Daddyball” is not a healthy situation.

• Emphasize process not product. Many homeschooling approaches I have been influenced by include emphasizing the process of learning over the end product. If you haven’t already, look into this aspect of Montessori- and Waldorf-inspired homeschooling, as well as the tenets of unschooling, relaxed homeschooling, discipleship homeschooling, eclectic homeschooling, unit studies, Charlotte Mason, and Thomas Jefferson Education.
  
  Rather than focusing on the goal of producing a scholar, a celebrity musician, or a scholarship athlete, we do our best to live with faith in the processes of reading, thinking, playing music, playing ball, and practicing, with the intent to provide instruction within that exquisite gap of “can’t-quite-do-it,-but-with-effort,-it’s-in-reach.”
  
  We emphasize a joy in the present moment’s activity, with the thought that this joy, if accompanied by autonomy and opportunity for further development, will help a kid keep reaching higher. At a certain point, a kid who adopts his or her own goal around a passion will also begin to apply hard work and focus. We provide support, not pressure.
  
  What Happens from Here
  I don’t know how our third son’s interests will continue to develop. I know that my two older sons have taken aspects of their hobbies, sports, and interests as kids and continued to benefit from and enjoy them as young adults, and I hope that will be the case for him, too.
  
  Additionally, I can’t stop myself from invoking balance for the future–getting a wrong angle on a passion can be debilitating. This is another reason why the right mentors matter and why it would be nice if homeschooling could guarantee future health and happiness, which it most definitely does not.
  
  Those thoughts will have to be shared in future blog posts, I guess. (I have a whole talk on Homeschooling Reality that I do at conferences!) For now, I will enjoy the music that springs up unbidden around the house, and I will just have to continue to be careful not to trip over the soccer balls in the kitchen.

Yesterday over at TheHomeSchoolMom.com, I blogged about why people use a living math approach instead of or in addition to a math curriculum.

If you struggle with helping your child learn math, or your child struggles with math, pop on over to THSM to read what I wrote about why some families are using a more holistic approach to homeschooling math.

Or, from non-homeschoolers, “Well, you can’t possibly cover physical education at home; you don’t have a gym at home.”

In truth, we’ve found one of the benefits of homeschooling to be our ability to place an emphasis on physical education, integrating fitness, physical play, and competition into a healthy lifestyle. I rounded up some of the approaches homeschoolers use for phys ed and wrote about them over at TheHomeSchoolMom. We’ve used most of those ideas in our own family.

Yes, in Virginia, homeschoolers are still challenged to find opportunities to try out for and participate in competitive sports at the high school level, unlike homeschoolers in a majority of states around the country. That’s because the Virginia High School League continues to prohibit local school divisions from deciding whether to allow all the kids in their service areas, including homeschoolers, to try out for their community’s school sports teams.

So yeah, in Virginia, the chance to compete for a spot for a competitive team sport really may be a problem during the high school years if you find that your kid’s academic needs are best met by homeschooling.

But physical education in general? Homeschooling and phys ed can go together well, and what’s more, can be a real opportunity for parents as well as kids to improve their fitness and health.