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I’m Sierra. I live in the Boston area with my family.

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From the category archives:

homeschooling

Look, Mom! I Can Ride My Bike!

April 6, 2010

Rio came home from school yesterday bubbling with spring fever. It was our first really warm spring day, and she couldn’t wait to get outside and plant things in the garden, ride her bike, visit her friends…you know, be a kid. I could totally wait to do all those things, because I was sick, sick, [...]

Tagged as: bike, bike riding, bikes, parenting, rio, serena, spring fever, training wheels, warm springs, wheels, wooden bike

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Lions and Toddlers and Bears!

March 30, 2010

So Martin took Serena to the Harvard Museum of Natural History the other day. Before she left, she told me Daddy had promised her they would see a lion. “I think it will be a scary lion, Mama,” she said. “I think maybe that lion is going to eat us.” “No, sweetie. The lion at [...]

Tagged as: parenting, play, serena

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Princess Smackdown

December 18, 2009

We have two guest stars at home today: Rio and another kid who both go to private schools that let out freakishly early for holiday break. The kids are doing what they do every morning: eating their body weight in Cheerios, playing with the princess dolls in the dollhouse, and reading every book they can [...]

Tagged as: play, princesses, rio, serena, wildflowers

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Sometimes you just have to jump in the leaves

November 20, 2009

It’s been a great season for leaf jumping: dry, warm, mostly sunny. The leaves pile up in big gold drifts of fun. And the kids pile into them, like kids do. Love it!

Tagged as: rio, serena

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Learning her letters

November 2, 2009

Serena was running down the gallery above her sister’s swim class when she caught sight of something that stopped her cold: a plaster bust wearing a baseball cap. She walked around it very carefully. She got down on all fours to examine it from below. She pointed and looked meaningfully at her mama, who is [...]

Tagged as: education, reading, serena

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Pattern blocks

October 20, 2009

Serena and I are doing pattern blocks. She got them out and started putting the correct color block on the colored spaces to make a design. I continue to be amazed at how different her brain is from Rio’s. I think Rio was four when she figured out the pattern blocks. What surprised me a [...]

Tagged as: education, serena

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Play-based education in action

September 16, 2009

Serena spent yesterday morning sitting on the floor playing with a baby toy she outgrew about a year ago. It’s a board with little movable colored pegs that you can push around a track. You’ve probably seen them in doctor’s offices. She played with it for a long time, humming to herself. Then she looked [...]

Tagged as: education, play, serena

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Flinch!

September 12, 2009

Rio starts kindergarten on Monday. I’ve already told the story of our decision to send her to school here and on Babble. I’ve been alternately praised for listening to my daughter and castigated for my failures as a mom. Today I want to talk about what happened during that now-famous conversation when she asked me [...]

Tagged as: education, flinch, homeschooling, kindergarten, rio, schooling, starting kindergarten, starting school

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Help Lia Grippo, a California mom punished for letting kids play

September 11, 2009

I first read Lia’s story on Free Range Kids a few months ago. In a nutshell, Lia ran a small, home-based childcare program not unlike the one I run. She lives in Santa Barbara, and took the kids on nature outings a couple times a week. One day, they were at the beach and she [...]

Tagged as: news, politics, wildflowers

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Fall leaves?

August 24, 2009

Every week, I do a nature walk with my preschool kids. We stroll around the block in as much silence as a group of 2-5 years olds can muster while awake, and pay attention with our eyes and our ears and our noses and our skin to what’s happening in nature. The highlight of the [...]

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Tagged as: homeschooling, nature

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