…Joining Ginny’s YarnAlong, sharing what I’m knitting and reading…

…Knitting…
I cast on a cowl in another color, what a wonderful shade of green. I just contacted my test knitters today because I’ll be putting the finishing touches on my pattern soon, during an upcoming trip, and I’m so excited.

…Reading…
Our friend Kim recommended the book ‘Homegrown’ by Ben Hewitt. I’ve read two books by him before (‘The Town That Food Saved’ and ‘Saved’) and enjoyed them. I’m only a few chapters in, I appreciate hearing about some of the reasons Ben’s family chooses to homeschool and a bit about the way they do so. He acknowledges that homeschooling is not possible for everyone or even a choice many would make, but shares why his family has chosen that path. While reading, it’s another reminder to me of how important time in nature is for children! This quote from the introduction was shocking to me:

“… And those hours are not insignificant: Recently, Penny and I calculated the amount of time our sons would already have spent in a classroom if such was their destiny. For Fin, who would likely have already spent six of his twelve years in school, it added up to approximately eight thousand hours, not including homework and commuting time. For Rye, it’d be about half that. When we tacked on thirty-four hours of television the average American child watches each and every week (we do not own a television), we arrived at the stunning conclusion that in just the past half-dozen years, our elder son would have spent nearly nineteen thousand hours either in school or in front of a TV screen. Assuming that he spends fourteen hours of each day awake, that’s more than three-and-a-half years of his waking life, out of only the past six. None of these calculations even includes the plethora of digital devices that command an ever-increasing portion of our child’s attention.

Is there really anything my sons might learn in school- to say nothing of what is learned in front of the television or peering into a smartphone- that is really worth giving up so much of their lives for?”

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How about you? Knitting? Reading?