Quaker-inspired Community Life
Marcy & Lee are raising
five beautiful children and a menagerie of animals, living close to the land in
a Quaker intentional community. A flock of chickens provide eggs, meat, and
entertainment, a garden supplies them with veggies, and a herd of sheep gives meat and wool. Marcy works the wool
with her daughters, teaching them valuable crafting skills. Their best friends
live next door with pigs, goats, more chickens, and another beautiful garden and
greenhouse.
Each family on the property
has their own garden and often a set of farm animals of their own. Families
share the bounty weekly at a community potluck in the beautiful central
farmhouse, the communal gathering space.
Their two oldest children
attend public school, by choice. Marcy works with the three youngest at home,
following a blended curriculum incorporating large elements of Waldorf as well
as a more traditional reading & writing curriculum. The girls (ages 3 and
5) were eager to show me what they had learned, reciting autumnal verses that
they had memorized, singing me songs, and showing me around their “schoolroom,”
the former living room now dedicated to their lesson space.
The girls follow a daily
rhythm, posted on a bulletin board alongside other images and words from their
lessons.
Their rhythm, in Marcy’s own
words:
The littles begin waking up around 7/7:30. They'll
have some breakfast, get dressed, and have some quiet/free time until about 10am.
During that time the girls may go outside and play, check chickens or go on a
walk with Dad if he's home. It really depends on the day.
We begin lessons around 10:30. This is our time
to do whatever book work we have, learn math concepts, writing, reading, and
our social studies/science blocks. We typically finish our lessons within
two hours or so. It depends on the depth of projects we're doing. We'll
have lunch after we've finished (or we'll stop half way through, again, it
depends on how the girls are feeling that day. I'm pretty child led in most
instances.)
Our afternoons consist of some reading, playing,
mindful work in the home, or painting.
I was impressed by how Marcy
incorporates lessons around the homestead into the learning day. When the
father found a cache of eggs buried in a corner of the henhouse, Marcy and the
girls worked together to float the eggs to see if any were still edible. One
egg was partially hatched but stone cold with a motionless chick inside. Marcy peeled
off the rest of the shell to show the girls what a newborn looked like, and in
the warmth of her hand, the chilly little chick began to stir and move its
beak, much to everyone’s astonishment! They quickly worked to candle the rest
of the eggs and put any that looked like they might be viable into the
incubator. Amazingly, two more of the eggs ended up hatching into chicks, weeks
later, and the newer baby chicks imprinted onto the older miracle chick. They now
sleep nestled under the bigger mama-chick’s wings. I can imagine of no better,
more exciting and heart-warming series of lessons than every piece of this
baby-chick salvation epic.
The Quaker Intentional
Village hosts a community-wide potluck every Friday that I was excited to
attend: I knew that I would meet other interesting people involved in
education. Gold Mine! First on the list is an incredible 14 year old who is
homeschooling for the first time this year. He casually mentioned to me that he
traveled to the Manhattan Free School to “help them set up their 3D printer.”
This young person blew me away with his expertise, and his whole set-up is
quite extraordinary. He and his father worked together to build a “TV B Gone,”
a small device that sends out the signals required to turn off any of the major
brands of TVs. His father designed a case for the device, the boy printed it
out, and the two of them took a field trip to Wal-Mart to turn off all of their
TVs, surreptitiously. Home-schooling at its finest!
The family has two beautiful
blogs to chronicle their family life that I highly recommend you follow. Thank
you, Marcy & Lee, for your inspiration!
I just arrived in Asheville, NC, where I have an action-packed week of school & community visits planned. Looking forward to more inspiration! Stay tuned!
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