Got worms?

As part of our general commitment to not be harder on the planet than necessary, we're big fans of composting kitchen scraps.  If we had a yard, we'd be fans of composting yard waste as well.  But we don't have a yard which means that it's kind of hard to have an outdoor compost pile back in some out-of-the-way corner.  

Fortunately, urbanites such as ourselves or, really, anyone, can take advantage of a worm bin for composting.  This method is known as "vermicomposting."  

We had a worm bin when we lived in Minnesota and it was great.  After several months there we had a bin full of really nice-looking compost.  Unfortunately we never got to use it since we moved across the country in early summer.  The contents of our worm bin were added to the large outdoor compost pile at Eric's mom's house and I'm sure descendants of our original worms are living quite happily there to this day.

We tried a worm bin again when we first moved to New Jersey but it didn't go quite as well that time and, again, we moved in early summer and never got around to gardening.  Life was too busy to maintain it properly and we gave up.

This spring and summer we have big garden plans for our little patio and we want to produce as much of our own compost as possible.  Today was the big day--our worms arrived in the mail!  We've ordered every time from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm.  They sell through Amazon and get mixed reviews there.  We have always ordered directly from the company which gets us slightly lower prices and we have always been happy with the worms.

I'll illustrate the general idea but we get all of our information for vermicomposting from the book Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Apelhof.  If you are interested in vermicomposting I strongly recommend purchasing the book.

We use a 10-gallon Rubbermaid storage bin.  You want an opaque container because worms don't like light.  You also want high surface area for the volume.  Since the container needs to breathe we've drilled holes all over the bottom and all around the top as well.

Then you need to create bedding.  There are several different kinds of materials.  We're using half shredded newspaper and half coconut coir.  But the coconut coir was hard to find locally and hasn't arrived in the mail yet so we started with just newspaper. 

Once you have a good amount of bedding you want to get it wet.  Worms are about 75% water, just like us, and their bedding should be about the same.  I used a spray bottle to make the newspaper wet and just kept tossing it until it was all evenly wet without it being completely saturated.  You can see that the bedding reduces  quite a bit once it is wet.  And a concern with a 100% newspaper bedding is that it can become too matted for the worms to thrive.  The cocount coir should help with that once it arrives.  Also, this really isn't enough bedding but it was a lot of work shredding the newspaper (you want it fairly fine to keep it loose enough) so this was more of a "keep the worms alive for a couple of days" approach until the coconut coir arrives. 

We bulked things up a bit and gave the worms some "grit" to aid with digestion by tossing in several handfuls of dirt and old garden clippings.

And then Margaret added the few kitchen scraps we've collected since yesterday.  We keep a quart-size container on the counter and just empty it every day or so.  Worms can eat about half their weight in scraps each day.  Last time we had a bin we produced more scraps than they could handle so we're actually setting up two bins this time around.

Here's our small pile of scraps so far:  a banana peel, some grape stems, a crushed egg shell, and some garlic peels.  Worms can eat most kitchen scraps.  Too much meat or citrus is a problem as are bones.  Bones won't hurt the worms, they just don't really get eaten and then you've got bones in your garden down the road.

Then it was time to open the box.  They ship Priority Mail through the USPS with a big, yellow "Live Shipment" sticker on the top.  I wonder what the mailman thinks . . .

The worm farm sends them out on Mondays only so they don't languish over the weekend.  The little guys are packed in peat moss and then tied up tightly in a breathable bag.  They are somewhat thin and lethargic when they arrive but perk up with food and water. We ordered 2000 worms in order to set up two bins.

The worms are dumped in one big pile in the center of the prepared bedding and then we move more wet bedding on top of them.  They disperse on their own over the course of a couple of days.

The kids really love having a worm bin going and Joseph has read quite a bit of the worm book which includes a good bit of science about worm anatomy, the ecosystem of a worm bin, worm reproduction, and other critters.  We don't have to try to hard to get science education in around here.

We popped the lid back on once we'd all gotten our fill of watching the worms.  William patted the lid and said, "Good night worms!" and visited them again just before bedtime.

We don't expect to have compost ready to harvest until July so we'll need to buy compost for our initial planting this spring but we'll have our own good stuff, if all goes well, by the time we're getting our fall harvest ready.

Oh, and the bins will live in our basement while the weather is cold.  Once temperatures are consistently above freezing we'll move the bins out to the patio.  The bins don't stink at all but they do develop fruit flies once in awhile and the kids like to dump the scraps in and check on the worms so having them on the patio will keep them more accessible for everyone.  We place each closed bin on a spare plastic lid from a bigger bin.  Plastic worm bins tend to collect excess water.  This can drain out of the holes on the bottom and the lid/tray underneath will keep it contained.  This water is great for watering plants.

Classical Unschooling

A few people asked, after my last post, to hear more about classical education and/or/with unschooling. I can't say that I'm an expert on either approach, or at anything at all related to homeschooling. I've been reading on the subject for almost ten years but no amount of reading can prepare you to actually educate real children in the midst of a busy home and we are only just beginning that stage of things.

There are a handful of well-defined home education "philosophies" out there for parents who are putting together their own curriculum and there are lots of more "curriculum-in-a-box" providers as well. But, in my experience, most families use a combination of two (or more) approaches and find that things evolve over time as the children grow. I don't want my thoughts on unschooling or classical education to come to define either of those approaches because if you know another family approaching home education this way, it will probably look completely different. This is one of those areas where I am totally comfortable being a relativist.

An extreme definition of "unschooling," in my mind, is: letting the kids do whatever they want with regard to their definition. I have never actually heard of any family that actually does that, for the record. It's not even legal in a lot of states. I find that an occasional dose of "unschooling" inspiration is a guard against feeling discouraged and defeated. In the midst of a large family and a busy life, there are definitely times when formal school does not happen. At all. During a time of crisis this could go on for weeks. I personally don't think that this is harmful for children and it is encouraging to know that there are whole populations of people, and even education experts who think this is the best and only way to educate children. I have definitely heard of and met some pretty darn impressive kids who came from "unschooling" families so it seems to work, in some form, for some people.

In the materials I've read on "unschooling," several elements attract me. First, it is a very "child-centered" approach. Unschoolers usually see children as inherently intelligent, thoughtful, creative, and self-motivated and believe that, left to their own devices, they will educate themselves (including learning to read) just fine. I also like that children have, in theory, limitless time to thoroughly explore what interests them. Eric and I homeschool, in part, as a reaction against shortcomings in our own education. We both would have preferred more time to really dig into the things that interested us rather than stick to the classroom agenda.

All that said, we don't ever see ourselves embracing this approach fully. For one thing, while all of our children seem pretty intelligent, they definitely differ in the personal initiative area. For another thing, as bad as I am about sticking to a routine, I do know that my children thrive better when we have a routine. And, while Eric and I would have loved more freedom in our education, we also wish that we had been introduced to more of the riches of literature and philosophy and world culture than we were.

Enter classical education.

Classical education relies on the "trivium" concept: children move progressively through three stages of learning first absorbing facts (the grammar stage), then learning to argue (the logic stage), and finally learning to fully express themselves (the rhetoric stage). Home educators who use a classical approach typically have a rich and rigorous program of study with a huge emphasis on the study of history. I was initially turned off by some materials I read on classical education because it seemed to lack respect for the innate creativity and imagination of the child, forcing them to think and learn a certain way. It seemed to view children as empty vessels for the parents to cram with a certain number of facts before it was time to ship them off to an Ivy League school at age 16.

I've since come to see that this is a rather extreme view of the classical approach and just as I don't know any families who truly always let their children do whatever they want, I also don't know any families who approach classical education in that way. And based on my very limited observation of children, the trivium pattern seems to be a sensible one. Also, classical education just sounds fun to me. And that is no small thing when I have to live with and supervise whatever it is we are doing for education around here.

So I tend to say that we are "classical unschoolers" because the materials we use are definitely drawn from classical sources. We plan to teach the children Latin and we will probably use history as a "spine" for most other subjects. But we also think children needs lots and lots of free time to explore and read on their own. Formal lessons are short, we're okay taking days off when we all need a break or a neat opportunity arises or if we are moving for the second time in less than a year and have a newborn in the house (just to pull one example out of thin air).

So there's a nutshell description of our approach and I will try to illustrate it a bit more in the coming months. Feel free to ask more questions about how we got here, what we do, or what we're planning for the future.

The pictures for today's post are courtesy, once again, of Robyn. We get together for science and music activities once a week and last week talked about volcanoes. The kids all loved it but Robyn and I love how unimpressed they look in the pictures. Very funny. The more impressive yeast+hydrogen peroxide combination failed us (turns out that H2O2 expires--good to know!) so we had to resort of baking soda and vinegar. Oh, and Joseph has a loose tooth!

School

We are still home schooling with no plans to change that at this point. Our year has gone pretty well although it's been in fits and starts. I don't really mind that too much for kids this young. Eric and I have both endlessly researched various approaches to home education and we feel drawn pretty strongly towards a classical approach in terms of what the kids will study. But we also find that a lot of what "unschoolers" say really resonates with us--especially for young children. Five and six-year-olds, it turns out, will pretty readily gobble up whatever they can get their hands on in a pretty self-motivated way and so much learning is going on just through living a rich life on a daily basis. While we definitely have set math and reading work we do for Joseph, I tend not to fret too much if he spends several days in a row absorbed in various books and doesn't crack open his math.

We gave a lot of thought to "grade level" at the start of this year. In lots of states Joseph would be in kindergarten this year and in other states he would be in first grade. We decided to err on the side of not rushing things so we've called him a kindergartner this year though he is definitely doing first or second grade work in some areas. The nice thing about homeschooling is that you can do different grade levels for different subjects. Joseph's abilities don't tend to match his desires, however. He is not eager about formal schooling even though he can easily complete his work when I make him do it. That's another reason I opted to err on the young side with regard to grade level. He likes to be really confident with a skill before diving in and I thought it best for him to feel good about his reading and writing ability before starting in on a classical first grade program.

Margaret has always come along for the ride with regard to school and this year I got her a preschool workbook so she'd have something fun to do while I worked with Joseph. She also demanded reading lessons. I was hesitant to start because Joseph got really frustrated as a four-year old with reading. But Margaret took to it pretty quickly and is blasting through the curriculum. She also outgrew her preschool workbook and the kindergarten one I got her as a sequel is also much too easy for her. Her mind isn't quite the information sponge Joseph's seems to be but she has a lot of initiative and is doing well with reading and writing. I think we'll end up calling Margaret a kindergartner next year and the two kids will do a lot of the more "humanities" type work together as they progress through their education.

We've had a really fun addition to our home education recently. My friend Robyn who lives in Brooklyn decided to pull her kindergartner out of school and finish up the year at home just before Christmas. We've been getting together once a week ever since to do short activities together--mostly science-type stuff, although I tried out some music with the kids last week--and for some playtime for the kids (and, honestly, for Robyn and I!). Joseph and Andrew have always been great friends and it's fun for Joseph to have a friend over every week. William is a huge fan of Robyn's younger son, Isaac (they both share a deep passion for trains) and Margaret is a huge fan of Robyn herself. So it's a great part of the week for everyone and I secretly hope that Robyn home schools her kids for the next twelve years so we can continue the play dates ;)

The pictures in today's post are courtesy of Robyn. I think Gregory is one week old--Robyn has a real thing for capturing crying babies. Enjoy!