In Homeschool You Can Say Penis and Vagina

The wolf report is amazing!

The image I have of myself is that of a blind person tick, tick, ticking my white cane, as this school thing unfolds. Echo wanted to do a "report on wolves" so we got books and read them. This led us to Never Cry Wolf - the movie (and book) about Farley Mowat in the Alaskan wilderness and this led to more nature videos and more books. I was fine with this alone as Echo (and the rest of us) were soaking up great information. But Echo had an official report in mind, something that became obvious when she let me know we needed a piece of posterboard.

    

Posterboard? Okay.

    

As we trundled along her vision slowly emerged and continued to  surprise this mom. Eventually it became apparent that part of the project would include a good deal of dictation. We now have two tightly spaced and typed pages covering wolf behavior. This is titled "WOLF NATURE, by Echo Manidra McTague" and was the report, or so I thought. 

    

But there was still the posterboard. We printed off a few photos, which I thought would be a bit of "decoration" but then Echo started orating and I realized it was my job to keep my pencil moving recording her words. When she started in, detailing the wolve's mating rituals, I scratched along trying to keep up. When she started to say: "The female is usually on the bottom because the male needs to be in position to stick his penis into her vagina..." I stopped her. 

She's right, of course. And eloquent I might add. But I also remembered that she wanted to present this report to Xi's class at the Montessori School. I quickly played the scene in my mind. Yep, that wasn't going to work as many many children have not received any form of the "birds and bees". My five-year old, a renegade from the outside homeschooling world, describing the actions of penises and vaginas, complete with a picture(!), wasn't going to fly.

    

She was put off by having to edit. But I love what she came up with.

    

"Above this explanation is a picture of two wolves in the process of preparing this year's pups."

    

Vague yet informative. Perfect.

    

Hierarchy has been a hot topic. Echo keeps making fierce eye contact with our cat, daring him to challenge her authority over the couch cushion. 

    

Wolves hunting moose of course!

    

But my favorite part of the report is this:

    

    It has changed since then, fairly, but humans used to, and still do, have hated wolves and thought them to be killers. This is not the true nature of wolves of course, but it is a sad truth that humans have had to hate wolves as they do now. Although humans hate wolves there has never been any sign that a healthy wolf in North America has ever attacked a human. And there might never be.

     Humans have mostly caused their own fear of wolves from taking away and gathering plants in the forest. This doesn’t seem harmful but it takes away the wolves’ grass-eating food such as moose, caribou, mountain sheep, elk and deer.  So, wolves are forced to go onto farmer’s land and kill farm animals such as hens, roosters, pigs, and sometimes sheep.

I never thought I would love dictation so much!

Comments

[Rachel]

Wow. That is quite an accomplishment!

[Jessi Crago]

YAY!!!

This makes my Wolf-Loving Self and my Teacher Self SOOOOO HAPPY!!!

Way To Go Echo!!!

<3

[Jill Dieser]

I love the details in this report! It is so easy to understand. Here is something you may want to investigate. I've heard that not all wolf packs only let their alphas mate. That this, in a sense, is being lost. May have been a behavior that was taught but wasn't instinctual. Although in the not to distant past, wolves were endangered, they have made a great comeback. "I've heard" that one of the reasons is this new turn of events. To me, this was crazy interesting and would love to know more about this. Is it true?

[natalie]

Well we will certainly look into that!

What we did find is that people have been so freaked out by wolves and so determined to just kill them all that very little research has been done.

Echo's report does mention that the Beta Male steps in if the Alpha is not interested (or able) to mate.

We'll keep you updated!

[Staci]

Very impressive! You guys were in my dream last night. I was playing frisbee with Echo. It was great fun:)

[natalie]

Staci- I love it!

[emily]

I love that you wrote down exactly what she said, just how she said it. Kids will actually absorb this information! Echo is shaping minds, helping wolves.