Episode-1366- Jen Mendez of PermieKids on Self Reliance for Children
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Jen Mendez of PermieKids.com
Jen Mendez is a wife, mother, permaculture enthusiast and student, lifelong learner, urban homesteader, and professionally trained, successful educator gone rogue. Her experiences living and working around the world as an active duty military member led to an understanding of the need for and the impact of education on the future of our world.
After her service, she completed a Masters in International Education with a focus on early childhood and elementary education and has been an educator ever since. Between her time as a classroom teacher and now as a homeschooling parent, she has fused her passion for educating and her enthusiasm for permaculture into an ethical, scientific design process to create a comprehensive, project-based inquiry education that empowers in learning and life.
She joins us today to discuss age appropriate home based education to teach children preparedness and self reliance without unnecessarily causing a climate of fear in their lives.
Resources for today’s show…
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- PermaEthos.com
- Back Yard Food Production – (sponsor of the day)
- Ready Made Resources – (sponsor of the day)
- PermieKids.com – Jen’s Website
- Permie Kids on Facebook
- Jen on Twitter
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Hi to the TSP community! I hope you find some of this discussion helpful. I have been running across parents from this community who are asking me questions about talking about some of these basic preparedness issues with their kids, when kids are ready to start thinking about these things, and how to make learning about these issues meaningful, playful, and yet valuable. I thought I’d just share some thoughts and ideas that you can take and run with.
I want to add two resources for folks:
1. http://www.permiekids.com/prepping-kids/ – This is a page I put together with a self-reliance and basic preparedness books, online resources, and such that you might want to check out.
2. http://www.permiekids.com/store – This is a link to check out and download (for free) the first lesson plan with 18+ activities I put together with ideas about how to start thinking about and talking about safety with kids. I’d love to get some feedback (on the lesson plans and the podcasts), so I can make what I am doing more useful for you. Also, if you have any interest in checking out the other lesson plans, please use the 25% off TSP discount code I set up: TSPKids! … I have another for 50% for MSB members and I’ve emailed Jack to see if he can post that one up on the members page.
On a related note: I have another lesson plan I’m working on that is targeted towards a different safety issue: social relationships and communication (including Nonviolent Communication and bullying issues). I hope to have that one done and podcast about it within the month.
Awesome show Jack and Jen!
Thanks, Shannon.
Jack, you’re a brewer. Are you not familiar with Stella Artois (Ar-twa)? And you don’t know how to pronounce it’s name?
I am quite familiar with it, I am not from Belgium though so perhaps I don’t say it the way you think I should. Hanging with Brits though that taught me it was called wife beater as I said on the air, all of them called it what I did. Frankly I am not even sure why I am bothering to respond to this comment. I have never been looked at sideways when ordering one.
Haha. No worries. I just thought it was funny. Thanks for the good interview. This one and the other with Jen have been some of my favorites.
Streetcar named desire?
Excellent show Jack and Jen. I’m a type A personality like you Jack and I have the same problem that you had when working on tasks/projects and my boys want to help. I’ve been trying to better myself this year by slowing down, which is hard to do, and taking the time to teach my kids as I go. They helped me build the chicken coop, hugelkultur style raised beds, planting seeds for the garden, and taking care of the chickens. What I’ve come to learn is that I find tasks much more satisfying when my kids are learning from my teachings. It took time for me to learn this but fortunately my boys are only 5 years old and all I have to do is keep the right mindset. I learned this behavior from my wife because it comes naturally to her and I come to realize what good is all my knowledge if I can’t pass it down to my kids. Again great show!
Max, you and my husband would have a lot in common, I think! On my personal blog that I do mostly for family, I get my husband to write one of the blogs each week. They have often been about the challenges this spring of including our kids in a fig tree propagation project, finding and marking contour lines, sculpting swales, and then laying down the cover crops and planting the bushes/trees. But it is so fun to see just how much the kids learn, even at their young ages, from being involved and feeling like they are part of these family projects…. not to mention my husband’s learning curve! And, I think my husband feels like he is developing a real, lasting connection with our kids.
It is hard to be willing to do things at a child’s pace so that they learn from doing, not just watching. I have been working on this for years and I still woefully underestimate how long some things will take many times. Just the other week, my kids and I put together two circular raised garden beds – one for each kid. They both wanted to do a three sisters garden, so they each picked whatever type of corn, beans, and squash they wanted in their garden. All that went fairly well, but doing the actual planting took forever. I will be quite interested to see where those seeds actually fell because I’m sure it isn’t perfectly placed out like the pictures in the books we were reading. However, all of it and even a jumbled planting will give us great opportunities to observe, interact, and learn.