Ep 212: Food, Play, & Mindfulness with Karen M. Ricks

Season 6 of Fare of the Free Child Podcast begins today, and we are so excited!! This season we’ve slowed down our listening process so that every topic can get three full episodes of conversation and connection. The first part is an invitation to deepen our perspective on a relevant topic, the second part we’ll be listening to community feedback about that topic, and the third episode will be a recap or replay from a live, group meetup (we call those feel trips), to bring our knowledge and questions together real-time. Want to make sure you don’t miss feel trip invites? Join our podcast village. On today’s episode, Karen M. Ricks of Our Kitchen Classroom, world traveler, life learner, mother, wife, chef, entrepreneur will be joining us to talk about joy, food, travelling, languages, Montessori ways, and her special take on worldschooling. 

Food Joy

We talk about boundaries, consent, relationship-building, and the importance of partnership between parents and children. Karen explains the way food can work as a medium through which we have a chance to connect through multi-sensory experiences, for example, the process of including the children in preparing meals. We talk about sense memory and how it is tied to a deeper personal involvement, and how this makes food a wonderful way to notice everyday learning.

Montessori Ways  (The world is our classroom)

Karen speaks about her experience running a Montessori school in Japan, about how this process exposed some of the drastic pedagogical differences between cultures, and the level of resistance that can live within us when it comes to trying a less schoolish approach to learning anything, including a new language. 

We chat about the cultivation of language as a tool that enhances communication, a tool to connect with the otherness, to share ideas and concepts, and to expand the possibilities for the richness of learning from every experience, person, and place.

Building upon the Curiosity

Karen shares the joy that food has given her by seeing culinary education as a cultural exchange, and a way of connecting with families and communities. With her project, Our Kitchen Classroom, Karen shares a different way of learning through the experience of food.

LIBERATION WALK

• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and speak up
• Learn something new at every meal! join Karen at Our Kitchen Classroom
• Join Karen at Our Kitchen Classroom on Youtube 
• While you’re there, subscribe to Akilah’s

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The Raising Free People Practice Card Deck
https://schoolishness.com/market/rfp-a-practice-deck/

Peek at the details of Personal Manifesto Path (will be available exclusively through our make-it-happen family on Patreon)
https://www.rfpunschool.com/p/manifesto

Our Youtube channel
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