News
Halloween!
Halloween 2006! Snake Lady, Little Bo Peep, DJ Spooky, Pumpkin Head, bunnies, ghouls, fashionable 'gals' and scores of other costumed revelers danced the night away in our Common House. Many memorable Karaoke performances kept us entertained including Age of Aquarius by our 60th birthday foursome. Games early in the evening included pumpkin seed spitting, screaming, and best pet costume contests. Scary movies on the ceiling and spooky decorations added to the all ages fun. Special welcome was made to the 14 AFS exchange students in Ann Arbor to help them master US Culture, Sunward style. Many costumed visitors roamed Sunward on Halloween proper looking for treats or offering tricks. One home discovered they saved on treats by being scary enough to frighten some kids away.
Team Flutterbot Goes to Canada
Fall 2006. Sunward's own Dr. G is coaching Team Flutterbot, a group of eight of the brightest students from the Rocks 'n Robots summer camp at Sunward. In November, they'll compete in the Canadian Robot Games in the advanced firefighting competitions. The students are programming the Flutterbot (a robot designed by Dr. G) to navigate through an arena, find the room with a fire in it (a candle), put it out and return to the starting circle as fast as possible. These students, most of whom have never programed robots, are learning and becoming facile in the industry-standard C Language. They've been practicing and improving their robots in our game room. Wish them Luck!
Sunward Soccer
Fall 2006. Once again, Saturday mornings have been filled with children sporting lime green t-shirts and kicking soccer balls at the Sunward soccer fields. This soccer league is several years old now and is currently being coached by one of the Great Oak dads, Tim Donahue. There is a young kids group for ages 4-6, and an older group for kids 7 - 10 with 20 kids enrolled in each group. The groups are made of children from the three cohousing communities, grandchildren of Sunwardians, home-schooled children and friends of cohousing residents. The last game of this season was October 28th, but if you didn't make it to this game, you will find it starting up again in Spring 2007.
Families Learning in communitY (FLY)
Fall 2006. FLY is holding regular monthly meetings as Sunward Cohousing Community. Ann Arbor Area families home-schooling children of all ages gather on the first Friday of the month, from one to four PM, to share themed activities, play together, and swap educational materials. Membership is open, and neighbors are always welcome.
Parenting Meetings
In May 2006, Sunward parents held their first Parenting Group meeting in several years utilizing one of Sunward's own highly skilled facilitators. It started as a meeting to determine what kind of weapon play would be allowed on campus and transformed into a rich resource of creative ideas for living well with children in community. Over the next several months, 5 more meetings were held which created the following activities at Sunward: a kids only meeting to decide how to make sidewalk play safe for all ages, a men/boys canoe outing, a mom/daughter outing to a horse stable and pony rides, the creation of a Wiki page where parents gave bio's of their parenting preferences such as what media is allowed, food preferences, style of discipline, etc. and a Common Parenting principles document that outlines our agreements as to respectful ways to interact with children, especially when they are not behaving like angels. This October we also held our first open meeting where we invited other members of the community to attend and give any concerns as to child related issues at Sunward, such as the forts that are constantly being built on the piazza by our highly creative little ones. The frequency of these meetings will decrease but they have been highly attended and valued by the parents here at Sunward!
Spring Work Holiday!
April 29, 2006. One of our annual rites of spring, the landscaping work holiday brought Sunwardians out for a day in the sun of tidying up our landscaping, mulching trees, running hoses, exchanging winter equipment for gardening tools in the shed and more. We began with breakfast in the common house and each selected a task from the work plan. All of it was well organized by our landscaping honchos, Erika, Caren, and Ann.
Louisiana Evacuee Restoration Tour, Take II
March 25, 2006. David and Roselyn again graced our Common House with some musical magic from New Orleans! This was their second appearance in Ann Arbor to benefit musician impacted by Hurricane Katrina. We enjoyed their soulful vocals accompanied by guitars, banjo, mandolin, harmonicas, trumpet, African finger pianos, rhumba box and more. To learn about upcoming shows and events at Sunward, sign up for our news letter today!
Let's Talk About It!
Feb 10-12, 2006. One bright, sunny weekend this Winter Sunward members and young people participated in a community retreat, "Let's Talk About It! Creating Community Through Communication" This included an introduction to Nonviolent Communication (NVC) skills which are based on the work of Dr. Marshall Rosenberg. Techniques were presented that taught how to communicate more effectively with family and neighbors with an emphasis on compassion as the motivation for action. Making objective observations, clarifying one's feelings about what is observed, understanding the needs that drive the feelings, and making a request that would improve life for oneself. We had group discussions led by Karl Steyaert, breakout sessions with the chance to practice our new skills and singing and dancing in the interludes.
Story Necklace
In January 2006, we began the creation of a community heirloom in the form of a Story Necklace with a distinct bead for each year or major event in our history. In our community meeting, a representative of the time period shares the story and strings their carefully chosen bead onto the necklace. We started with a bead for all the community wisdom, experiments, and experience that came before, and influenced Sunward's creation. This was followed by beads for 1992 and 1993, the 'pre-history' of Sunward when organizing efforts were beginning in Ann Arbor. We'll slowly add a bead for each year in community ceremony until we are current, then the new year's will be told and a bead added at our annual celebration in the Fall. A written collection of the stories will be kept with the necklace.
News from 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001...1999, 1998, 1997
“A more sustainable community recognizes and supports people's evolving sense of well-being, which includes a sense of belonging, a sense of place, a sense of self worth, a sense of safety, and a sense of connection with nature.” -Elizabeth Klein