Showing posts with label building. Show all posts
Showing posts with label building. Show all posts

Friday, December 22, 2023

It seems miraculous.

Alysia Berman wrote:

I tell people that I'm amazed every day by what my kids know and learn. It seems miraculous. It's not, really. It's normal. I see it as miraculous because I was indoctrinated to believe that none of this could happen outside of school and without teachers.
—Alysia Berman

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Julie D
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Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Happy to be where he is

colored drawing of house and cabin, tree, by Kes when they moved
Peace is a prerequisite to natural, curious, intellectual exploration.

What is peace, then, in a home with children? Contentment is peace.

Is a child happy to be where he is? That is a kind of peace. If he wakes up disappointed, that is not peace, no matter how quiet the house is or how clean and "feng shuid" his room is.

Peace, like learning, is largely internal.

There is more at Contentment is Peace.
drawing by a younger Kes; photo by Janine Davies

Monday, March 28, 2022

Becoming unschooling parents

In order for parents to unschool, they need to become unschooling parents.

Saying "we're unschoolers now" isn't enough.

There are changes that need to take place.

the quote is from Who can Unschool?
but this will help: Becoming Solid
photo by Ester Siroky

Thursday, February 24, 2022

Oh, wait!

Same boring, stupid, same-old...
Oh, wait! A Quonset hut, back there, with a side building. Look at the tumbleweed. That attachment looks very cool, whatever it does.

Curiosity
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Monday, January 24, 2022

Be more, do more

Pam Sorooshian wrote: I'm not saying to prepare a lesson on cactus or coconuts or pineapples. I'm saying that if you're not already an interesting person with interesting information to share with your children, then you'll have to make an effort to be more interesting. The way to do that is to develop your own sense of curiosity, wonder, fascination, and enthusiasm.

It might have to seem a little artificial, for a while, if it isn't natural to a parent to just "be" this way.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Thursday, January 7, 2021

Truthful and protective

When freedom and choices are given to children, they are given by a parent who has the power to withhold them. The parents are still the authorities and the responsible parties in the group. They don't need to abuse authority to prove they have it. They don't have to have a steep hierarchy; they can have a closer, cooperative hierarchy, but there is still a hierarchy. If parents earn their children's respect by being kind and helpful and truthful and protective, then there will be a natural hierarchical relationship, not something the parents claimed out of tradition or the air.

SandraDodd.com/anarchy
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Monday, December 28, 2020

Forgotten roofs of the world

I'm sure there are things on my roof that would be interesting to someone else, but I don't go up there, and I don't look.

When I've visted other places, though rooflines seem exotic, and the chimneys and birds and all are not what I'm used to and I get excited.
More often,
       perhaps,
              look up.
It can help in more ways than one.

Uplift
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Chichester, in England

Sunday, August 2, 2020

Piecemeal and serendipitous

"Every person's learning about the world will be piecemeal - so it might as well be serendipitous and interest based."

SandraDodd.com/history
photo by Ester Siroky (while visiting Tuzla)

Friday, June 5, 2020

Everything is bumpy

Today's text is taken from my FB memories yesterday, things written by others:

2010: "I wish people who think unschooling is about doing nothing could know that it's about everything!"
2011: "I have enjoyed reading Sandra Dodd's Big Book of Unschooling. It has been my "go to" book that helps me to get over some bumps in the road."

SandraDodd's Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

The photo is from 2013, when Joyce Fetteroll and I visited Marta's family in Portugal, and spoke there. It's a Moorish castle near Sintra, built in the 8th century, captured and claimed by the first Portuguese king in 1147. It was in the same "memories" set.

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Feel your thoughts

Read about why, and what others have seen.

Try it a little.

Don't expect her not to think you're crazy at first; wait a while.

Watch her reaction.

Feel your own thoughts.

Lay your fears out to dry in the air and sunshine.



Gradual Change
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

Saturday, April 18, 2020

Happier and more peaceful

There are MANY people who came to unschooling and honestly tried to consider the ideas, and they tried the suggestions, and their families started becoming happier and more peaceful. And many have reported that as their children began to relax and love their lives, that the parents begin to rethink all KINDS of things they believed were true.

Unless people are willing to try it, they can't understand it or believe it. Lots of people every day share how they got from one point to another, with lots of practical suggestions and reassurances.



Emotion vs Intellect, from Unschooling Discussion, in 2003
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Advice for a newlywed

To have a more peaceful, loving relationship that has the potential to last for a lifetime, don't count and don't measure.

Don't divide anything "fifty/fifty." Forget that concept. Give what you have. Do all you can do. Give/do 80% when you can, but only measure it vaguely, at a squint, and then forget about it. If you aim for half, there will be resentments. If you aim for 100%, small failures will seem larger than they need to be, so don't do that. You can succeed at "lots" without measuring.

If each of you gives as much as you can, your shared needs will be fulfilled more quickly, more easily, and more often.

Be generous with your patience. Life is long. People change, and more than once.

I wrote that for a young friend getting married, and I quoted it here:
Becoming a Better Partner
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Safe and lively

"Some kids need school more than they need their dangerous or lifeless home environments."

I wrote that in 2009. School was good for me. If you keep your kids out of school, create an environment that is safe and lively.

If you can't do better than school, let them go to school.

Building an unschooling nest
photo by Manessah Ellender Garcia

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Familiar and unfamiliar

If everything is unfamiliar, it's hard to think about what it is at all. If everything is too familiar, it can escape notice and conscious thought.

Learning happens best at the edge, where something familiar has a difference. Something is not the same, in an otherwise understandable scene.



Angle
photo by Ester Siroky

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

What is not a clock?

I do love clocks and calendars and the history of time measurement, but it is good to remember that we are not clocks, and our children are not clocks.
The clock is not hungry
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a sundial in Chichester

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Choices, and benefits

Once upon a time, someone complained about me in a discussion: "I am quite sure you have nothing better to do."

What would be better for me to do than helping people who honestly want the help?

That day I responded:

"Nothing better to do" was intended to be an insult, surely, but choosing what to do in any given moment is part of living a mindful life. Some people choose to insult. Some people choose to explain. Some choose to leave. Some choose to stay. But THIS isn't where unschooling is. Unschooling is in the relationships between parents and children. That should be the topic of every post—what will help parents find ways to be unschooling parents for the benefit of their children and of the family as a whole. Because there can be secondary benefits.
And, that day, I linked to this entry in Just Add Light and Stir:
Good person, good parent
photo by Ester Siroky

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Time flows

Every ghost town used to be alive.

Every "haunted house" was once new.

An abandoned car started with good tires, a running engine, and a happy owner.

Each adult was a child.
The flow of history
photo by Karen James

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Step back and think

I did an odd thing, when Kirby was five. I consciously decided not to use the names of "subject areas," ever. Whether he liked something or not, I wasn't going to tell him it was "history" or "math" or "science." Each of those is made up of dozens, hundreds of interests and unrelated topics.

In school, kids decide to declare that they like or hate "science," when really geology has very little to do with psychology or surgery. Same with "geography." Would someone who "likes geography" because he's fascinated by maps and mapping necessarily care about the major production of different regions of the world, or traditional costume of Afghanistan?

But as an unschooling mom, I think it's important for the parents not to say "I don't like... (maps/science/costume/psychology), because if you have fears and prejudices left over from school, it's a good thing to do whatever internal work you need to get over that, so you can answer your children's questions without showing (and maybe passing on) an aversion.

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Ester Siroky
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Thursday, May 3, 2018

History's disorderly conduct

History can't be learned "in order," because it's never going to be orderly. It doesn't even happen in order, because often facts aren't discovered until years after incidents occur, and so the history of them unfolds and is clarified and expanded all the time. People knew zip about Pompeii until 1700-and-some years after it was buried. Someday people might know more about Amelia Earhart's disappearance or the assassination of JFK than they do now, after all who knew them personally will have been long dead.

SandraDodd.com/history
photo by Lisa Jonick