Sunday, March 10, 2013

Explore your neighborhood

You could think of yourselves as tourists in your own town. What museum or historical site or interesting natural feature have you not gone to see, or maybe haven't taken your children to lately? Pretend you're only in town for two weeks and do some cool things.


Or if that seems awkward to you, import a tourist. Maybe an unschooling family could be persuaded to come and visit you, and you could take them sightseeing and also discuss unschooling. Just let the kids play, though, and play with them or watch them. Look at what they're drawn to. Look at how they examine things or what they ask about. Don't be teacherly in your responses. Answer them as you would a tourist friend who was visiting town. Tell the good parts in an inspiring way. You don't need to put it in historical or political context.

Give one cool fact and if they want to know more they'll ask. That's how conversations work. Have conversations.

The quote is from page 15 of The Big Book of Unschooling,
in the Deschooling section, but here is something similar:
SandraDodd.com/video/doright (bottom of the page)
photo by Marty Dodd
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1 comment:

  1. (From an e-mail:)

    "Today's blog post, from the Deschooling section of The Big Book--YES, YES, YES! I think some Buddhists call a concept similar to this beginner's mind. It's a good place to be. I had the great luck to move to a new city and state, when my oldest son was 5. We WERE tourists for a while, and we approached the year like a great adventure, soaking in as much as we could, relaxing into the knowledge that we could do it all again tomorrow since we LIVED here! It was splendid, and I couldn't have asked for more serendipitous timing for our entry into unschooling.

    "Thanks, again but not for the last time, for this lovely blog and email-inbox encouragement."

    ReplyDelete

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