Visible joy

Make home a place the child is always safe, secure, loved, and respected. Model empathy, kindness, and take visible joy in good things. Bring more good things into the home for the family to take joy in.

—Jessica Hughes

Building an Unschooling Nest
photo by Roya Dedeaux
__

A big, easy difference

"If I can bring someone a snack before they come tell me they are hungry it can make a real difference in the kind of day we are all having!"

—Sylvia Woodman

Siblings: Attending to Very Young Children and Their Siblings
photo by Lydia Koltai
__

Those flowers bloomed.

I have saved this, text and images, from something Janine Davies posted:

Kes has loved the film Wall-E since he first saw it, age 3. ❤️

He has watched it over and over ✨

When his snow boots didn’t fit him this winter and we bought him new ones, he said, “I’m going to grow a flower in my boot just like in Wall-E.”

He planted seeds in both boots back in early spring and today those flowers bloomed. 🌼🌼💛💛

---

The plant from Wall-E

SandraDodd.com/peace
top photo by Janine Davies, 1 July 2018

Wellbeing, learning and balance

When I stopped seeing my daughter as adversarial it changed the world for us.
. . . .We have developed a sweet and trusting bond where the focus is on wellbeing and learning and finding balance.

—Joanna Murphy, 2008

SandraDodd.com/change.html
photo by Holly Dodd
__

Again, again!

“No-one is ever likely to read my whole website and I don’t ever need them to. It’s not written to be read from one end to the other any more than a pharmacy is intended for someone to start at one end and eat, drink or inject every substance in the whole room. If you find a page that does help you, guess what? It will help even more if you read it again after a year or two. And if you read it after you’ve been unschooling for five years it will seem that the first time it was a black and white postcard and now it’s a technicolor movie. Because you’ll understand it better and you’ll see the subtlety and the artistry of what people wrote and maybe you’ll wish you’d been able to understand it better sooner.” ~ Sandra Dodd

Changes in Parents (episode of Pam Laricchia's interview podcast)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Doing this deeply

Unschooling is not as easy as some people think it is. It can be fun, and simple, and life changing, if it is done deeply and thoroughly.

SandraDodd.com/video/doright
Thanks, Marta Pires, for saving that quote.
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Bits & pieces

Caren Knox, on how they learn:

I don't even think about learning any more. It's not something I can quantify, or say how it's happening for anyone other than me - and quite frequently, I can't for me, either. It's organic. It's in bits & pieces so small we don't notice.

—Caren Knox

How do they learn?
SandraDodd.com/day/meme/caren
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Good things

Do good things for good reasons.

photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Travel

Travel can be small or large. The younger the children, the shorter a trip needs to be to provide them with an experience from when their world will be enlarged.

Take them where they will see, hear, touch, smell or taste something new.

photo by Sandra Dodd