photo by Sandra Dodd
Showing posts with label costumes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label costumes. Show all posts
Friday, January 16, 2015
Everything and more
photo by Sandra Dodd
Monday, November 17, 2014
An active experience
Pam Sorooshian wrote:
In my park day group, the unschooled kids with freedom of choice to watch tv really clearly have their critical thinking engaged when watching tv. They "work" to get the joke, for example, on the Simpsons. They ask questions—they make connections to other things they know. TV is a more active experience for them than other kids. I know this from listening to them talk about it.
SandraDodd.com/t/holly
photo is a link
In my park day group, the unschooled kids with freedom of choice to watch tv really clearly have their critical thinking engaged when watching tv. They "work" to get the joke, for example, on the Simpsons. They ask questions—they make connections to other things they know. TV is a more active experience for them than other kids. I know this from listening to them talk about it.
—Pam Sorooshian
photo is a link
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Toys
"Fill your house with peace, toys, interesting things, good food, and love."
—Colleen Prieto
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Holly's scene
(more about Barbie and unschoolers)
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Produce happiness
Having a happy home comes from the creation and maintenance of happy conditions. Produce as much as you can. You'll fill yourself up and it will overflow, and your family might even have enough to share with friends and strangers!
That was written in explanation of having shared a quote I got from watching "Being Erica," a Canadian TV series, in which Dr. Tom (one of the main characters) quoted George Bernard Shaw: "We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it."
photo by Julie D
__
That was written in explanation of having shared a quote I got from watching "Being Erica," a Canadian TV series, in which Dr. Tom (one of the main characters) quoted George Bernard Shaw: "We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it."
__
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Spend time more joyfully
"[T]he more willing I am to help Simon and Linnaea to do what they want to do, the less needy they are. And, conversely, the more joyfully I spend time with them, helping them out, the less needy I am of my own space, my time to myself." —Schuyler Waynforth |
photo by Alex Polikowsky
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Unschooling is...
Unschooling is creating and maintaining an atmosphere in which natural learning can flourish.
SandraDodd.com/definitions
photo by Sarah Dickinson
__
photo by Sarah Dickinson
__
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Focus on others
Wanting your family to be happy, joyful and learning seems a perfectly fine goal! But you won't get there by focusing on what you want. You'll get there by focusing on what they want.
What are your kids interested in? What do they want? How can you support that?
—Joyce Fetteroll
photo by Sandra Dodd
__
Sunday, August 25, 2013
There is safety in happiness
I think the most dangerous thing for a kid is unhappiness. When a child wants out and away from parents, then things outside the house can seem appealing—even questionable strangers in cars with tinted windows, who will say "meet me in the alley."
And that has been happening since before the internet.
photo by Julie D
__
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Glad to be wrong
When I had been unschooling for several years, I still dreaded and joked about how different it would be when I had teens. I expected what I thought was "natural" and what was probably inevitable teenaged behavior.
It turns out that much of what is considered "normal teen behavior" is a normal reaction to many years of school, and to being controlled and treated as children and school kids and students rather than as full, thoughtful human beings.
Being wrong doesn't bother me one bit when the truth is so much better than my fears and predictions!
photo by Sandra Dodd, 2005 at a movie-character theme party
Kirby as Casey Jones from the first Ninja Turtle movie
Marty as Dr. Strangelove (←click there to see him in the chair with glasses)
and Holly as Addie Pray from Paper Moon
__
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Candy gets dusty
Since my kids were little they could have all the Halloween candy they wanted, and since they were little that has been no problem at all, because by the time they gave away what they didn't like and traded for favorites, and saved it and shared it with kids who came over for the next few weeks, there was still candy left. I have very often found the sorting boxes (a Xerox box lid or cardboard Coke flat) months later, and one year when it was nearly Halloween again, Kirby threw out the last of the candy from the year before. (Ditto for Christmas and Easter candy, some years.)
We were confident that it was control, not access, that made kids eat, do and want "too much" before we ever considered unschooling. Others come to the idea the other way around—unschooling first and releasing other control-urges later.
photo by Sandra Dodd in 2002 (click for more)
__
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Parents can learn from children
Ren wrote:
As a child I was taught that fashion and all it entails was "wordly" and that Barbie stuff promoted low self esteem. Baloney! What promoted low self esteem was being told my interests weren't worthy.
—Ren Allen
photo by Jayn Coburn
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Choose a point, any point.
Parents new to unschooling tend to worry that some activities are good preparation for life, but others are frivolous and should be forbidden or discouraged. Life and thought and learning, though, depend on connections being made. And the more points of information about anything at all being made inside an individual, the more points there will be to connect.
SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo by Sandra Dodd
photo by Sandra Dodd
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Book worship
There was a time when the only way for a kid to get information from outside his home and neighborhood was books. (Think Abraham Lincoln, log cabin in the woods far from centers of learning.) Now books tend to be outdated, and google.com is better for information. If Abraham Lincoln had had full-color DVDs of the sights of other countries, of people speaking in their native accents and languages, and of history, he would have shoved those books aside and watched those videos.
When someone thinks books are the one crucial step to any further learning, then books and school have crippled that person's ability to think expansively, and to see what's unfolding in front of them in the real world.
photo by Holly Dodd with her Barbies enacting a movie
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Surprising, trivial fun
Sometimes to understand a joke, people have to know three or four different things already. Sometimes a piece of humor ties together LOTS of trivia/learning in ways other things can't do. Sometimes the joke isn't uplifting, but it's still created of surprising and theretofore unrelated things. Some people won't get the joke (yet, or ever) and that only makes it more fun for those who DO get it.
photo by Holly Dodd (maybe)
__
Monday, November 8, 2010
Riches
I don’t know exactly what will be happening at our house today, or this evening, but I have every expectation there will be warmth and kindness and humor and learning.
(quote from the end of "Late-Night Learning")
__
(quote from the end of "Late-Night Learning")
__
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
What have you sacrificed?
I think forbidding toy guns is another instance of superstitious magic practiced unwittingly by parents.
The idea that one can make a sacrifice to assure future success is ancient among humans, isn't it?
Deprivation doesn't create appreciation. It creates some or all of desire, neediness, curiosity, fascination, resentment, obsession, anger...
Unfortunately the real sacrifice parents make too often is their child's happiness and their own hope of a full and healthy relationship with that child and future adult.
The quote is from the page on Toy Guns.
The photo is of Marty and Holly, as zombie hunters, Halloween 2008.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
"What is this GOOD for?"
When I was a student I often asked why something was important to learn, but my teachers rarely had good answers.
When I was a teacher, I was asked those things too.
Then one day, the question came phrased a new and better way: "What is this GOOD for?" The answer I gave then changed my life and thinking. I said quickly "So you can get more jokes." I think we were reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet at the time. I could've gone into literature and history and fine arts, but the truth is that the best and most immediate use of most random learning is that it illuminates the world. The more we know, the more jokes we will get.
The larger paragraph above is from:
To Get More Jokes
or
"Thinking and Learning and Bears"
by Sandra Dodd, 2007
When I was a teacher, I was asked those things too.
Then one day, the question came phrased a new and better way: "What is this GOOD for?" The answer I gave then changed my life and thinking. I said quickly "So you can get more jokes." I think we were reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet at the time. I could've gone into literature and history and fine arts, but the truth is that the best and most immediate use of most random learning is that it illuminates the world. The more we know, the more jokes we will get.
To Get More Jokes
or
"Thinking and Learning and Bears"
by Sandra Dodd, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)