Pets

Many unschoolers have reported changed feelings about pets, and successes in extending newfound principles to animal friends and companions.

SandraDodd.com/pets
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a stile in England
for humans and dogs

(Officially, humans over and dogs through, though I'm sure young children love going through. This was not farmland.)

Purposes and choices in the moment

When someone questioned "purpose," I responded:

I didn't say "live your live with a purpose," though. Not a singular overriding goal that would cause any other outcome to be failure. That's what some people mean when they say "a purpose," but I didn't say "a purpose." It makes a world of difference.

I was talking about individual situations, projects, days, ways to decide. Not about a whole life.

People do that with decisions, too, sometimes. When we talk about making decisions within unschooling discussions, it's not something like "I made the decision to be an unschooler." It's small decisions in the moment, right before each action or response, about what to have for lunch, where and how and why.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Janine Davies, of a stile in England

Thoughtful choices are better

Arbitrary rules will never be better for unschooling, nor for any relationship, than thoughtful choices will be. Unschooling parents must gradually learn to make thoughtful choices themselves and give their kids the opportunity to make choices.

The quote is from an interview
but here's a link to
Making the better choice
photo by Sandra Dodd

Learning is subtle

Karen James wrote: Real learning is subtle...like a breath.

—Karen James
(that quote in a larger context)

Becoming Confident
photo by Sandra Dodd

Goop, fire, snowballs

When one person says "I like science" and another says "I don't like science," I remember school science textbooks that had geology, astronomy, chemistry, botany, biology, agriculture and physics all in one book. . . . . There are many fun things to do and explore that could be called "science," but why not just call them skate boards or miniature golf or basketball or piano or water play or rescuing wounded birds or making goop or collecting rocks or swimming or drawing pictures of clouds or taking photos in different kinds of light or growing corn or training a dog or looking through binoculars or waiting for a chrysalis to open or making a sundial or making a web page or flying a kite or chasing fireflies or building a campfire or finding out which planet that is by the moon on the horizon, or wondering why snowballs take so much snow to make, or how a 4-wheel-drive truck works.

Science and the larger idea of Changing Facts
photo by Sandra Dodd

Your relationship with learning

You can't wait until you understand unschooling to begin. Much of your understanding will come from the changes you see in your child and in your own thinking, and in your relationship with and perception of learning itself. You can't read a touch and then go and unschool for a year and then come back and see what you did wrong; you could be a year in the wrong direction.


from "Beginning to Unschool," page 36 or 39 of The Big Book of Unschooling
(I changed "it" to "unschooling," in the first line above.)
photo by Janine
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Paths

I like traditional construction, I like stiles over fences or walls, and I like paths. This one is in Montana, and has a bridge over a ditch, to get to a stile over the fence.

There are paths we can explore, and some we can't. There are metaphorical paths, philosophical paths, spiritual paths, and real-earth paths. There are paths in video-games, stories, books, and films. We can only follow a few, but it's fun to look around at others, too, to remember they're there.

Other path posts (images of paths), and some with the term "paths." Have a nice stroll.
photo by Kelly Lovejoy
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History and tradition

Newness can dazzle us, and the future is confusing. But right around you are simple, plain, useful, interesting, solid bits of history and tradition—things that were there before you were born, things with their own stories, whose makers might be gone and forgotten, but the artifacts remain.

The photo today is a stile I saw in Texas. Stiles and fences have existed in various forms for a long time. There are quiet antiques all around us.

SandraDodd.com/curiosity
photo by Sandra Dodd
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