Pattern blocks, side by side

Marcia Miller wrote:

Wooden pattern blocks are wonderful in so many ways. You can create designs with them, build with them, and play games with them. You can talk about their colors, shapes, angles, and how they relate to each other. You can lay them out in repetitive patterns or beautiful mosaics. You don’t need lessons for any of these things, only time and space to play.

The best part of playing with pattern blocks is sitting next to another person and conversing about anything and everything while you play. Years ago, Sandra Dodd wrote a beautiful essay called Leaning on a Truck and other parallel play. She described the delights of playing with pattern blocks, along with many other wonderful side-by-side activities, and I’ve been fascinated with them ever since.

—Marcia Miller
read more at
Playing with Pattern Blocks

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Pattern Blocks Elsewhere
scanned image by Sandra Dodd
before phones had cameras

The world is new

Simple, pretty things should be valued. The world is new to every child.

Being directly with children can help parents see the newness in the world.

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Abby Davis

Learning and growing

Someone had written that she had the urge to tell her daughters to do something more productive than playing My Little Ponies. Others reminded her of the importance of play, and of bonding.

I wrote:

"Production" is for factories. Your children are learning and growing. There is nothing they need to "produce."

I sent her the link on "Focus," but this one is better:
SandraDodd.com/mylittlepony
photo by Holly Dodd
(who also styled the pony's mane)
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Brief and memorable

Sometimes an experience is brief, but memorable. Rather than big lessons, think of small moments that spark thoughts.

Playing with a sparkler is like stirring light into darkness. I like that.

SandraDodd.com/sparklers
photo by Erika Davis-Pitre

Lots of yes

It's sweeter to say yes several times a day, with the option to still say "not yet," than to have one big "anytime, anywhere" that then might need to be amended.

[But she's asking even though I've told her she doesn't need to ask.]

There are times it won't be a good idea. Say yes, sweetly, when she asks, instead of correcting her and making promises you might not be able to keep.


Too Far, Too Fast
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Measuring

"Sometimes the measure of unschooling's success isn't how much a kid meets normal expectations, but how much sweeter and easier life is."

—Meredith Novak
(original, on facebook)

SandraDodd.com/success
photo by Cátia Maciel
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Mysteries and things

There are amusing mysteries, spooky mysteries, beautiful mysteries and sacred mysteries.

Sometimes a thing is just a thing, and sometimes it's a mystery.

Everyday Mysteries
photo by Sandra Dodd
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For now...

There it is, for now. Later it won't be.

See it, love it, be grateful, and then accept the changes, with grace.

SandraDodd.com/acceptance
photo by Roya Dedeaux

Like working a puzzle

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Picture learning like piecing together a massive jigsaw puzzle.

With natural learning kids plunge into the puzzle wherever it seems interesting to them. They fit the pieces together here and there working all over the puzzle. They won't go in any particular order. They'll stick with one spot or jump about depending on what's most interesting to them. They'll stumble over new and interesting things. They'll see old things in unfamiliar places giving the unfamiliar places a sense of familiarity as well as intrigue.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/talk
photo by Sandra Dodd

Hold on principle

Instead of having a rule that kids had to hold my hand in a parking lot, I would park near a cart and put some kids in right away, or tell them to hold on to the cart (a.k.a. "help me push", so a kid can be between me and the cart). And they didn't have to hold a hand. There weren't enough hands. I'd say "Hold on to something," and it might be my jacket, or the strap of the snugli, or the backpack, or something.

Toddlers
photo by Gail Higgins

One thing to feel blessed about

"When I'm feeling out of sorts and crushed by the world, all it takes is finding one thing to feel blessed about to start thinking in terms of abundance rather than lack, of being inspired instead of beaten down."

—Jenny Cyphers

Wonder and Awe
photo by Sandra Dodd

Keep an open mind

Even if you don't decide to unschool, keep an open mind about where and what your children could be learning, and where they might find the inspiration to become something like world-changing scientists.

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That is paragraph 5 of 5, of "Gilligan's Island and Star Trek,"
page 152 (or 140) of The Big Book of Unschooling, noting, in part,
Dr. Robert Sapolsky's crediting of Gilligan's Island, and Dr. Mae Jemison's of Star Trek
for their abiding interest in scientific research.

This photo of Holly Dodd and a braiding pattern on a pony was taken to illustrate a quote from Professor Christine Alvarado about... well just go and read it, please.

Models and miniatures

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, there is a chapel. It once belonged to a Catholic girls' school. It was built as a half model of another chapel in France, but after it was being built, they realized a half-sized stairway wouldn't work. Mystery and adventure ensued.

There is much history, physics, artistry and varied purposes in such things.

Toy soldiers were quite the rage in England at one time. That led to kids who knew military tactics as well as some kids know their favorite video games now. That led to lead, though—lead based paints on lead figurines, and there's some biochemistry involved that they didn't know about yet in those days. (Some were tin, and now they're other metals, or plastic.)

Follow those trails, and things you didn't know were even out there will connect to things that are already in your own knowledge and experience. Connections
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a detailed miniature carousel

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If you click the image above, you can see my other photos from my visit to Hollycombe Steam Collection, on their music box day, in 2013. There were collectors of mechanical music devices, and of miniature fair rides.

This is a first run of a trick Vlad Gurdiga has arranged for my site to do—a tool for using folders as slide shows. Vlad's pretty great. For me, the photos loaded quickly on my MacBook, semi-quickly on an iPad, and a subset of them loaded, after a while, on my iPhone.

The first photos are pub lunch in Liphook, animals on the property near the car park, some of Hollycombe's collection of wagons that travelling-fair workers used to live in, and of various things inside the park.

Helping casually

No one needs an assembly line to make a single item, nor to educate a single child. Rather than seeing the curriculum and then trying to wrap that around your child, or insert all the parts, it works better to see your child and help him learn as part of a busy life, considering occasionally whether maybe you should introduce other topics into his life, or introduce him to other people, places and things. This can be done casually, though, and doesn't need to be scheduled or methodical.

page 121 of The Big Book of Unschooling (page 110 in first edition)
photo by Chelsea Thurman
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Better right away

The second you have a positive attitude, even fleetingly, your life is better, right then.



Thoughts about doing better
photo by Sandra Dodd
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What proof do you have?

A response to this question:
What proof do you have that it is working? How would you suggest parents reassure themselves that this path is providing everything their children need?

Well starting at the end, there is no path that will provide everything for a child. There are some [paths] that don't even begin to intend to provide everything their children need. Maybe first parents should consider what it is they think their children really need.

As to proof of whether unschooling is working, if the question is whether kids are learning, parents can tell when they're learning because they're there with them. How did you know when your child could ride a bike? You were able to let go, quit running, and watch him ride away. You know they can tell time when they tell you what time it is. You know they're learning to read when you spell something out to your husband and the kid speaks the secret word right in front of the younger siblings. In real-life practical ways children begin to use what they're learning, and as they're not off at school, the parents see the evidence of their learning constantly.

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo of a kaleidoscope (and Holly) by Holly

Holly was six when the response above was written,
and nineteen when she took the photo.
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Scary shadows

Sometimes children want to puff up and be bigger, and stronger, and braver, than they normally are. Help them play that, if they want to.

Sometimes children want to be a little bit scared, for fun. They might want something spooky. Stay near, and spook them gently. Be quick to change the game if "peek-a-boo" becomes too much.

It's natural for kids to think about power, and fear, and heroics, the same way kittens and puppies play rough.

SandraDodd.com/t/monstermania
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Not what, but why?

When someone expressed shock that unschoolers felt TV was okay in any amount, Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

I wouldn't say that books are ok in any amount because it isn't *what* a child is doing that's important, it's *why* the child is doing it. A child who reads all day long because he has many options and his parents appreciate the value in choosing what you want to do is in a good place. A child who reads all day because his mother picks at him constantly when he's in her presence isn't in a good place.

I feel that TV is a resource like any other and that given the freedom to do so kids will use it when they need it and not use it when they don't, just like any other resource.

—Joyce Fetteroll

["TV" could be video, games, YouTube...]
SandraDodd.com/tvchoice
photo by Heather Booth

A long, quiet time

If your purpose is just to be with your child, and relaxed, and have a chance to talk, go with something that's non-verbal and takes a long, quiet time.

SandraDodd.com/truckcomments
photo by Holly Dodd

Sleepy feels good

When there are options, feeling sleepy and choosing to go to bed can be warm, wonderful feelings. How sweet, to have a clean bed waiting, and to want to get into it.

On one small bit of gratitude, one can step up and see another one, and another.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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