photo by Jihong Tang
Showing posts with label waterfall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label waterfall. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Ideas, changing, carefully
photo by Jihong Tang
Monday, August 19, 2024
Thoughts can flow
Don't think of your brain. Think of your mind and of your awareness. A little tiny brain can hold a LOT of information. A big fat one can fail to do so. It's not size, it's peace and use.
photo by Cally Brown
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Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Planning, resources and intention

Sylvia Woodman wrote:
Unschooling is not "doing nothing." It takes planning, and resources, and intention. I think it felt more like work in the earlier years while I was still doing the bulk of my Deschooling. (Don't get me wrong there are still things that "catch me by surprise" in my thinking even now! But it's not as constant.) But at some point, there was a shift. A Leveling Up. Unschooling became less of the way we were educating the children and more of the way we lived our lives. It wasn't one thing that we did. It was a million tiny choices (and not so tiny choices) that led us to where we are today.
—Sylvia Woodman
and the quote is also at SandraDodd.com/levelup/
photo by Jo Isaac
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Quietly empty yourself
With a mind open to change, then, go here: Read a Little
photo by James Coburn IV
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
The open flow of real-world sharing
The best thing unschoolers can do is to unschool well. The best thing those who are interested in helping others come along the same path can do is explain what helped it work well.
Reading other families' personal stories, hearing about paths that didn't work well and others that did is what helped me when I was new to this, and that's what I've been involved in helping happen ever since—real unschoolers sharing their real experiences.
Some people don't want to share in public and that's fine. Some people share things in public that turn out not to be true, and that's not cool. But over the years, many hundreds of unschoolers who first found one another through AOL's message boards, or at conferences, or through e-mail correspondence have met other unschoolers in person, and each person must ultimately gauge for herself who to emulate or trust or to go to for inspiration or whatever. There is no central board certifying unschoolers or conference organizers or listowners. It's the open flow of real-world sharing.
SandraDodd.com/help
photo by Linda Wyatt
Thursday, February 1, 2024
Being, in balance
I think finding balance is probably the hardest thing. It's easy to make an extreme caricature of "being an unschooler" rather than finding a way to live unschooling. Someone recently assured us she was "doing it," but having someone else say "that's it, you're balanced on that bicycle" is worthless if the bicycle falls over. There's doing, and there's being, and there's "it," and the reason this list exists and thrives is that those ideas (doing, being, "it") live in the realm of philosophy, of the examination of ideas, of the weeding out of error and fallacy.
Half of me says "bummer" and half of me says "cool!" and so at the balance point of those two, we continue to discuss unschooling.
photo by Linda Wyatt
Friday, January 12, 2024
Let the light shine
Probably everyone reading this knows that, but unschoolers have figured out ways to step away, just far enough to let the light shine on options and choices.
Confidence can grow when unschooling starts working well, and everything seems clearer when it's happening at your house, and not theoretical.
photo by Diane Marcengill
Monday, December 4, 2023
Practical positivity
If a person with marked highs and lows gets too involved with depressing politics or scary or sad this'n'that, or doesn't gather a tool box of self-soothing thoughts and behaviors (breathing, walking, sending birthday cards and thank you cards to other people, singing, playing sports—different sets for different people, but some positive, uplifting habits), the low can turn to a depression that isn't easy to rise out of, and can be nearly impossible to function from.
photo by Linda Wyatt
Thursday, September 21, 2023
Seeing unschooling more clearly
Perhaps it’s more process than component. Parents must deschool themselves. Gradually, but not TOO gradually, they should examine the schoolish ideas and assumptions that come up in them, and see if they can lay them out to dry. They can file them away as school memories, and as outdated assumptions, or as tools that could hamper unschooling’s success.
Even if parents were to create the richest physical environment and a schedule for their kids that involved being home plenty, and going out into the interesting world often, if the parents are looking at the children through school-colored glasses, it will not become unschooling.
photo by Linda Wyatt
Monday, May 8, 2023
Explore ideas
There is no academic degree that would enable you to answer all your children's questions.
photo by Rosie Moon
Friday, March 17, 2023
Peace
photo by Diane Marcengill
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
In full flow
Confident parenting, in full flow, is made of courage born of successes of big choices and small decisions that were once tentative, and before that you hadn't even considered them.
Enough improvement and ease can cause good options to tumble and flow all around you.
photo by Rosie Moon
Monday, January 2, 2023
Variable speeds
Water freezes; ice melts.
The sun goes down; the sun comes up.
Children are still, and sit or lie down.
Kids jump up and run around.
When I was younger and I would change, I thought something was wrong with me. I was under the mistaken impression that personality and mood should be constants. Life is better when I think of those fluctuations as tides, or as the weather of the soul.
Cocooning and other stillness
photo by Diane Marcengill
The sun goes down; the sun comes up.
When I was younger and I would change, I thought something was wrong with me. I was under the mistaken impression that personality and mood should be constants. Life is better when I think of those fluctuations as tides, or as the weather of the soul.
photo by Diane Marcengill
Sunday, April 3, 2022
Stepping outside
photo by Ester Siroky
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
Autumn waterfall
Leaves changing, water flowing—visible signs of the natural passage of time.
I'm glad Gail and Broc hiked to this beautiful place and Gail captured an image.
The water's flowing even if nobody's watching.
photo by Gail Higgins
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Pure and joyful
photo by Jihong Tang
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Wednesday, November 11, 2020
An intellectual process
This whole unschooling journey was very very much an intellectual process for me—a process of developing deeper and deeper understanding by reading and listening to others, thinking hard about what I'd read and heard, applying what made sense, paying attention to how things were going, waiting a little, trying out other ideas that seemed to make sense, and continuing that process for all the years I had children—taking in input of others ideas and experiences, considering and analyzing, acting on my own conclusions, observing my own family dynamics—all at the same time.
—Pam Sorooshian
The quote lives at Understanding Unschooling
photo by Pushpa Ramachandran
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Sunday, March 15, 2020
Peace is primary

Tara Joe Farrell wrote:
Peace is THE priority in unschooling. It's primary. No amount of dropping bedtimes or food/media restrictions, no finding the yeses, no rich environment can get a family to unschooling well until someone (the at-home parent, the keeper of the nest, usually the mom) understands how to scan for peace, see where it's missing, and then find a way to let peace grow in that space. That could mean simply planting peace, but it can also mean clearing obstacles (including ourselves). Learning only, ever, thrives where there is peace.
—Tara Joe Farrell
photo by Gail Higgins—rainbow on a waterfall
(click to enlarge)
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Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Your move

Sometimes I’ve said that conversations, friendships, relationships, are like a chess game. You don’t get to plan out all the moves in advance and decide the end. You get to make ONE move. Then you wait.
a discussion ensued.
photo by Vicki Watkins
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Something looks like this:
reflection,
sun,
toys,
water,
waterfall
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Relationship, trust and peace

The relationship, the trust, and peace, are what will help learning work.
Relationships and wholeness
photo by Gail Higgins
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