Learning

How will they learn to learn?

By learning.

SandraDodd.com/faq
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Today...

Live lightly.

SandraDodd.com/reallearning
photo by Sandra Dodd

Exploring locally

Deb Lewis wrote:

I have found so many interesting things to do around our little town just by talking with people and asking questions. I ask everyone questions about what they like to do, etc. I have met so many people with interesting hobbies who have been happy to share what they know with my son and show him their collections.

The man who runs the local green house lets us help transplant seedlings. He grows worms too, and lets Dylan dig around in the worm beds.

The guy who works at the newspaper speaks Chinese and draws cartoons. He's given Dylan lots of pointers about where to get good paper and story boards, etc.

The old guy at the antique shop was a college professor and is a huge Montana History buff, whenever Dylan has questions, we go browse the antiques.

The lady at the flower shop keeps birds and lets Dylan hold them when we visit.

—Deb Lewis

some local particulars from Deb Lewis's "List of Things to do in the Winter"—a long list of things a parent and child could do if it's cold or they want to explore SandraDodd.com/strew/deblist
photo by Diane Marcengill

Something old. . . something blue

Something old, something new,
something borrowed, something blue."

—traditional English saying about what brides should wear

"And all of this is true because it rhymes."

—Vitruvius, in The Lego Movie

Look for beauty, truth and humor. Connect the dots!

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Giving, learning and growing

Parvine Shahid wrote, on the topic of "Service":

Being with my children, giving them in each moment all I can, learning and growing with them, changed my understanding of "service."

I have chosen to give, help and serve my children. I feel being with them has contributed towards a new understanding of the word as well as a way of building a connection with them. I can also see how it can be extended to others.

I realize how much weight a word can carry, how changes in my own feelings have lightened that weight and thrown a new light on the word itself. Service now stirs up and brings great feelings of joy.

—Parvine Shahid

SandraDodd.com/serviceResponse
photo by Sandra Dodd (click for more info)
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The flow of history

What is new now might be an antique before your children are grown.

Try to ride the gentle flow of time and progress.

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Amber Ivey

Trash or treasure?

You can use antique shops or junk stores, charity shops, thrift stores, as museums to visit with your children. Many things are neither trash nor treasure, but can be interesting examples of art, technology, geography, politics, function and design.

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In deciding which link to use with this image, I settled on the history page, and noticed a paragraph I wrote over a decade ago. Now, two deaths and a Nobel prize have entered the story:

History can be nearly current, like comparative pop/funk of the '80s— is Prince really all that much greater than Michael Jackson? Is it because he plays guitar? What about the history of the guitar? Does Minneapolis create better musicians than Gary, Indiana, or does it even matter? Is Bob Dylan evidence for Minneapolis? One thing leads to another. Thinking about Minneapolis can lead to thoughts of U.S. history, of early 19th century border fortifications, the Mississippi River, the French in Canada, and in Louisiana. You can let your mind float downstream (or up). "Hiawatha" would've been set in that area, and Longfellow wrote that and many other things of childhood, and parents, and night time.

SandraDodd.com/history
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Knuckles, the past and the future

Thirty days hath September,
All the rest I can't remember.
The calendar hangs on the wall;
Why bother me with this at all?

That's a rhyme that goes around, in protest of a longer and more complicated thing kids used to be pressed to memorize. Some of those kids are still alive, but the antique "hath" remains.


Times change, though. People don't flip through calendars on the wall so much as they ask Siri or Google, or look at the calendar on the iPad. Phones know what date it is, and what time zone you're in.


Go to this page to see how to calculate month lengths with your knuckles: SandraDodd.com/months
image by Andrew and Glenda Sikes
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The past, the future, and the right now

I love history, and I like to think about the future, but it's important to bring yourself back, very often to the very now.

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

It helps a lot to try for better moments not days. Don't judge a day by one upset, judge it as a bad moment and move forward. A little bit better each moment. A little bit more aware.

SandraDodd.com/moment
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Change a few little things

Stop thinking schoolishly. Stop acting teacherishly. Stop talking about learning as though it’s separate from life.

SandraDodd.com/deschooling
photo by Marty Dodd, of an beautifully cast and enamelled antique slot machine

No assembly required

My favorite definition of unschooling is providing an environment in which learning can flourish. School prescribes what should be learned, and in what order. Then they build an assembly line, and put all the students on it. The reward those who get through easily, and punish others. School at home is like an assembly line for one.


Learning for Fun: Interview with Sandra Dodd
photo by Sandra Dodd, in an antique shop,
in Ashford, Surrey
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Calm in confusion

Learn to be content with your own puzzlement, and to nurture the puzzlement around you. It's okay not to have all the answers, but to let the questions confuse you for a while as you move in new directions.

You might like SandraDodd.com/gradualchange
(the quote is not from there, but it's related)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Handle life carefully

The fewer things you say or do to make things worse, the better things will be.

SandraDodd.com/breathing
photo by Marty Dodd

Ideas and trivia

Learning isn't in fancy books or computer games, it all happens in the ideas children have, in the trivial facts they fit together to come up with their view of the world—past present and future. You don't need a lesson or a unit to show a child what's wonderful about woodgrain, ice crystals on the windshield, or birdsongs. Five seconds worth of pointing and saying "Look, these trees were not native to North America" might possibly lead to an hour long discussion, or a lifelong fascination. Bringing something interesting home, browsing in an antique shop, listening to new music on instruments you've never heard—all those build neural pathways and give you a chance to be together in a special place.

Quote from the 1998 article "All Kinds of Homeschooling"
photo by Holly Dodd
of art by Holly Dodd
which happened to catch a rainbow
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Change a few little things

Stop thinking schoolishly. Stop acting teacherishly. Stop talking about learning as though it’s separate from life.

SandraDodd.com/deschooling
photo by Marty Dodd, of an beautifully cast and enamelled antique slot machine
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Treasure-ish

One country's trash is another country's mysterious antique treasure.

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd

Minor little stories

My granny had a button box, in a fruit-cake tin. The kind with Texas pictures on it—a star, a cowboy, the Alamo.


I still see those tins sometimes. Even when I was older and went to her house I would ask to play with those. Partly she didn't have much to do. Partly it was fun to see which ones I remembered, and to look at them with more experience. At first, when I was little, I could only tell the big ones from the little ones, and sort by color or number of holes. And there used to be the BIG coat buttons from the 1930s and 40's.

As I got older, they got older and more "antique." And as I got older I could tell that some of those buttons were older than my grandmother. Nothing special in there, just the collection of her life, and she hardly ever sewed anything but quilts, and she crocheted. Most of the dresses and aprons she made just tied.

I wish I had thought to put them out and talk about them, in those days, but they were private with me, and she would have told me to get them off the table, probably, anyway.

They talked over quilting, she and the older female relatives. My papaw didn't have a truck. But the men talked walking slowly down to fish, and while fishing, and while walking slowly back.

Doing Two Things at Once
Similar tin to the one I remember, image lifted gratefully from an eBay listing.
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like pulling a bouquet of flowers out of a wand

Sometimes my kids get bored, and I can light up a half hour by digging into some box or drawer and producing something they've never yet seen. Like a magician pulling a bouquet of flowers out of a wand, I pull out a little doll, or some Australian coins, electric curlers (for sorting, putting back on the rods, and discussing), muffin tins, poker chips, grandpa's bow ties, a hand-cranked egg beater to froth up soapy water (I wish I had a hand-cranked drill; my dad did). Whenever I pull these things out I tell the kids why I have them and what I know about them. I told about the gold strip in Australian paper money, about ties my dad used to have with cowboys and bucking broncos on them, about patterned muffin tins being pressed kind of like steel car parts are pressed, of getting my hair stuck in electric curlers when I was a teenager and crying because I was afraid my long hair would have to be cut off.

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd

The photo is not of my house, but of a candy shop in the village of Tissington, in Derbyshire, which had an antique till ("cash register," in American parlance).

When I was little, there were a few little stores in northern New Mexico that still had mechanical cash registers that didn't take electricity.

The talking will start

I can’t predict what will be discussed the next time you set out some engrossing bowl of shells or foreign coins, or a box of buttons, or the antique Tinker Toys you got at the garage sale, but if you sit there long enough, the talking will start and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.


Leaning on a Truck
photo by Sandra Dodd

Light and happy

One of my intentions from way back, before unschooling came around in our lives, was to keep the tone of the house light and happy.


The quote was from a chat, but this is a good match: SandraDodd.com/happy
photo by Sandra Dodd of a place in Leiden, in The Netherlands
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