Make home sparkly

Jo Isaac wrote:

What do your kid LOVE to do in the home? Do more of it. Buy more of it. Make home as sparkly as you can. Buy fancy foods, buy take-away dinners from different cultures, make extravagant hot chocolates, put your Christmas decorations up early, plan a cool advent calendar event, plan to watch a bunch of cool movies, etc.

—Jo Isaac

Sparkly Unschooling is a good match,
but the original is here on facebook
photo by Kinsey Norris
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Sparkly and wonderful newness

Part of what makes something sparkly and wonderful is the observer being new to it and seeing it as a giant wall of glory and potential.

Be patient and understanding if your child is growing tired or more cynical about an interest or pursuit.

When unschooling isn't as new, it can begin to dull for the parent. Find what you can see as new and sparkly, in your child and his interests.

The first paragraph is a quote from the Focus, Hobbies, Obsessions chat.
photo by Kinsey Norris

Sparkly, bubbly, warm and effusive

Unschooling should be rich, flowing and mindful living where learning abounds. Too many people see "living" as nothing more than the absence of death. Let's encourage sparkly, bubbly, warm and effusive lives.

SandraDodd.com/sparkly
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Sparkly thoughts and moods

When someone said she should make her house seem more sparkly, I wrote:

Not seem. No pretending.

Not your house. Your thoughts, your interactions, your moods, your responses. Sparkling, like sparkling from one thought to another, connecting a picture with a song with a joke with a movie with a dog.

Sparkly ideas
photo by Colleen Prieto
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Environmental factors

In the quote below, "it" could be replaced with

• home
• life
• your nest
• your children's day
• yourself

Make it happy and funny and comfortable and exciting so that they want to be with you. Be sparkly.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Bright and sparkly

Jenny Cyphers wrote:

Intellectually, I got unschooling all the way from the very beginning. The part that took more time was relationships and wholeness. When I got THAT, that is when things started happening in the direction that made unschooling work great!

The way I see it, often, is that there are multiple facets that make unschooling work best. The two biggest facets that go hand in hand for me are the absence of school and school think, combined with real working relationships with my kids. People can go and do one or the other and not let them overflow into each other, but it won't be as bright and sparkly, with the facet analogy.

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Karen James

There goes the darkness

One of my guiding principles is that I want my children's worlds to be sparkly.

There goes the dull and the darkness. Easily not chosen, not an option.

Sparkly Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

Where learning abounds

Unschooling should be rich, flowing and mindful living where learning abounds. Too many people see "living" as nothing more than the absence of death. Let's encourage sparkly, bubbly, warm and effusive lives.

SandraDodd.com/sparkly
photo by Elise Lauterbach
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Funny and comfortable

Make it happy and funny and comfortable and exciting so that they want to be with you. Be sparkly.

"It" could be
  - home
  - life
  - your nest
  - your children's day
  - yourself

Sparkly Unschooling
photo by Janine

Choose the good things

No parent has to do anything. They choose to do things.
. . . .
Through all the innumerable factors, how DO people decide?

By deciding what principles they are following. Each principle one clings to eliminates about half the choices in the world easily, and in a good way. Each additional principle eliminates some more options, until the world becomes manageable.

One of my guiding principles is that I want my children's worlds to be sparkly.

There goes the dull and the darkness. Easily not chosen, not an option.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly, 2004
photo by Irene Adams

Sparkly, happy, random thoughts

Humor is a great warm-up for any thinking. If one's mind can jump to get a joke, it will be easier for it to jump to synthesize any ideas, to make a complex plan, to use a tool in an unexpected way, to understand history and the complexities of politics. If a child can connect something about a food with a place name or an article of clothing, parents shouldn't worry that he hasn't memorized political boundaries or the multiplication table.

The more that fun, divergent thought is discouraged, the more quiet and dark those minds will be. The more that sparkly, happy, random thoughts are encouraged, the brighter that home will be.

SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo, sign, found uncredited, "out there"

Choose the good things

No parent has to do anything. They choose to do things.
. . . .
Through all the innumerable factors, how DO people decide?

By deciding what principles they are following. Each principle one clings to eliminates about half the choices in the world easily, and in a good way. Each additional principle eliminates some more options, until the world becomes manageable.

One of my guiding principles is that I want my children's worlds to be sparkly.

There goes the dull and the darkness. Easily not chosen, not an option.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly, 2004
photo by Irene Adams

Environmental factors

In the quote below, "it" could be replaced with

• home
• life
• your nest
• your children's day
• yourself

Make it happy and funny and comfortable and exciting so that they want to be with you. Be sparkly.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Flowing play

One of my guiding principles is that I want my children's worlds to be sparkly.

There goes the dull and the darkness. Easily not chosen, not an option.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly
photo by Julie D, in Leiden, at a playground
also seen here: Clearer and larger

Ideas and energy and fun

Joyce Fetterol wrote:

One of the factors that drew me to homeschooling rather than public schooling was that I thought learning should be fun. But only the unschoolers were focusing on fun and having positive relationships with their kids.

Much of the other forums were devoted to how to make kids do their work, what products were best, what to do with younger kids while older ones did their work.

Pam Sorooshian responded:

This got me thinking, Joyce. Because I found unschooling the same way, just looking for homeschooling information and discovered that the message boards where the unschoolers were talking were the ones that got my heart racing because they were so alive and sparkly with ideas and energy and fun and love of their children.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sparkly and joyful

Choices in an environment maintained with learning in mind are different from choices in a quiet, boring place. If I were a kid, my choice in a quiet, boring place would be to go to school.

Make your unschooling sparkly and joyful.


SandraDodd.com/schoolchoice (righthand box halfway down)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Positive fun

Joyce Fetterol wrote:

One of the factors that drew me to homeschooling rather than public schooling was that I thought learning should be fun. But only the unschoolers were focusing on fun and having positive relationships with their kids.

Much of the other forums were devoted to how to make kids do their work, what products were best, what to do with younger kids while older ones did their work.

Pam Sorooshian responded:

This got me thinking, Joyce. Because I found unschooling the same way, just looking for homeschooling information and discovered that the message boards where the unschoolers were talking were the ones that got my heart racing because they were so alive and sparkly with ideas and energy and fun and love of their children.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sparkly and flowing

Sometimes it's fun to try to think with fewer words.

Unschoolers can move toward "better" by making better choices.

Imagine a way to be. What about clean, moving water?

When you choose activities, responses, thoughts and moods could you choose things more sparkly and flowing?

SandraDodd.com/feedback
photo by Maria Wong
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Criss-cross trails

Do the best you can to survive the bumps and unexpected turns of the trails through the unschooling world, which will necessarily cross back over and through themselves, which is how learning works–a little now, a little more later to connect to what you've learned since, and detours that end up being short cuts.

The quote is from page 3 of The Big Book of Unschooling.
photo by Sandra Dodd

Bigger and better

A mom who's going to help a child learn from the whole wide world should herself become ever increasingly comfortable with what all is IN the whole wide world, and how she can help bring her child to the world and the world to her child.

Unschooling should and can be bigger and better than school.

If it's smaller and quieter than school, the mom should do more to make life sparkly.

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Kirby Dodd