One thing leads to something else

Mary Ellen (nellebelle) wrote, years ago:

Up to now, we have never had any video games in our house. It wasn't that I purposely avoided them, it was just something we'd never done and the girls had never asked for. I had a vague idea in my head that they were negative along the lines of TV and other electronic media. Generally, when video games make the news it is not positive. I had never before questioned these ideas. Lisa had mentioned playing a race car game at her friend's house. We decided to give the girls a Nintendo64 for Christmas. This morning I played Crusin World with Lisa. The game is full of famous landmarks. It is not totally realistic, but does match many real aspects of the countries you race through. While cruising Germany, I mentioned the autobahn. I don't know too much about it, except that people drive really fast there. This led us to consider mph vs. kph, which led to the metric vs. US system of measurement. I told Lisa that I had bought some stuff to help learn the metric system because I wanted to understand it better. She said, "We can learn it together".

It never ceases to amaze me how doing one thing can lead to learning about something else.

—Mary Ellen(nellebelle)

"Everything I really need to know I learned from video games and cheesy cartoons."
SandraDodd.com/t/cheesy

image respectfully lifted from
Launchbox Games Database

What leads to learning

Mary Ellen / nellebelle wrote:

The girls and I did a *unit study* on the Olympics. I use the term loosely, because I didn't sit down and plan units or require reports on what they learned. Basically, we watched and watched and watched Olympics coverage, bought the official program in order to follow events more easily, got library books about Michelle Kwan and other Olympic stars present and past, and recorded some of our favorite events for repeat viewing. We even got the Olympic soundtrack CD. While watching, all sorts of tidbits came up for discussion. Where our favorite athletes were from had us frequently grabbing the globe or an atlas. How were events scored, why did some countries have many participants and others only a few, what is a sport, sportsmanship, and much more. Some nice unplanned things occurred at the same time. Pat was working with some people from Spain, and a couple of them came to visit. They came to dinner at our house and spent the evening watching and discussing Olympics with us. This was the night that Ice Dancing was on, and we had a spirited discussion on whether this should qualify as a sport, or not. It was exciting for all of us to have a foreign person associated with the international sports industry spend time with us. That it happened during the world's most popular sports competition was really cool. . . . . It never ceases to amaze me how doing one thing can lead to learning about something else.

—Mary Ellen

Part of something longer, SandraDodd.com/t/cheesy
photo by Cathy Koetsier, on a visit to Cambridge

Learning from Cartoons

Each family discovers the value of choices in unique and wonderful ways. Well, not every family–only those who actually do start giving their children choices, and in which the adults work to see the choices they are making as well.

One surprise is that programs the parents had thought were "stupid" have led to discussion and research on the autobahn, the metric system, classic movies, technology, international sports, geography, segregation, famous speeches, sportsmanship and ethics, live theatre, opera, oil and mining, hygiene, reproduction, Australian food, life cycle of frogs, hurricane formation, trust, cooperation, classical music, Vikings, religion, art, how different animals survive the winter, Galileo, Japanese mythology, cooking, geology… this list could be twice as long without leaving that section of my website.

One trail went from a mummy cartoon to Egypt, to Pharaohs, to slavery, to the Civil War, to Abraham Lincoln, and to other presidents. The Simpsons' parody of Schoolhouse Rock led to a discussion on Thoreau and Walden.

text from page 141 (or 153) of The Big Book of Unschooling
and that page links to SandraDodd.com/t/cheesy and SandraDodd.com/t/learning
cartoon portrait by Gina Trujillo, my niece, based on this self-made photo