Patterns and dots

Find, consider, value connections.

Notice, contemplate, appreciate patterns.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Stages, and stars

The first stage is all the fear and uncertainty and angst.

Then comes deschooling and noticing how much of one's thoughts might be school-based and how easy it is for adults to belittle and discount children. That will take a year or so.


After school starts to recede it will be like the stars showing on a clear dark night in the country. They were always there, but you couldn’t see them for the glare of the sun or the city lights. So now you'll start to see that they're not all the same, and there are patterns, and a history, and there's science, mythology, art, and then the moon comes out! And then you hear coyotes and owls and water moving somewhere… what water?

It might be like that, or it might be exactly that. But until you stop doing what you were doing before, you will not see those stars.

After a few years of reveling in natural learning and the richness of the universe, if you or your children decide to take a class it will be an entirely different experience than you would have had when school loomed so large in your vision of the world.

That's all of page 37 (or 40) of The Big Book of Unschooling,
which leads to SandraDodd.com/stages
photo by Sandra Dodd
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This is repeated from a July 2012 post, to which someone responded "Beautiful. This is one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing on unschooling."

Mix life up

Can you get out of the house more? Go do different grocery stores? I've suggested this ten times over the years and some people perk up and get it immediately, and some think I'm a small-minded dope. People learn from stimulation. Seeing things they haven't seen before that are not entirely unlike what they have seen will help them build brain trails and patterns. If you go to the same grocery store and walk the aisles in the same order every time, the kids won't learn anything but that pattern. They won't learn the range of what stores have, how differently it can be arranged, and how to shop by looking at labels and looking at what's stored near that product, instead of just heading straight to where you KNOW the soup you always use is. How will they ever see exotic new soup? How will they ever see bulk pasta if you always get the same bag of noodles of the lowest shelf near the same old same old same old stuff?

That can go for going to the post office, to the movies, to buy shoes, all KINDS of things. Mix life up. Take a new trail.

That's from a 25-year-old discussion:
Conversations With Sandra Dodd: Welcome!
photo by Sandra Dodd

Let light shine through you.

See how that cut-out affected the table, and the light? It's in Wales, but we can see it wherever we are today. See how that little jack-o-lantern ornament affected so much of the world?

I love the light through that orange bottle. Beautiful. I like the pumpkin, or gourd, too.

Janine saw all of that, and took a photo. I saw that photo, and sent it to you.

Beauty and patterns are all around us.

Let light shine through you.
SandraDodd.com/curiosity
photo by Janine Davies

Improving thought

Kathy Ward had eight children, and was active in discussions years back. At first she rejected video games, but changed her mind. This is part of something longer:

Everyone agreed that [Tetris] was a great game for developing and improving mathematical thinking. The puzzles require some thinking about patterns and ability to recognize and recall geometric designs. Even the little kids enjoy it. I don't know why a parent would love to see a child spend an hour at a time figuring out puzzles like this in a workbook or on paper but be dismayed that the same child was doing this on a computer or a video game system. In fact, the whole thing is more challenging on the game system because it moves and changes, it's more interactive than geometric puzzles on a piece of paper.

When I told the older children that I was interested in putting their ideas about video games on this webpage...

—Kathy Ward
who continues that writing into other games, and benefits including problem solving, spatial reasoning, maps, graphic arts, physics of motion, vocabulary of auto mechanics, morality, military history, comparative cultures, and geography.

SandraDodd.com/kathyward/videogames
photo by Sarah Peshek

Naming things

Seeing new things and learning their names is the way babies and toddlers learn their native languages and how they learn about the world. It works for people of any age.

Each model of the universe requires identification, sorting, relationships between things, and other patterns. Whatever seems trivial in one context is of central importance in another.

Names and words and labels and descriptors have a glory about them.

Naming Things elsewhere here
photo by Denaire Nixon, of a young red-footed booby

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

Changing thoughts

"Changing our own thought patterns is hard and it can help to have strong motivation along with examples of alternative ways to think about the same situation."

—Pam Sorooshian

Motivation might be wanting to be the sort of parent who can unschool well. Alternative ways to see things are offered in Just Add Light and Stir, and at the pages linked from the posts. Best wishes finding jewels to brighten your life.

SandraDodd.com/perspective
photo by Sandra Dodd

Patterns and angles

What you see every day can be seen in a different way.



SandraDodd.com/checklists
photo by Sandra Dodd

Twirling, swirling

Through playing, children learn physics and dance and balance and color theory, but you don't need to use any of those terms. They will be discovering what their body can do, and how. They will feel the effects of wind, gravity, speed, and force, gradually through everyday experiences. They will see how colors mix or clash or complement. They will play with patterns, without needing any of those words.

All learning is connected, and everything counts.

Play around.
photo by Cátia Maciel

Getting it

When people say "I read [whichever] webpage last year, but..." and I say "Read it again," I think they might think I'm accusing them of not having read it, but it's that after using the ideas a while, the description makes lots more sense.


Whatever it is we're learning—crochet patterns, musical notation, using crutches, building a fire, making cookies—hearing instructions (or reading them) makes VERY little sense at first. Later it makes more sense. But after trying it and figuring out some things for ourselves, and then going back and looking at the directions, they come to life, in color, and they make 3-D sense.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit

Read a little, try a little; wait a while, watch
art and photo by Roya Dedeaux

You can go on and on!

Linda Wyatt wrote:

Play with patterns. Play with sets. Go outside and throw rocks and pay attention to the paths they travel. Drop stones into a pond and watch the ripples. Figure out why buildings don't fall down- or why they do. Ponder why the wind off Lake Michigan travels through the city of Chicago the way it does. And Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains... what's different in very windy places? How do you need to change things to accommodate that? Or other weather? Why are most of the roofs in places that get a lot of snow not flat?

I could go on and on and on and on. You can, too.

Question everything. Figure some of it out.

—Linda Wyatt

SandraDodd.com/math
photo by Sandra Dodd
of wall art at Bhava Yoga Studio

Beauty

The other day I saw some beautiful onions. People would buy them even if they hadn't been arranged so nicely, but the produce manager had set each onion down by hand, with thought, and there they were in a pattern I helped to dismantle by taking some of them home with me.

Some of what we have used to be elsewhere. Some of what is at our house will be other places someday. Patterns come and go like cloud pictures, and we ourselves are part of that changing swirl of life and beauty.

click to see others
The photo gallery works on the blog, but not in e-mail; sorry.

Math without numbers

In thinking of mathematics, I operated on the assumption that our children might be more pattern-oriented than I am (spatial and logical intelligences) and that they might be more word-dependent than my husband. We provided games involving patterns–board games, video games, dice, cards, and singing games–and played them with the children. One of the most memorable games was Bazaar, a game with exchange rates and values but requiring no numbers or reading. (In Germany there is a similar game called Bierbörse.) Math was a fun part of the fabric of life. It was the structure of games and of music and of Lego and Ramagon. We talked about proportion and perspective in art and construction, but only in words, not with numbers. They found patterns; I found patterns, and we shared them without me saying "this is mathematics."

Games     /     Geography without maps
screenshot by Holly Dodd, of the game FlipPix

Three

It can be fun to play with the idea of three. I had a literature professor say "Three trees make a row." He meant that finding three instances of something in a piece of writing is worth pursuing.

I thought of real trees, though, and more often three trees make a triangle.

That idea has amused me for a long time, of rows and triangles. Finding, seeing, hearing three things that are similar can make fun connections worth pursuing.

There are threes in literature, lyrics, art, games, rhythms, and on clocks. Whether you have young children to amuse with this or not, maybe look around for and play around with threes.

Patterns
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Everyday patterns

Meredith Novak wrote:

Kids learn because they are observant. I don't only mean modelling, I mean the human brain is designed to notice patterns and there are patterns everywhere - in speech, in social interactions, in shapes of things, in the relationships between physical characteristics. Some sets of related patterns we call "language" some we call "mathematics" some we call "music" etc. Kids can't help but notice those patterns and think about them because that's what our big convoluted brains do best.

More, by Meredith

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SandraDodd.com/patterns
photo by Hema Bharadwaj

Perspective and patterns

The patterns you and your children see are worth exploring and expanding. The connections you make are your model of the moment, and ultimately part of your model of the universe—past, present, future, imagined, revised, spooky and sweet.

SandraDodd.com/perspective
photo by Annie Regan

Clearly and maturely

Rippy D. wrote:

[The Always Learning discussion] has helped me think more clearly and maturely. It has helped me change unhelpful patterns and most of all helped me step into the *JOY* of life, connection, partnership with my children and husband. I know how scary it is to feel examined, and I think some other readers interpret examination as meanness, like I once did. I think to do unschooling well, it is a fundamental element to have an examined life. To be mindful of our choices and understand our thought processes.

—Rippy Dusseldorp

Healing Presence
photo by Ester Siroky
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Color and form

Look for patterns and unique expressions, all around you. There will be packing materials, automobiles, tea mugs, hats and toys to serve as sculpture and utilitarian design, even if you're stuck at home.

Look out your window. Look AT your window.

some other windows
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Finding patterns

Look up. Trees? Clouds? Arches or ceiling joists? Textured ceiling?

Look down. Snow? Sand? Grass? Dirt? Concrete, tile or wood? Water, maybe, or carpet. (Both at once would be bad.)

Pretend to see your thoughts. Slow? Calm? Racing? Repetitive?

Different days are different ways. In a moment, it might be different. Find good patterns.

Patterns and Connections
photo by Sandra Dodd
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