Full-time learning environment

Unschooling is a form of homeschooling; it's a way to homeschool. The method is to create and maintain a full-time learning environment in which learning happens at home and away, from as many sources as the family comes across.


from "Methods," page 109,The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd

the simple truth

"I have seen, again and again, the simple truth that the more a parent plays with, listens to, and includes their child, the better their relationship."

—Claire Horsley

SandraDodd.com/being/with
photo by Holly Dodd
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Calm and Quiet

Please take time for reflection. Take time for your mind to be calm and quiet. Take time to be open to input, not busy creating output. Don't respond, think. Take the ideas and let them "be" in your mind and go spend lots of time with your children and consider and observe how the ideas might play out in your own home with your own kids.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/lists/alwayslearning
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Unexpected discovery

My children have never asked, "Do we have to learn this?" They don't have to learn anything. So everything is equally fun for them. The joy of unexpected discovery is the substance of a typical unschooling day.

Typical Unschooling Day (Presidents)
photo by Holly Dodd
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Stand with your child

In a discussion about limitations and choices, Joanna Murphy wrote:

People want to look at these issues as though there are only two options: free rein or limit. Black or white thinking. There is a whole world of conversation and relationship with your children between the two extremes.And that's where unschooling lives—a child exploring their world in connection with a parent.


Are you going to be a parent who enlarges your child's world and helps them to find their own power and hone their decision making and critical thinking abilities, or will you be a parent who limits and closes down your child's world and imposes your own ideas of right and wrong?

Stand WITH your child to navigate these issues, not in their way. The more you let them make important decisions, the more they will think them through and strive to make good ones for themselves.

—Joanna Murphy

Joanna Murphy, from Building an Unschooling Nest
photo by Sandra Dodd
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(in French)

People

Treat your children as people first.

(a paraphrase of Dan Vilter, paraphrasing me,
and the whole story is at SandraDodd.com/tone)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Extra Thinking is Good!

Public school discourages kids from coming up with off-the-wall responses. No bank shots, please. Just go directly from the question to the first sufficient answer—nothing tricky or dramatic, and nothing that makes you think, or makes the teacher think. If your answer isn't what's in the teacher's manual your answer is wrong. If you did extra thinking you wasted your time.

When learning is valued for its own sake, all thinking is good.



SandraDodd.com/connections/cocktail
Photo by Sandra Dodd, of a dry-stone bridge made by Bruce Curtis, a home ed dad and a master drystone waller ("dyker" in Scottish parlance). Bruce made this particular bridge singlehandedly, to the specifications WWII engineers figured would hold an army tank. He didn't "have to." He wanted to. It's for golf carts and small automobiles. If you want to read more about drystone work click here, but remember it won't be on the test.
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