A million ideas

I'm glad to live in a time when photographs are so easily taken and shared, without ever needing to be set on paper or touched with hands. I can show you things I've seen.

Just Add Light has had images from four continents, from mothers and fathers sharing photos of their children, and from teens and children sharing photos of things they've seen. A thousand people can see them on the same day. A thousand photos have come through. It's worldwide strewing from which each reader makes his or her own connections. Shared experiences are interpreted differently by each person involved, and connected by each to his own existing knowledge and images.

SandraDodd.com/strew/sandra
photo by Sandra Dodd,
and it's one of over 1200,
but I rounded to the nearest thousand

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Note in 2024, when I modernized some code on this post. A few photos have been re-used, over the years (often by accident), but there are over 5,000 posts these days.

Rearrangement as a constant

If something comes up in a conversation and then it doesn't come up again later, that's fine. The tide comes in, leaves some stuff on the sand, and goes out; some things stay, some go back out. All of it still exists—the sand, the shells, the water—they're all still there, just rearranging a bit.

On "Always Learning," in response to someone considering
writing down every question her kids asked to look things up later.
photo by Sandra Dodd

Descriptive and unlimited

I think that an unschooler's checklist should look more like the five senses and past/future than like "science, history, language, math, maybe-music-art-physical education."   Because that model is prescriptive and limiting.  And the other is descriptive and unlimited.

SandraDodd.com/checklists
photo by Sandra Dodd

Change

If the mom changes, the family is changed.

SandraDodd.com/peace/mama
photo by Sandra Dodd

More time

The more time parents spend with their children, doing interesting things together, the less they will worry about other things.


Marta saved the quote from a post on Always Learning.
Here's something similar:
SandraDodd.com/being/with
photo by Karen James, a few years ago,
in a giant wheel in Japan

Dude, they named a Turtle after him

Michelangelo said that to carve his statue of David, he just chipped away everything that didn't look like David. Or maybe he didn't say that. But clearly that's what he ultimately did.

Chip away what doesn't look like unschooling. It's not as difficult as you might think.


Unschooling: How to Screw it Up (sound file with notes!)

SandraDodd.com/screwitup

photo by Colleen Prieto

Emotions and intellect

"Feelings and intellect are not in opposition and not even separate things. All learning involves the emotions, as well as the intellect."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/pam/principles
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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