Food and shelter

Seasons change, and creatures look for a place to be, near something to eat.

If you're providing food and shelter for your children, good job! If you can look cool while doing it, with a bit of style and pizzazz, bonus for everyone.

Fill your shelter with peace and patience.

Building an Unschooling Nest
photo by Karen James

Using fewer words

To a mom using way too many words, I wrote:

IF (just if) your regular mode of communication is to coat words in words and then have introductory phrases, that will very likely cause children not to understand you, first of all; not to take you seriously; and eventually not to listen to you.

Think of what you want to communicate and do it in three or five words. With feeling. Be the lead partner in your relationship. Take care of your children. Be solid.

That's for anyone, and everyone, who tends to fall into "Well, sweetie, I understand that you might be feeling frustrated, but your sister doesn't want to be hit and when you yell it hurts mommy's ears, so please find a way to be more peaceful" instead of "HEY. Stop. Leave her alone."

Quiet
and more quiet

photo by Karen James
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Happily and richly

I've seen hands-off, hands-up parents use various justifications for not helping a child do better. I've seen them blame other things, other people. I don't like to see it recommended in discussions I've organized and invited people to.

What I intend to continue to do for people who want to be unschoolers in the way it's discussed here, is to encourage them to be each child's partner, to help him live peacefully and joyfully, and to learn in his own way as happily and as richly as they can arrange for it to happen.

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from Getting angry at people who are helping, a discussion at Always Learning

Paragraphs above aren't in the same order they were at the longer original.

photo by Sandra Dodd
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Figuring out how to read

How will they learn to read? In school or out, every child learns to read in his own way, as he figures it out. Different people read different ways. Some are more visual, and some are sounding out letters, and some are reading groups of words. Reading is complex, but teaching rarely helps. Until a child's brain and body are mature in various mysterious ways so that he can process the visual information and connect it to the language inside him in a manner that completes the puzzle for him, he cannot read, whether he's in school or not. Some children are three, some are thirteen, but shame and pressure never help.

Answers to the Most Repeated Unschooling Questions of All Time
photo by Chris Sanders

Emotional well-being

Emotional health and emotional well-being are as important, if not more so, as physical health.

—Jenny Cyphers

Moving Toward Less Control, Concerning Food
photo by Janine Davies
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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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Find wonder where you wander

"Watch and listen to you kids. Let yourself get caught up in what they find wonderful and in the process rediscover wonder itself."

—Meredith Novak

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Ester Siroky