Goop, fire, snowballs

When one person says "I like science" and another says "I don't like science," I remember school science textbooks that had geology, astronomy, chemistry, botany, biology, agriculture and physics all in one book. . . . . There are many fun things to do and explore that could be called "science," but why not just call them skate boards or miniature golf or basketball or piano or water play or rescuing wounded birds or making goop or collecting rocks or swimming or drawing pictures of clouds or taking photos in different kinds of light or growing corn or training a dog or looking through binoculars or waiting for a chrysalis to open or making a sundial or making a web page or flying a kite or chasing fireflies or building a campfire or finding out which planet that is by the moon on the horizon, or wondering why snowballs take so much snow to make, or how a 4-wheel-drive truck works.

Science and the larger idea of Changing Facts
photo by Sandra Dodd

Selflessly and sweetly

With a child, being his partner and not his adversary means that situations are not going to involve one of you winning at the other's expense. There doesn't need to be a winner and a loser, when a choice is made. Try to see that in your marriage and in your family. Make decisions that benefit your family, your home, and your children. Do that selflessly and sweetly, and your own life will be sweeter.

Gradually easier
photo by Gail Higgins

"What paths we will follow..."

"Watching my son follow his interests and learning about his world in the process has been an enlightening experience for me. I have a new confidence in children's curiosity and their drive to learn and explore. As I write, Trevor is developing a a new interest in sharks and I can only anticipate what paths we will follow and what we will learn. Who knows where it will take us?"

—Amy Kagey, about dinosaurs,
but there were monsters, too

Learning With Dinosaurs
photo by Tessa Onderwater

Happiness is better

"Being happy has never diminished my partnership, and being miserable has never enhanced it."

—Beth Fuller

SandraDodd.com/quotes
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Choices can abound

Choices can abound. Parents can arrange life so that their children have choices all the time, and learn to see their own actions as choices rather than "have to's," but none of them can give their children "the freedom" to do as they wish at MY house. Nor in a shop, nor a public place. Certainly not in a national park, or museum, or church. . . . .

Parents who tell their kids that they can give them "freedom" might be talking about the relative freedom of being out of school rather than in. Once they're in the normal real world, though, continuing to promise freedom isn't as helpful, nor as relationship building, as finding ways to give them choices.

Freedom/Choices/Empowerment/Respect
photo by Amber Ivey

Flow, sparkle, joy

Unschooling should be better than school; if it's not, the kids would be better off in school. Any unschooler who wants to do just the bare minimum of what she "has to do" to be considered (by whom!?) an unschooler is NOT unschooling well or right. It needs energy, activity, interactivity, flow, sparkle, joy.

other "better than school" posts and sparkling ideas
(quote from 2014, preserved here]
photo by Nina Haley

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