A road leading somewhere

Deb Lewis wrote, when her son was young:

Our town is small and we've been to the museums here more than once but we still find new things to do here. A new store opened so we checked it out and talked to the owner. The radio station moved from the residence of the owners to a building downtown and we took a tour. The mom-in-law of my employer got a bunch of fancy chickens and we drove out to see them. She showed Dylan a coffee table book about chickens. She showed us her little sun room where she grows orchids.

There's always something to do, someone to talk to, some road leading somewhere.

—Deb Lewis

How Much Strewing?
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Learning is...

Nothing on paper is learning. Nothing recited is learning. Nothing in a conversation is learning....

Learning is putting information together in one's own head so that it makes new and different sense. It always and only happens inside the learner.

The Problem with Teaching is...
photo by Lydia Koltai

Sugar is sweet

Sugar is sweet, and so are you.

If you're not, consider how much sweeter your child's life would be if you were as sweet as sugar.

"The brain LIVES on glucose. It can’t live without it. And little kids' brains need more glucose than adults'."

—Brie Jontry

SandraDodd.com/sugar
photo by Cátia Maciel

More and more moments

If something is good for a moment, it doesn't take a bunch of planning, and it doesn't need to be reported or documented. It can just be a good moment.

And when people get more and more practice doing what it takes to create or accept or recognize those moments, they can have more and more of them.

Moments and Mindfulness
photo by Sandra Dodd,
candid moment of Much Green

Smiling, patient, gentle

If you feel helpless, you are.
If you feel powerless, you are.

Make conscious choices, in little ways, in ways that make your family warmer and more comfortable. Not a few big decisions, but a hundred little decisions in the next 20 hours. Tone of voice. Smile/no-smile. Patience/rush. Gentle/jerky.

Help yourself find the power to make your family's moments better.

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Elise Lauterbach

Anytime, every time

Anytime an unschooling mother thinks she's not doing enough, the simple solution is for her to do more.

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Cátia Maciel

What kind of peace?

How can peace help learning? Is peace always a subset of "peace and quiet"? Is quiet always peaceful? What is the value of a peaceful environment to unschooling and how can parents help to create and maintain that? What kind of peace are we after and how can we get some?

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Sometimes just asking the questions can be helpful, but if you want to hear a free sound file of me talking about that sort of thing, here:
SandraDodd.com/bignoisypeace
photo by Caroline Lieber

There was a typo in the link, when the e-mail went out, but it's fixed above now. Sorry. —Sandra