Quietly alert

If you can choose to be more aware over less aware, that will help.

One aspect of awareness is working on your ability to be quietly alert, like a mother hawk, aware of the location of your child, her mood and your surroundings.

A Loud Peaceful Home
photo by Karen James
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Learning how to make decisions

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Some people, such as those who are naturally drawn to rules, who live under limitations accept the rules and stick to them. They live in fear and the rules are like talismans that will keep the boogeyman away. What happens when they are faced with new situations that they don't have rules in place for? People often extrapolate from the nonsense and extend the rules. But rational thought would reveal shoddy foundations for decision making.

If the reasons behind rules make sense, then there isn't a reason to make a rule. But people who follow rules aren't learning how to make decisions. They are only learning to follow someone else's rules.

If the reasons behind rules are nonsense, then people memorize nonsense and use that as a foundation for decision making.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/logic
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Special ideas

Deb Lewis wrote:

When you have snow, or can get to snow, snowshoeing is wonderful because you don't need any special skills to strap on the shoes and go have fun. Rental isn't expensive and most places offer group rates if you ever get together with others for the day. We went snowshoeing on Christmas day... Wonderful!

Don't be afraid to tell rental places you're looking for the best price. Tell them you're homeschoolers, ask for a discount. You'll be surprised how well it works.

—Deb Lewis

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Sandra, adding...

I LOVE ideas and advice that are regional and seasonal. Deb lives in Montana. It will be summer soon, there.

Other unschoolers might live where there are ZERO snowshoe rentals, ever. But what else might they have that Montana doesn't?

Frolic in thoughts and ideas, and maybe in snowshoes.

Deb Lewis's List of Things to do in the Winter
photo by Janine Davies

Really very peaceful

Sandra, March 2008:

All my kids have TVs in their rooms. No... Holly took hers out when the VHS player broke, and it's in a corner in the front room now, unused. She has a computer. So do the other two kids, just since last year for the younger two.

Hours, whole days go by with those rooms quiet, with one of the kids in there drawing or listening to music at the most, or playing with lego while a familiar movie is on, and they'll look up at their favorite parts, maybe.

Our house is really very peaceful. A house full of "no" can't begin to be this peaceful.


Principles of Unschooling?
photo by Holly Dodd, with a timer and then photoshop
(sitting at my computer, not hers, that day)

Sometime I go EEEEEk.

EEEEEk.
What gets me more than the casual acceptance and recommendation of arbitrary limitations is the characterization of allowing children choices as "plonking a 3, 4, 5, 10 year old in front of the television/google."

Can you imagine ANYone "plonking" a ten year old in front of google? And what? Demanding he look something up? But I have seen kids that young have a BLAST with google and other search functions, about games, or YouTube, or NetFlix.

If they can look up game hints at ten, they will be able to look up building codes or disease treatments or various translations of Bible passages on their own anytime thereafter, given resources. Practicing on something that might seem "loose, easy and unnecessary" can *BE* what is needed for them to be competent, functional workers when they're older. And I won't say "when they're grown," because my kids were competent functional workers when they were mid-teens, every single one of them.

So when people who haven't had a child who is mid-teens disparages my knowledge in light of their paranoid theories, sometimes I go EEEEEk.

Sandra
2011

Plonking a child down in front of the television
is where I found it, but the original is here:
on Always Learning,
wherein the rant is all one paragraph.

photo by Sandra Dodd, of a granddaughter playing a game, a husband reading the news, and the TV was playing "Pupstruction" for another grandchild not appearing in that photo

Planning, resources and intention

Sylvia Woodman wrote:

Unschooling is not "doing nothing." It takes planning, and resources, and intention. I think it felt more like work in the earlier years while I was still doing the bulk of my Deschooling. (Don't get me wrong there are still things that "catch me by surprise" in my thinking even now! But it's not as constant.) But at some point, there was a shift. A Leveling Up. Unschooling became less of the way we were educating the children and more of the way we lived our lives. It wasn't one thing that we did. It was a million tiny choices (and not so tiny choices) that led us to where we are today.

—Sylvia Woodman

SandraDodd.com/doitwell

and the quote is also at SandraDodd.com/levelup/
photo by Jo Isaac

Exuberant learning

Karen James wrote:

When Ethan was around three. I left the room very briefly to answer the phone. We had been drawing. As I was talking I heard, "Circles. Circles." I came out to see what he was doing to find him drawing big circles on a freshly painted wall. His circles I could paint over at any time. I still had lots of that colour of paint. That pride at drawing big beautiful shapes I could never recapture at any cost if I had have chosen to scold him. He turned to me all smiles. He had discovered circles. I had rediscovered what exuberant learning looked like.

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/art/stories
photo by Karen James
with different circle; the story of that art is also at the art/stories page