Accepting help (and cake)

Deb Lewis wrote:

I always get in trouble with analogies, but I'm going to try one here. If I wanted to make a cake, and had never baked or cooked before, a cake recipe that just said "do whatever seems best to you, use your imagination" probably wouldn't be that helpful. If my friend, who always had lovely cakes (devil's food?) had given me this recipe, I would have to assume cake just didn't work for my family.

It would have been much more helpful to have an ingredients list and a plan for putting them together.

Ok, kids are not cakes, and maybe there's no ingredients list for unschooling, but I would hope, before I pour a bottle of vinegar in my batter, someone who knows about cakes would stop me. I would hope, before I add a text book or take away TV, someone who knows about unschooling would stop me.

—Deb Lewis
(original, on Always Learning)

SandraDodd.com/witness
photo (and cake) by Sandra Dodd,
when this blog was ten years old

Fresh breeze of new thoughts

De wrote:

OH! Brainstorming ideas, treating your children like you would your spouse or friends, *OH!!*

I knew that. Now I *know* that. Or maybe I understand it with more depth. It still amazes me how a few words on a page—sometimes entirely (seemingly) unrelated—can trigger a massive door that I didn't know was there to open in my brain. It lets in the light and the fresh breeze of new thoughts.

—De

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd

Slowing down

Karen James wrote:

I have spent the past three years trying to get unschooling faster. It has only been this past year, where I have slowed down, that I feel like I am really starting to get it, or at least see more clearly where I am still stuck, and work out those knots with a bit more clarity.

I quoted Karen from her comment at
"You can't test out." (2011)
photo by Hema Bharadwaj

Joyful and secure

"Learning about and applying unschooling principles has created joyful, secure relationships with my kids that I had never imagined. I feel SO lucky."

—Jill Parmer

SandraDodd.com/milestones/jill
photo of Addi, by Jill Parmer (her mom)

Holly and the Hippie Shirt

The article's real name is "Art, Aging and Spirituality— Connections between Things and Ideas." I wrote it in early 2001, when Holly was nine years old.

I will quote the end, and usher you toward the full article:

We all are preparing for our unseen futures, and I was prepared to homeschool. I am prepared to discuss the social history of the 70's musicals Holly is frolicking with now, in a shirt I made when a brand new India print bedspread could be bought by a barefooted hippie for $4. She is surprisingly prepared, at the age of nine, to understand it.

That was written for a local homeschooling newsletter, so I apologize for the neighborhood particulars. Those from Albuquerque, or who attended the University of New Mexico, might've perked up. ***

SandraDodd.com/HippieShirt
photo by Sandra Dodd

Opportunity

I don't look at the state's requirements. I look at my child's opportunities.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Amy McDonough
Retrospective (more about the photo)

But WHY?

Knowing WHY you want to make lunch can make all the rest of it a series of mindful choices. (Unless the "why" is a thoughtless sort of "because the clock hands pointed up".)

What and Why?
photo by Rosie Moon
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