Growth

Each tree grows from a single seed, and when a tree is growing in your yard what is the best thing you can do for it? You can nurture it and protect it, but measuring it doesn’t make it grow faster. Pulling it up to see how the roots are doing has never helped a tree a bit. What helps is keeping animals from eating it or scratching its bark, making sure it has water, good soil, shade when it needs it and sun when it needs it, and letting its own growth unfold peacefully. It takes years, and you can’t rush it.

So it is with children. They need to be protected from physical and emotional harm. They need to have positive regard, food, shade and sun, things to see, hear, smell, taste and touch. They need someone to answer their questions and show them the world, which is as new to them as it was to us. Their growth can’t be rushed, but it can be enriched.

from Changing the World
Some Thoughts on Homeschooling
SandraDodd.com/thoughts

tree photo by Holly Dodd
__

Feeling Peace

If we raise the level of peace our children expect, they will know what peace feels like.

Adults need to know what peace feels like too, though, and some feel it for the first time when they really start to understand unschooling.


SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
I know I've linked to this page more than once, but I don't mind pointing to the important things a second, third, or fourth time. Peace is it.

photo by Sandra, in Old Town, in Albuquerque
__

Be your child's partner

Be your child's partner, not his adversary.

No child or spouse needs to go through life unsupported, because he has a partner! Maybe more than one. If a child can depend on a parent (maybe two, and maybe a sibling or friend) to help him navigate the world, he won't feel helpless or lonely.



SandraDodd.com/partners/child
Holly photo

Environment

Part of creating a learning environment is creating a safe, generous, loving environment.

SandraDodd.com/service
photo of Alex by Holly
__

History is infinite.

History is infinite, that's for sure. You've gotta start somewhere, and pretty much it doesn't matter where you start because it's all connected, like a universe-sized dot-to-dot you could never finish but you started when you were born. Or maybe before...

History can't be learned "in order," because it's never going to be orderly. It doesn't even happen in order, because often facts aren't discovered until years after incidents occur, and so the history of them unfolds and is clarified and expanded all the time. People knew zip about Pompeii until 1700-and-some years after it was buried. Someday people might know more about Amelia Earhart's disappearance or the assassination of JFK than they do now, after all who knew them personally will have been long dead.

SandraDodd.com/history
photo of flower and map in my kitchen
___

Choosing More Peace

There will never be perfect peace. We can't even define "peace."
There can be a closer approximation to ideal peace. People can come nearer to the way they would like to be, but only incrementally, choice by choice.

If you want to live peacefully, make the more peaceful choice.

Peace is all about choices.

To have peace in your house, be more peaceful.


SandraDodd.com/peace/noisy
doodly art by Holly Dodd

Patterns on patterns

Bricks, bars, sun and shade make patterns in an alley between shops.

Find and play with patterns.


SandraDodd.com/patterns
photo by Sandra, Albuquerque, October 2010