That reminds me...

"That reminds me..."

That's all it takes. If one thing makes you think of another thing, you form a connection between them in your mind. The more connections you have, the better access you have to cross-connections. The more things something can remind you of, the more you know about it, or are learning about it.

Flat representations can't show these connections. Neither could an elaborate three-dimensional model, because when you consider what a thing is or what it's like, you not only make connections with other concepts, but experiences and emotions. You will have connections reaching into the past and the future, connections related to sounds, smells, tastes and textures. The more you know about something, the more you can know, because there are more and more hooks to hang more information on—more dots to connect.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a gate at Yarrow Manse
__

More dots to connect

If one thing makes you think of another thing, you form a connection between them in your mind. The more connections you have, the better access you have to cross-connections. The more things something can remind you of, the more you know about it, or are learning about it.

Flat representations can't show these connections. Neither could an elaborate three-dimensional model, because when you consider what a thing is or what it's like, you not only make connections with other concepts, but experiences and emotions. You will have connections reaching into the past and the future, connections related to sounds, smells, tastes and textures. The more you know about something, the more you can know, because there are more and more hooks to hang more information on—more dots to connect.

I got the idea for this kind of graph from Trust the Children: A Manual and Activity Guide for Homeschooling and Alternative Learning by Anna Kealoha.

Here's a simple mathematical example:

But being more "cross-disciplinary" about it, not limiting to just one area, we've played with them more like this:

And any of those can become "the center" and branch out to everything else in the whole wide world. But at the heart of this exercise is what is and what isn't: What IS a thing, and what is not the thing? What is like it and what is unlike it?

CONNECTIONS: How Learning Works
graphs by Sandra Dodd, when Holly Dodd was thirteen years old

Connections and cross-connections

If one thing makes you think of another thing, you form a connection between them in your mind. The more connections you have, the better access you have to cross-connections. The more things something can remind you of, the more you know about it, or are learning about it.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd

Concepts, experience and emotions

When you consider what a thing is or what it's like, you not only make connections with other concepts, but experiences and emotions. You will have connections reaching into the past and the future, connections related to sounds, smells, tastes and textures. The more you know about something, the more you can know, because there are more and more hooks to hang more information on—more dots to connect.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Cross-Connections

If one thing makes you think of another thing, you form a connection between them in your mind. The more connections you have, the better access you have to cross-connections. The more things something can remind you of, the more you know about it, or are learning about it.

SandraDodd.com/connections
icy-web photo by Cathy Koetsier

More and more connections

Each idea, object, concept, person, song, motion—anything you can think of—has personal associations for you. You have an incalculable mass of connections formed in your brain and will make more today, tomorrow, on the way home, and in your sleep.
SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Ester Siroky

A state of curiosity

In early 2008, sharing some interesting connections that had happened at our house, I wrote:

That all 'just happened,' but it happened because we've been building up to it with our whole lives and our whole style of communicating and living together in a constant state of open curiosity.
. . . .
Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

SandraDodd.com/connections/example
Photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Not all, but more

Connections won't be the same for any two people, but talking about those connections will help our children, and us, understand more and more of everything. We can't know all of everything, but we can know more of everything.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Jo Fielding
__

Personal connections

Each idea, object, concept, person, song, motion—anything you can think of—has personal associations for you. You have an incalculable mass of connections formed in your brain and will make more today, tomorrow, on the way home, and in your sleep.


SandraDodd.com/connections/
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Rejoice

Connections and parodies, comparisons and contrasts—learning is all about seeing what is like what, and how an image, idea or object can apply or fit where.

Don't be afraid of happy connections and rearrangements. Rejoice!

Webs, nets, connections
Robbie Prieto's nativity scene, once upon a time;
photo by Colleen Prieto, his mom

More of everything

Connections won't be the same for any two people, but talking about those connections will help our children, and us, understand more and more of everything. We can't know all of everything, but we can know more of everything.


SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd
___

Learning is all connections

Learning is all connections— associations, patterns, and relationships.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Tissington
__

More of everything

Connections won't be the same for any two people, but talking about those connections will help our children, and us, understand more and more of everything. We can't know all of everything, but we can know more of everything.


SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Your individual self

There is a hanging lamp at our house, in the entryway. It reminds me of restaurant furnishings of the southwestern U.S. in the late 1960s and '70s. It's iron, with sheets of colored glass, in blue and amber. It makes it easy for me to remember that the house was built in the early 1970s.

The associations I have with this lamp won't match those of my children, who have seen it most of their lives. Even my husband, also from New Mexico, probably has other thoughts and connections. Visitors, depending on their ages and experiences, will see it and images or words might come to them.

It's good to know that the pictures in your head are your own, and the connections that go with them. Your children's experiences and views of the world are their individual own selves'.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd

Connections build and grow

Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

Once you start looking for connections...
photo by Amy Cromwell

Welcome connections

Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

Once you start looking for connections...
photo by Jo Isaac
__

Shapes and meanings

Toddlers want to name things. They're learning words. This picture might show a circle and a square.

For an older child, thoughts might be about "window" or port hole or whether it's still a window if you can't see through it.

Some adults might think about materials or purposes, and others about what plant is portrayed and why.

Things are seen at different levels and depths by different people in different circumstances. Connections are made to prior imagery and knowledge in each viewer. Thoughts of what something is or isn't, and ideas about what it is like or unlike, are the thoughts learning is made of.

That's how learning works.

Connections: How Learning Works
photo by Sandra Dodd
__

Doing and thinking

Learning to see learning is a process. It's part of deschooling, for the parents.

When learning starts to show, in its natural state, you will see that children are processing what they do and what they think about what they've done. They'll be making connections to everything else in their history and surroundings, to other experiences and imaginings.

When unschooling begins to really flow, the process of learning is the processing of experiences and connections.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Nina Haley

Once you start looking...

Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

SandraDodd.com/connections/example
photo by Chrissy Florence
__

A flow that builds and grows

Once you start looking for connections and welcoming them, it creates a kind of flow that builds and grows.

SandraDodd.com/connections/example
photo by Sandra Dodd, of the Rio Chama near Abiquiu