All these connections

Farming, vocabulary, art, colors, geography, botany, shapes, textures, joy, comfort, gifts, humor, lunch.

Most things are many things.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Roya Dedeaux
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Flexible uses

Creativity and intelligence are seen in the ability to use a tool or an object for something other than its intended purpose. If you see your child (or your cat) doing something "wrong," set rules aside long enough to consider principles.

Sleep is important. Curiosity leads to discovery and to new connections. Shade can come from things other than trees or roofs.

Let your mind leap and frolic.

CONNECTIONS: How Learning Works
photo by Belinda Dutch

Unexpected thoughts

Juxtapositions, surprising connections, odd pairings—these make jokes, or frighten cats, or confuse us long enough for our brains to reach out for explanations we hadn't thought anything about before.

The connections might be visual, historical, linguistic, musical, real or imaginary. None of that matters, when your mind builds a new idea, and it's yours to keep.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sandra Dodd

Trivia

Carousels, merry-go-rounds... American-made carousels go counter-clockwise. In the UK, they call that "anti-clockwise," and theirs go clockwise.

Is that worth knowing? Maybe not, but I think it's interesting.

Where I live, in the U.S., horses don't have names on them, except at Disneyland, pretty much. The "King Arthur Carrousel" in Disneyland was made in Canada, over 100 years ago—before Disneyland. I don't know whether the Canadian builders used two "r"s in the name, or if Walt Disney liked the alternative spelling. If you think any of this is interesting, you can read more here, about the one at Disneyland.

I took the photo above, at a fair in England. Lol is a nickname for Laurence, there (and old guys are named Laurence, not so many young kids), so that horse was named after someone who was called "Lol" instead of "Larry," and not named after laughing out loud.

How many small facts and connections can one person hold? I don't think there's a limit.

It's easier to learn a thing if you already know something else kind of like it. Connections!

It's All Information
photo by Sandra Dodd

Sharing time and space

Connections are the best part of learning, in unschooling, in life, for fun. But if it’s too noisy too often, a quiet moonrise over a lake will get all sound-polluted. And one person’s thoughts of beauty might be overrun by someone else’s free associations.

Gaze without speaking / Explore Connections
photo by Janine Davies

I nearly missed a day

Time out!

I got tired and went to sleep without thinking about Just Add Light. That doesn't often happen.



Yesterday I was at a flea market in Lisbon. Anyone who feels like looking at photos that can lead to connections and questions is very welcome to see what I snapped during that time out, and some of the things I brought home with me!

I'm sorry I didn't do a proper post, in time for the morning mailing, though. Six more weeks in Europe... I expect a few more worthy distractions, but also opportunities for some good photos!

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd (click the image for more)

Choose a point, any point.

Parents new to unschooling tend to worry that some activities are good preparation for life, but others are frivolous and should be forbidden or discouraged. Life and thought and learning, though, depend on connections being made. And the more points of information about anything at all being made inside an individual, the more points there will be to connect.


SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo by Sandra Dodd

"Serious learning"

I still see "subject areas" everywhere, but I haven't taught those categories and prejudices to my children. Science has much more to do with history than geology has to do with microbiology, but in school geology, biology, astronomy and physics are all "the same thing," and history is different altogether. Yet the best parts of history involve the knowledge cultures had and how they put it to use, whether in shipbuilding or iron tool use, medicine or communications.

Holly asked yesterday about when people discovered the world wasn't flat. I told her there was no one date or century because people discovered different things at different times, and some were shushed up when they said the world was round, or that the sun didn't orbit around the earth. I also told her, "Ask your dad, because he's really interested in the history of science."

I noticed when I said it that I had "named subject areas," but I didn't feel too bad. She's twelve, and reading, and after all "the history of science" was never part of my schooling. A science teacher wasn't certified to teach me history, and vice versa. Only outside of school did I figure out that scientific discoveries were history, and that music was science, and that art was history.

School served to prevent connections for me, but I overcame that, with difficulty. It is a problem my children never had. If Animaniacs completed a circuit for them between Magellan and WWII, well it's a circuit school would never have completed for me under any circumstances. If learning for fun creates more connections than "serious learning" did, I can no longer look at "serious learning" seriously.

The School in my Head, 2004
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Tangents and connections

How many ways can you categorize a scene or a situation? Here is a photo of a bridge.


I see geography, weather, water, engineering, technology, materials, transportation, history, finance, artistry, reflection, photography, generosity, audience, storage, reference, stored in fleeting pixels.

Play with your ability to see things more than one way. Enjoy hopping from one connection to another.

Connections
photo by Karen James

"L" is for Learning

This photo is the background for the "L" on the new(ish) Learn Nothing Day logo.

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Real learning, the kind of learning humans are hard wired to do, is about discovering connections between one thing and dozens of things. What those connections will have in common is interest.

—Joyce Fetteroll, saved at Real Learning

The photo first appeared here in 2018: Laugh, think, smile
Thank you, Amber Ivey.

Symbolism

Here is a mother and a child. It's a tiny copy of an original sculpture. It's not real ivory or solid gold, but is representing real ivory, or perhaps alabaster, in a real gold frame.


If you don't know who that mother and child are supposed to be, it can be any mother and child.

The piece of art came from the Vatican. There is much symbolism around and within the Vatican. I haven't been there. Someone who had been there brought me that pin. I kept it for a few years and gave it away to another friend, yet it can be still in my hand, because I have a photo. And now I've shared it with you.

The pose of my hand in that photo has some symbolism. A hand position can have a subtle meaning, or an overt one. Gentle and inviting; threatening or forbidding. Communication by symbology. A handshake. A caress.

On my hand is a ring really made of gold and symbolism, representing details of particular relationships, and stories.

Stories, meanings and connections are not always told in words. Be open to seeing more, in smaller ways.

Connections (a game without equipment)
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Swirls and connections

Joyce wrote:

A big part of natural learning is absorbing ideas and letting them swirl around in the background. They clarify. They form connections. If the subject comes up again in a few months, you may be surprised how differently you're looking at what you were wondering about.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/readalittle
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Webs, nets, connections

The terms "web" and "net" have both been commandeered by the internet. The idea of a grid or web or matrix to represent the connections involved in learning and memory is a good one, though—of many "dots" connected in all directions.

The photo here is of the two-dimensional web—very flat—of a garden spider, outside my house this week. Black widow spiders make a web that's three-dimensional, but has no pattern. We have those in our yard, too.

The webs on which our own mental models of the universe are based are more complex—with past and future, emotion and theory, alternative stories and secondary theories. We have sounds and songs, scents and tastes to remember, and can sort things by temperature or texture, in our minds and imaginations.

Rejoice in the random!

SandraDodd.com/random
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Connections and Adventures

"That's part of the magic of unschooling—information swirls around, connects and reconnects until you're not really sure where learning begins and ends and where any particular adventure will lead you." —Meredith Novak

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd

Pathways and connections

"I learned early on that being excited with my kids about whatever they are excited about opens pathways and connections that are magical—not just for their learning but for our relationship and their relationship with the world."

—Jen Keefe

"Following their Interests": SandraDodd.com/jeninterests
photo by Ester Siroky

Flowing thoughts

What you know can be added to, or amended, but rarely deleted. Some things are best not learned, which is why it's so important to be careful what you say and how you say it (and to drive carefully, and all that). Some people do try to encapsulate ideas or experiences and forget them. Sometimes other memories are shut off along with that. That’s a good reason for analyzing traumatic events and sorting through instead of trying to encase them. Too many "do not enter areas" in your mind will slow down connections, and also will inhibit the biochemicals that help make learning fun and easy.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Ester Siroky

Symbolism

An angel, holding an image of dice, in a church in Wales, in reference to a story about Roman soldiers near Jerusalem, long before that.

Light from the same sun.

Connections!

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd, St. Teilo’s church at St. Fagans Museum

Completing circuits

School served to prevent connections for me, but I overcame that, with difficulty. It is a problem my children never had. If Animaniacs completed a circuit for them between Magellan and WWII, well it's a circuit school would never have completed for me under any circumstances. If learning for fun creates more connections than "serious learning" did, I can no longer look at "serious learning" seriously.

SandraDodd.com/schoolinmyhead
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp
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A million-piece puzzle

Today I'm quoting something Joyce Fetteroll wrote on Always Learning yesterday:

The way schools get academics into kids goes against how we're naturally wired to learn. It's very hard for humans to memorize someone else's understanding of the world and then make sense of it. That's why it takes so long in school. It's why kids can "pass" classes and yet still have little practical understanding of what's been pushed in their heads.
We're hard wired to pull understanding out of life. We're pattern seeking creatures. Natural learning often doesn't look like much of anything from the outside. But it's like working on a million-piece jigsaw puzzle. Kids are working here and there, jumping all over the place, spending a chunk of time in one area, then seemingly abandoning it for another. It doesn't look like progress. But by the time they're teens, the connections they've been creating between all the areas they've been working on shows. And it's not a bunch of memorized facts (that will fade) but a deeper understanding of how things work.

Whereas the kids in school have been told what pieces to put where and how to put them in, to drop that interesting piece because it's not part of the curriculum. By the time they hit middle school most are ready to slam the door on the puzzle and have nothing more to do with it.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Sandra Dodd, and it's a link

Bridges and reflections

When I look at a bridge, I think of travel, of engineering, of safety, and of history. Even new bridges change history as soon as they can be used.

In this photo, the arches are reflecting and making a round shape. That's always fun. There is also roundness in the tree to the right, and in its reflection in the water. The bank of the river has a rounded edge, and is covered with rounded pebbles.

Others, seeing that, might be thinking of what birds live around there, or other wildlife. If it's someone familiar with the area, they will know where the road goes, maybe who owns the land, and who used to own it before that.

Kids, seeing it, might wonder first "Could we get IN that water?" Wild swimmers (people who like to swim in naturally occurring waters) probably had that thought before any other.

Any scene is many things. The knowledge and perspective of each viewer is different. People spot different things and make their own connections.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Ester Siroky