Living lightly and musically

from a chat on Musical Intelligence:

Howard Gardner sorted out the areas in which one individual might be GREAT, quick, but other people are slower, less interested. And he objects to "intelligence" being measured with just math and verbal ability.

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Encourage your kids to play with music in all kinds of ways. They're learning and growing. Help them turn the scary music off, if they're scared. Encourage them to appreciate other people's artistry.

Live lightly and musically. And if you have a kid who doesn't seem very musical, don't worry a bit.

Musical Intelligence (chat transcript)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Descriptive and unlimited

I think that an unschooler's checklist should look more like the five senses and past/future than like "science, history, language, math, maybe-music-art-physical education."   Because that model is prescriptive and limiting.  And the other is descriptive and unlimited.

SandraDodd.com/checklists
photo by Sandra Dodd

How will their learning be used?

Pam Sorooshian wrote this:

The time spent mothering and playing is not time away from real learning—not to be rushed through to get to "the good stuff" as some may think of it. It is essential to real learning and, really, to allowing the child to grow up as a whole, integrated human being.

Homeschoolers think a lot about learning—but they often focus on learning to read, write, do math, or learning science or history, etc. Unschoolers tend to take that kind of learning for granted, it happens along the way. Instead, as we get more and more into unschooling, we tend to focus on things like kindness and creativity and honesty—all those character traits that will determine "how" their learning will be used in their lives.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd

Play with words

Playing with words makes them come to life.

The history of England, of math, of writing, of counting.... Any portal into the universe is as real as any other. If an interest in language or butterflies or patterns or water creates connections for that person to anything else in the world, that can lead to EVERYTHING else in the world.

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A parent cannot decipher the whole world for her child, but she can help him begin to decipher it.

SandraDodd.com/etymology
photo by Sandra Dodd, in a park in Bangalore
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Switching words around

Yesterday's quote had the phrase "playful and full of wonder." It seemed to me for a moment that "playful and full" was awkward. But it was a quote. I wrote it last year; it's published.

If it were math, we would make the phrases match—give them a common denominator, or base, or something. Or they would be commutative. Wonderful and full of play? Full of play and full of wonder?

I think words are wonderful, and it's good to play with them. Sometimes, take the words out of the air, off the page, out of your thoughts and turn them over. Feel how old they are, how solid, how useful. When it comes to language, be playful and full of wonder!

SandraDodd.com/wordswords
(The words above aren't at the link but other words are!)
photo by Karen James
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Threes

I had a Shakespeare professor who said "Three trees make a row," to confirm a pattern when a student noticed that something had appeared three times. I remember thinking, but not saying, "Not if they're making a triangle." But it wasn't a math class, and I understood his point.

There's something strong and fun about three. Two parents and a baby. A tripod for a camera or a telescope. A three-legged stool (a tripod to sit on). Three versions of a song. A book or movie trilogy. Counting by threes with its elegant stops at 33, 66, and 99.

photo by Sandra Dodd
Some other images in this blog with three of something:

What do you hope for?

Museum of everything

Destinations

Happy and glad

Calm and quiet

Leeway and freedom

Kindness and creativity

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

"Homeschoolers think a lot about learning—but they often focus on learning to read, write, do math, or learning science or history, etc.

"Unschoolers tend to take that kind of learning for granted, it happens along the way. Instead, as we get more and more into unschooling, we tend to focus on things like kindness and creativity and honesty—all those character traits that will determine *how* their learning will be used in their lives."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Jamie Lee

Don't do this at home

Almost any piece of routine damage school can do to a child, parents can do at home. Parents can make their kids hate math. They can make them never want to read a book again. They can make them want nothing more than to grow up and get away. So with unschooling, when people ask me what I think makes it work, I tell them the kids have to have a choice.

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from Living Unschooling with Sandra Dodd
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Note: I do avoid "have to" but in an if/then situation, sometimes there's something a person has to have to enable the desired condition. If unschooling is going to work, kids have to have choices. Parents do not "have to" give their children choices. Unschooling parents will find themselves choosing to do so.

Subjects

Kirby was five and not going to go to school that year when I decided to keep the whole idea of a structured curriculum divided into subjects secret from him for a while. So we carefully and purposefully avoided using these terms: science, history, math.

He was too young for us to need to avoid terms such as "social studies" (which doesn't come up outside of school anyway) or "grammar," but I was prepared to rethink my list of terms to avoid as he got older, if he continued to stay home.

By the time his brother and sister were unschooling, some of those "names of subjects" (in school parlance) had been discovered on TV shows about school, or in jokes or songs. Don't know much about history; don't know much biology… By then, though, I was ready with confident answers, and we were all sure natural learning could work.

If you can avoid using school terminology, it will be helpful in many different ways that you will figure out if you don't already see them.

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Sandra Dodd, at The High Country, in Chama, 2011
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Triangles and rows

I had a Shakespeare professor who said "Three trees make a row," to confirm a pattern when a student noticed that something had appeared three times. I remember thinking, but not saying, "Not if they're making a triangle." But it wasn't a math class, and I understood his point.

There's something strong and fun about three. Two parents and a baby. A tripod for a camera or a telescope. A three-legged stool (a tripod to sit on). Three versions of a song. A book or movie trilogy. Counting by threes with its elegant stops at 33, 66, and 99.

European folklore has many sets of three, in bears, goats, wishes...

Here are other posts with photos of three things. It's a fun collection. Three (image label)
Three
photo by Lydia Koltai
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Blue Suede Shoes

Some time back there was a request for songs to be sung which would be educational. As music itself is a discipline, I think any music can be used as an educational tool. It can tie in with physical activity, mathematics, physics, history, geography, art, language, and it can be used to get kids excited and awake, or calm and asleep, or anything in between. I don't mean singing about math or history, either, but discussing the form of the music, the rhythm, the moods, the origins, the instruments on which it is traditionally played, the length and pattern of the verses (or phrases, or whatever), what its purpose is (a march, background music for a movie or for an 18th century fireworks show, a lullaby, a love song), etc.

Don't miss this fun and easy opportunity to tie different "subjects" together by using a song as a jumping off place to many different discussions. If you need ideas, name a song here and see how many suggestions you can get for it!

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2012:

What's above was written in 1993. Someone named "Blue Suede Shoes," thinking it wouldn't net much. I just wrote and wrote that day, and luckily I printed it out and saved it. The link below leads to my response, commentary and a video of Elvis doing another song, that leads to another song, and... you know.

SandraDodd.com/dot/elvis
photo by Sandra Dodd (of some art right behind my house)

Passing real tests

Sandra Dodd, of Holly Dodd (Holly was 12 and told an older story, in 2003):

My husband's oldest brother came to visit and she and Marty discussed how to deal with his quizzy questions, usually math. She told me a story from when she was littler, maybe eight. Uncle Gerry had been here, and Holly was brushing her teeth. He stood watching her, and started in about how important it is to brush teeth and floss, because (as Holly reported, he said in a teacherly voice) "Do you know how many sets of teeth you have in this lifetime?"

Holly said, "Two?" (in a kind of "is this a trick question" tone) and she said he was already holding up his index finger as the "one" of the coming "right answer," and he added another finger and sheepishly said, "That's right. Two."

So Holly won a big point and never even told us about it at the time. Cool story. I don't think he quizzed them this time. It's getting to the point that they're likely to know something he doesn't know and he likes to maintain his semblance of superiority. LOL!

original (2/3 down that topic)

Update in 2021, Holly 29 years old, and Gerry having recently been in town when Holly was here, too. Holly was very helpful to her uncle, driving him to an auto parts store and helping him figure out what his plan might be to get back to Alamogordo, if his car couldn't be fixed easily. She's nearly 30 now, and he's in his mid-70s. After she left, he went on for a while about how helpful and good-hearted and wonderful she is. I appreciated hearing it, and passed it on to her later.

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SandraDodd.com/betteranswers
photo by Irene Adams (Holly's aunt; my sister)

Holly was seven in this photo, with more of her first set of teeth, casually preparing for Uncle Gerry's quiz-to-come the next year.

Learning much more

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Sometimes you will understand what your kids *could* be learning from something. Always they'll be learning much more, making connections with ideas that seems to have no relation to what they're doing, learning thousands of little bits about peripheral things like music, social interactions, history, math, who they are, who you are and so much much more.

—Joyce Fetteroll

Please read the whole post at Reassurance, on Always Learning
photo by Janine Davies
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Character traits

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Homeschoolers think a lot about learning—but they often focus on learning to read, write, do math, or learning science or history, etc.

Unschoolers tend to take that kind of learning for granted, it happens along the way. Instead, as we get more and more into unschooling, we tend to focus on things like kindness and creativity and honesty—all those character traits that will determine "how" their learning will be used in their lives.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/nest
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Values

"Meredith Meredith" wrote:

If you value something, make it part of your life. If you value music, play music, listen to music, dance and sing. Invite the people you love to join you—maybe they will. If you value scientific thinking, think like a scientist. If you enjoy math, play with numbers and relationships. The catch is to live your own values without trying to foist them off on other people—because that's not a very good way of sharing what you love, and because personality matters. All your singing and dancing won't make your kids musicians if they're not so inclined—but they'll know a few things about music. If you push music at them, they may associate what they know with drudgery and unhappiness—and then you've failed and failed more utterly than if you never sang a note in their presence.

—Meredith Novak

Meredith
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Marty kid-art
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Odd combos

The connection between humor and learning is well known. Unexpected juxtaposition is the basis of a lot of humor, and even more learning.

It can be physical, musical, verbal, mathematical, but basically what it means is that unexpected combinations or outcomes can be funny. There are funny chemistry experiments, plays on words, math tricks, embarrassingly amusing stories from history, and there are parodies of famous pieces or styles of art and music.

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Sandra Dodd, one day at Goodwill
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Another step; another

Those who divide the world into academic and non-academic will maintain rules, bedtimes, chores even though they might not be "having lessons" in history, science, math or language arts.

So the history of "radical unschooling" came from someone saying "Well we're not that radical," and me saying "well I am."

I think if people divide their lives into academic and non-academic, they're not radical unschoolers.

I think unschooling in the context of a traditional set of rules and parental requirements and expectations will work better than structured school-at-home, but I don't think it will work as well for the developing souls and minds of the children involved.

And those who are not radical unschoolers would look at that and say "What do their souls have to do with unschooling?"

It has to do with philosophy and priority.

What do you believe is the nature of man, and the duty of a parent?

What do you believe hinders a child, or harms the relationship between a parent and a child?

Real actual unschooling
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Odd combos

The connection between humor and learning is well known. Unexpected juxtaposition is the basis of a lot of humor, and even more learning.

It can be physical, musical, verbal, mathematical, but basically what it means is that unexpected combinations or outcomes can be funny. There are funny chemistry experiments, plays on words, math tricks, embarrassingly amusing stories from history, and there are parodies of famous pieces or styles of art and music.

SandraDodd.com/playing
photo by Sandra Dodd, one day at Goodwill
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Patterns in all directions

Linda Wyatt wrote:

Play with patterns. Play with sets. Go outside and throw rocks and pay attention to the paths they travel. Drop stones into a pond and watch the ripples. Figure out why buildings don't fall down- or why they do. Ponder why the wind off Lake Michigan travels through the city of Chicago the way it does. And Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains... what's different in very windy places? How do you need to change things to accommodate that? Or other weather? Why are most of the roofs in places that get a lot of snow not flat?

I could go on and on and on and on. You can, too.

Question everything. Figure some of it out.

—Linda Wyatt

SandraDodd.com/math
photo by Sandra Dodd
of wall art at Bhava Yoga Studio
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Geography without maps

As far as I know, the best way to know that deschooling has happened is that kids start asking you (or telling you) cool things, trivial things, that they might have learned in school if they had gone, or maybe that would be in books clearly marked "science" or "history," and they're no longer avoiding school subjects (if they went to school).

Or if the kids never went to school, it's when the parents can see math without numbers, and language without writing, and "writing" without handwriting, and history without kings and wars and dates, and geography without maps.

SandraDodd.com/stages
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a restaurant in a building that was once a fire station, in Albuquerque
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