Sandra's addition: "... to see life and people" and fancy chickens, cupcakes, frost, sleeping puppies and your favorite mug as beautiful.
photo by Helene McNeill
I do unschool but I obviously do not subscribe to your radical view of unschooling where children are expected to learn by osmosis and television shows.To the Always Learning discussion list I wrote:
When the environment is rich, children learn by osmosis, if the membrane through which ideas pass is their perception of the world. What they see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think becomes a part of their experience, and they learn. And they learn from television shows, movies, paintings, books, plants, toys, games, movement, sports, dancing, singing, hearing music, drawing, sleeping.... as if by osmosis, they live and they learn.
As we had been talking about natural learning, naturally I responded:
"The power to decide what to learn" makes a pretzel of the straight line between experience and knowing.
My children don't "decide what to learn, how to learn, and when to
learn it."
They learn all the time. They learn from dreams, from
eating, from walking, from singing, from conversations, from watching plants grow and storms roll.
Pam Sorooshian wrote:
"Unschooling is more like a dance between partners who are so perfectly in synch with each other that it is hard to tell who is leading. The partners are sensitive to each others' little indications, little movements, slight shifts and they respond. Sometimes one leads and sometimes the other."
Sleep When You're Tired
photo by Colleen Prieto
"Be prepared to be flexible and willing to change as your child gets older." —Emily Strength |