Smile

Find something to smile about.


Beginners, aim for once per day—one extra smile.

More experienced unschoolers, raise that to several a day, and then once per hour.

Before long, you'll be smiling easily and more often than you could count.

You'll know you're significantly happier when just the thought of counting smiles will make you smile.

Sparkly Unschooling
photo by Marty Dodd, of a floral merry-go-round in a hotel in Las Vegas
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Bigger and Better

A mom who's going to help a child learn from the whole wide world should herself become ever increasingly comfortable with what all is IN the whole wide world, and how she can help bring her child to the world and the world to her child.

Unschooling should and can be bigger and better than school.

If it's smaller and quieter than school, the mom should do more to make life sparkly.

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Kirby Dodd

Choose the good things

No parent has to do anything. They choose to do things.
. . . .
Through all the innumerable factors, how DO people decide?

By deciding what principles they are following. Each principle one clings to eliminates about half the choices in the world easily, and in a good way. Each additional principle eliminates some more options, until the world becomes manageable.

One of my guiding principles is that I want my children's worlds to be sparkly.

There goes the dull and the darkness. Easily not chosen, not an option.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly, 2004
photo by Irene Adams
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Environmental factors

In the quote below, "it" could be replaced with

• home
• life
• your nest
• your children's day
• yourself

Make it happy and funny and comfortable and exciting so that they want to be with you. Be sparkly.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Time out

There have been a couple of errors lately, and I wanted to take a minute to talk about the blog. I misspelled the name of the Concorde in yesterday's post. Julie D, who has provided me with some nice photos, and who crossed the Atlantic by Concorde more than once, caught that. I spelled it as though it were part of Flight of the Conchords, and if anyone isn't familiar with that duo, this is a fun intro.

On February 10th's post, one of the links was broken when the e-mail went out. It was repaired that morning, on the blog, but for those who missed it, here it is with the link working: Disharmony for a good cause

Two nights ago in a conversation here at the house, I was telling a friend that the photos I use aren't really very good, and that Lori Odhner's daily mailing (Marriage Moats) has GREAT photos. The very next night I was talking to another friend by phone, and she brought up how much she loves the photos on Just Add Light and Stir.

I will continue to do what I'm doing until frustration outweighs satisfaction, and I quit and do other things.

Until that happens, here are two other resources some of you might subscribe to, or peek in on occasionally. One is an infrequent blog about connections and thoughts, called Thinking Sticks: Playing with Ideas. The other is a little more frequent, and links new pages or notable additions to existing pages on my website: Unschooling Site News, SandraDodd.com.

If one day a post from Just Add Light and Stir seems too small for you, or it wasn't something you needed to read, maybe you could go and poke around one of those other blogs and find some sparkly ideas.

Thanks for reading!

Sparkly, bubbly, warm and effusive

Unschooling should be rich, flowing and mindful living where learning abounds. Too many people see "living" as nothing more than the absence of death. Let's encourage sparkly, bubbly, warm and effusive lives.

SandraDodd.com/sparkly
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Eliminate half the world (in a good way)

No parent has to do anything. They choose to do things.

So being in that world of choices, where do they decide to stop and why?

There comes the philosophy back.

Through all the innumerable factors, how DO people decide?

By deciding what principles they are following. Each principle one clings to eliminates about half the choices in the world easily, and in a good way. Each additional principle eliminates some more options, until the world becomes manageable.

Sparkly Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd
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A busy, enriched and enriching life

I used to assume that people would begin with a busy, enriched and enriching life, but not everyone was making the same assumption or starting from the same place. Some said "We're unschooling, starting now," and then watched the kids to see when they were going to take control or direct their own learning.

Choices in an environment maintained with learning in mind are different from choices in a quiet, boring place. If I were a kid, my choice in a quiet, boring place would be to go to school.

Make your unschooling sparkly and joyful.

—Sandra Dodd

The text above is from a 2009 commentary on a 1996 article at SandraDodd.com/schoolchoice.
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a spooky fortune-telling machine (click it)

Positive fun

Joyce Fetterol wrote:

One of the factors that drew me to homeschooling rather than public schooling was that I thought learning should be fun. But only the unschoolers were focusing on fun and having positive relationships with their kids.

Much of the other forums were devoted to how to make kids do their work, what products were best, what to do with younger kids while older ones did their work.

Pam Sorooshian responded:

This got me thinking, Joyce. Because I found unschooling the same way, just looking for homeschooling information and discovered that the message boards where the unschoolers were talking were the ones that got my heart racing because they were so alive and sparkly with ideas and energy and fun and love of their children.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/sparkly
photo by Sandra Dodd

There goes the darkness

One of my guiding principles is that I want my children's worlds to be sparkly.

There goes the dull and the darkness. Easily not chosen, not an option.

Sparkly Unschooling
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Easy choices

Practice pairs, for easy choice making:

floaty light alive sparkly

dull heavy still boring

SandraDodd.com/choices
photo by Sandra Dodd, Albany International Airport
(If that video isn't working, it's seven seconds of moving, foil leaves.)

Sparkle

On a scale from dull and dusty to bright and shiny, where is your life? How much of the happy outside world is flowing in? How much are you and your children interacting with the bright, shiny parts of the world outside?

Unschooling should and can be bigger and better than school.

If it's smaller and quieter than school, more should be done to make life sparkly.

Let one thing lead to another for you. Explore. Not the parent pressing the kid to explore, but the parent exploring and connecting.


SandraDodd.com/strew/how

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Note: Two parts were quotes, and I changed "the mom" to make it more general. Very often, unschoolers are writing to mothers; mothers are writing about children. I realize there are dads reading, and that not all unschooling families have mothers. References to "moms" is never intended to exclude or to limit the ideas.