Calm awareness

Provide an environment in which they can grow in such calm self-reflection and awareness that they can learn naturally from the things around them.

SandraDodd.com/weight
photo by Erika Ellis


That quote is almost out of context,
though it's half of a sentence, word for word
from the page linked above.
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Giving, learning and growing

Parvine Shahid wrote, on the topic of "Service":

Being with my children, giving them in each moment all I can, learning and growing with them, changed my understanding of "service."

I have chosen to give, help and serve my children. I feel being with them has contributed towards a new understanding of the word as well as a way of building a connection with them. I can also see how it can be extended to others.

I realize how much weight a word can carry, how changes in my own feelings have lightened that weight and thrown a new light on the word itself. Service now stirs up and brings great feelings of joy.

—Parvine Shahid

SandraDodd.com/serviceResponse
photo by Sandra Dodd (click for more info)
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Giving and connecting

[The word "Service"] stirred negative feelings for many years, until I had my first child.

Being with my children, giving them in each moment all I can, learning and growing with them, changed my understanding of "service."

I have chosen to give, help and serve my children. I feel being with them has contributed towards a new understanding of the word as well as a way of building a connection with them. I can also see how it can be extended to others.

I realize how much weight a word can carry, how changes in my own feelings have lightened that weight and thrown a new light on the word itself. Service now stirs up and brings great feelings of joy.

— Parvine Shahid
March 2015

SandraDodd.com/serviceResponse
photo by Cátia Maciel

Becoming lighter

"Once I turned my head around and realized the wonder in me and curiosity that I felt for learning with my children a huge weight lifted off of me."

—Phoebe Wyllyamz

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Sandra Dodd

Electronic strewing

Physical strewing is fun—shells, leaves, crystals, puzzles, widgets and tools... Younger children need to touch things, turn them over, feel their texture and weight. Older children have more experience, and deeper questions. They're involved with collections and connections. Recordings, video, photos and trivia can be easily collected and shared, without needing storage. At my house, we're saving bottle caps for a young friend who's collecting them. He knows how big a bottle cap is, and what it feels like. I saw these and collected an image, thanks to the wonder of digital cameras.

SandraDodd.com/strewing
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Embrace curiosity

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Some people hold onto the fear that kids need schoolish math to learn math. They need to experience their kids learning math by living life to pry those virtual textbooks from their mind's grasp.

But some people are so damaged by math in school, the idea that they don't ever have to do math with their kids because kids will learn math by living life is like a great weight lifted.

That's not good either! For unschooling to flourish we should embrace a curiosity about the world—and the world includes relationships, comparisons and other uses of math.

Unschooling is *much* harder than school at home because it takes a great deal of self examination and change in ourselves to help our kids and not get in their way!

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/math/phobia
photo by Denaire Nixon