The good stuff

There are probably things in your house that would fascinate your children but you haven't thought to offer or they haven't found the good stuff yet. Consider interesting things you have that might be of interest for being old, foreign, specially made or obtained under special circumstances:

ornaments
dishes / pots /molds
silverware—even one old piece you know something about
egg beater
flour sifter
can openers (“church keys”)
old bottles or other containers
old clothes from the 60's or 70's
recordings—reel to reel, 45's, 78's, 8-tracks
manual typewriter
push mower
pre-transistor radio

More of that list, and the parent article are at SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Holly Dodd
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Strewing, and teens

Someone asked about strewing for a teen. I wrote:

Your family needs to be interested and interesting. Go places. Bring things and people in. Visit friends of yours who have cool stuff or do interesting things. Ask him to go with you if you take the dog to the vet. Drive home different ways and take your time. Putz around. Go to the mall some morning when it's not at all full of teens, and windowshop.

If you can afford it, find something in another town like a play, concert, museum, event and take him there. Stay overnight.

Go touristing somewhere not too far from you. Like if you had out-of-town guests, but just go with your son.

There are other ideas, too, at SandraDodd.com/strew/teens
photo by Karen James
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Surprising beauty

Why travel to an art museum when a bus stop can do this?

But it won't do it all day, or every day. Light, projections, shadows, are fleeting, and people aren't always there to see them.

Art museums are good, but art is unfolding all around us.

SandraDodd.com/surprise
photo by Elaine Cambridge

Patterns and games

Many games involve patterns of colors or numbers. Think of that, even when you play games like Rummy or Poker. Tile games and matching games are easy to see. Many single-player games with cards or moving pieces on a grid to let all the cars move, or match-three games, are all about seeing patterns, one step at a time.

Having read that far, I hope you thought of one or all of these, too:

Music
Mathematics
Art

Patterns galore. Play with them.

Seeing patterns
photo by Sandra Dodd, of some old-style cards
in the barracks at Fort Stanton, now a museum
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Mess with chess

Sink-Like-a-Stone Method: Instead of skimming the surface of a subject or interest, drop anchor there for a while. If someone is interested in chess, mess with chess. Not just the game, but the structure and history of tournaments. How do chess clocks work? What is the history of the names and shapes of the playing pieces? What other board games are also traditional and which are older than chess? If you're near a games shop or a fancy gift shop, wander by and look at different chess sets on display. It will be like a teeny chess museum. The interest will either increase or burn out—don't push it past the child's interest.

When someone understands the depth and breadth of one subject, he will know that any other subject has breadth and depth.

SandraDodd.com/checklists
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Museumworld

If you've seen all the cool things on the shelves at your house, look at other people's shelves!

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd

What big eyes you have!

Since I was little, I have loved the line, "Grandma, what big eyes you have," from Red Riding Hood. It's a good line.

What can you see if you look far away or close up, or with your eyes closed, "with your mind's eye"?

The New Mexico State Museum of Natural History has microscopes. I took a bug there. If you click that, I think you can get an image you can zoom in on to see his eyes, his toes, his wings. How can you see that? Other people helped you see.

SandraDodd.com/seeing
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Things and places

I like museums, but if you can see the whole world as a museum, your life will light up!

If you can see art in normal, functional things, your life will lighten up!


SandraDodd.com/mystery
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a dam and some tumbleweeds
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Something different

Things you are used to are exotic to others. There are things you see every day that some people might never, ever see in person.

Lightning storms. Snow. Kangaroos. Tumbleweeds. Tugboats. Mountains. Beaches. Cargo bikes. Lifts / elevators. Temples. Shave ice. Castles. Cactus. Alligators.

Inventory your special local treasures!

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd
(click it for a video)
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Whole people, now

Your children are not works in progress. They are whole people, now and from the day they were born. If you can try to see that, rather than think people are not finished until they're finished, it might help you.

SandraDodd.com/respect
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Adam Daniel picking out a souvenir shirt
at the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque
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Curiosities

Learning proceeds from being able to touch and see things, maybe to hear, smell or taste things. To discuss new or unexpected things. To think about interesting things.

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd

Treasure-ish

One country's trash is another country's mysterious antique treasure.

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd

Your House as a Museum

There are stories behind the things you have. You're saving history, geography, social ties, mysteries. Share those stories with your children and your guests, if there's a lull, or a connection to be made.

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd

Everything in the Whole Wide World

There is a Sesame Street book called Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum. There is a "things under the sea" room and "things in the sky" room, but still each room is just a room in a museum, no windows, everything out of context. Then he opens a big door marked "Everything Else" and...

The picture that follows is here, and more text, but what's outside the door of your own home is more important.

art by Joe Mathieu, early 1970's
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Do more

If you think you haven't done enough for your children lately, do more.

Maintain and replenish
photo by Janine

The world as a museum

Be willing to be surprised where you are, to appreciate the unexpected, and to stop and notice something old or artsy. What's familiar to you might be brand new to a child.

SandraDodd.com/learning
photo by Sandra Dodd

The wondrous now

There are WONDROUS things people can do with current technology, and it's likely to get better and better, isn't it?

Don't separate your children from the future, from progress, and from understanding and using things just because the parents don't understand them or use them as well as they might. Don't hobble your child out of fear or superstition or trying to impress people you don't even know who want to scare and shame you. Be your child's partner. Lift him up and let him see.

SandraDodd.com/partners/child
photo by Sandra Dodd, of sculpture and shadows in Albuquerque,
to share around the world, without printing, paper or postage
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Round, coming around

Lisa Jonick took this photo in a park in Albuquerque where I have been many times. The shadow is round, but flatter than the tree is. Still, the big round sun and a round tree caused that effect.


The dome in the distance there is Explora, the permament home of a children's museum that used to move from storefront to strip mall to basement of a downtown building, while they raised enough money for a home of their own. Some of the displays are things we saw in other locations, as my children were growing up.

Things tend to come around again, in different forms, perhaps, and with different details. Small effects can build up to large ones. A snapshot moment connects space to earth, season to viewer, structures to history, memories to the future.

Find a comfortable way to relax into the flow of life, as often as you can, appreciating the sweet surprises along the way.

The writing above is new, but a good link is SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Lisa Jonick
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The path to unschooling

It's the path to unschooling—to go toward the better things and away from the worse things.

Deschooling... "Like what?!" (chat transcript)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Peaceful options

Our lives are peaceful, our pressures are self-inflicted and mostly optional, we’re free to visit historical sites when there are no crowds, to leave town during the week, to sleep late or have guests whenever it’s convenient for us, without regard to school’s schedule.

SandraDodd.com/why
photo by Ashlee Junker