Playing for real

Playing with words makes them come to life.

The history of England, of math, of writing, of counting... all clued above and in all the histories of words. 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.

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, of a sign in The Mercer Museum
in Doylestown, Pennsylvania
__

Wide view and close-up

A closer photo of this gate might look more limiting than this distant view. There's no fence attached, past the low places on each side of the road. It will keep vehicles out, but not animals.

If you're feeling limited by something that doesn't really have a fence, it might be illuminating to look more closely at some of the construction, at the details. Things are different different places, and interesting.

To young children, things can be new even if they're the same old hardware, or view, or tree, or sky, to the adults. If you can see through a child's eyes, things might seem new again.

Seeing as a visitor or a tourist, in your imagination, will reveal another layer to your same-old, too. Even when you don't have visitors, you can think of what might be interesting to someone from another side of the world.


Your House as a Museum
photos by Sandra Dodd, visiting Queensland in 2014
__

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)
__

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
__

It must be learned and lived

Unschooling is not something people can wind up and let loose. It has to be learned and lived. And it has to be learned on the job, as it goes, so you can't wait until you're great at it to start.

—Sandra Dodd
Too boring to unschool?
at Always Learning

Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch.
photo by Sandra Dodd, of museum robots

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

Seems like yesterday

If my kids watched TV for hours each day, I might not be a good person to listen to about this, but I'll say it again: Unlimited access to TV and to food in my house has produced kids who only watch TV when they want to, and who only eat what they want to eat which is NOT a bunch of candy.

Holly asked for broccoli Tuesday. I bought some and cooked it before I knew she had gone to her friend's for an overnighter (she got the invite and left while I was shopping). So yesterday she asked about it, I reheated it and brought it to her at the TV where she was playing a game, waiting for the Simpsons to come on. She finished that bowl of broccoli, salt and butter, and asked for more with less butter.

I cooked the rest of it, and she ate most of it.

When The Simpsons ended she was done with the TV.

This isn't theoretical broccoli or TV, it was yesterday.

[It was 2001, but I wrote it the day after it happened.
Holly was nine years old.]

True Tales of Kids Turning Down Sweets
photo by Sandra Dodd, totally unrelated to the text, from a display at the Victoria and Albert museum of art from defunct or dismantled churches
__

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
__

Choices can abound

Choices can abound. Parents can arrange life so that their children have choices all the time, and learn to see their own actions as choices rather than "have to's," but none of them can give their children "the freedom" to do as they wish at MY house. Nor in a shop, nor a public place. Certainly not in a national park, or museum, or church. . . . .

Parents who tell their kids that they can give them "freedom" might be talking about the relative freedom of being out of school rather than in. Once they're in the normal real world, though, continuing to promise freedom isn't as helpful, nor as relationship building, as finding ways to give them choices.

Freedom/Choices/Empowerment/Respect
photo by Amber Ivey

Antiquery

Some antiques are never in a store or a museum. What others show you as old and valuable might be wonderful, but be on the lookout for other elderly objects, minding their own business without being fancy. History lives in all of that.

SandraDodd.com/history
photo by Sandra Dodd
(click for another angle, with mountains but no trough)

Newness unfolding

I can't really speak to any "end results," because they're still growing and experiencing the newness of many firsts in their lives. If there is ever an "end," the results won't matter anymore. But as long as life continues, the results unfold.

SandraDodd.com/magicwindow
photo by Marty Dodd, of himself and his girlfriend when they drove to Grants, New Mexico, on a whim to visit the Mining Museum
__

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

Where we live

Most of us live in a town, or near one, or in a city. Many of us live in houses—some attached, some stacked up, some with wheels. But all of us live in the present, in our families, in our bodies, and in our minds. We live, in part, in the thoughts of others. We live, sometimes, in peace and joy. We live in our imaginations, and in our dreams, and in our memories.

Stand in the place where you live...

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Sandra Dodd, at a museum in London
but there was such a playset at our house
and I wish I had more photos of it

Drop anchor.

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
__

Artsy collections

This photo is of home decorating, artistry, collecting and storytelling. Everything in the picture has a story. Some might be "found it," or "made it," but those stories would involve where, and how, and when.

Not everyone can arrange a collection interestingly or harmoniously. One of the greatest forms of artistry is arranging a display of paintings in a museum, or organizing a gift shop so that the visit itself seems a gift.

But wait! Look at the duck shadow! Beauty pops up wherever you see it.
Tree of Knowledge Motif is an example of an online collection.
photo by Colleen Prieto

Natural learning flows

Learning and growth are like a limitless reservoir, but we have factors in our culture that limit our access or control or faith that it could even work, or our feeling of ownership of knowledge of growth and learning. Experts. Timetables and charts. Once a parent knows enough about natural learning to help that learning happen, though, it can flow freely.

hand pumps, siphons, water containers
photo by Sandra Dodd

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

Treasure-ish

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

SandraDodd.com/museum
photo by Sandra Dodd

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

Looking closely

Karen James wrote:

Ethan and I are playing a game where one of us takes a close up picture of something in our yard, and the other one has to find it. Here's a sampling...



Sandra, I thought of this quote from Just Add Light and Stir as I was playing this game with Ethan today: "Some families travel. Some stay in one place, and come to know that place well."

It's interesting too, as I sit here and look at these photos again, that there's not anything particularly exotic about our back yard—it's kind of overgrown and weedy (as you might have guessed from a couple of the photos)—yet it looks so beautiful from this perspective. Especially that middle one. (Ethan was proud of that one.)

More exploring without leaving: SandraDodd.com/museum
The quote first said "...the quote from today's Just Add light..."

photos by Karen and Ethan James