Simple and beautiful

"I think unschooling has done as much for me as it has and will have for my son. When you get down to it it's just so simple and so beautiful. It's helped me to reconnect with my older kids too and make amends for all the times that I made mistakes. So many things that you don't even know will be changed when you start living that different kind of way."

—Jessica Sutton

Unforeseen Benefits of Unschooling
photo by Karen James
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Learning without Reading

I didn't know how much children could learn without reading, until I immersed myself in unschooling and my children's lives.

As their reading ability unfolded and grew, I learned things I never knew as a teacher, and that I wouldn't have learned as an unschooling mom had they happened to have read “early.” Reading isn't a prerequisite for learning. Maps can be read without knowing many words. Movies, music, museums and TV can fill a person with visions, knowledge, experiences and connections regardless of whether the person reads. Animals respond to people the same way whether the person can read or not. People can draw and paint whether they can read or not. Non-readers can recite poetry, act in plays, learn lyrics, rhyme, play with words, and talk about any topic in the world at length.

The second paragraph above is on the page
"Unforeseen Benefits of Unschooling," SandraDodd.com/unexpected
photo by Holly Dodd
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How many hours?

There are no hours of school, and there are no hours of not learning.

From a talk in Edinburgh (Q&A section of Unforeseen Benefits)
Sandra Dodd: Talks in Edinburgh on Saturday 21st May 2011
photo by Sandra Dodd, from a funhouse at a steam fair in England

Sharing life

I expected unschooling to cause me to be closer to my kids, when they were young, than I might otherwise have been. As time went by, though, I found that I was being kinder to my husband and nicer to my pets.

Others have reported this effect, and their surprise. As unschooling principles became a deeper part of their lives, they discovered a gentler homelife, and an expectation of kindness.

Unforeseen Benefits of Unschooling
photo by Meredith Dew

Nearly ten years of this

When I started Just Add Light and Stir, I didn't think "And I'll still be doing this in ten years!" In two days, September 2, year 11 begins. I suppose there's a possibility I'll still be doing it for another ten. 🙂

The past six months have been awkward and unsettling. After years and years of others looking askance at unschooling, though, and asking questions like "Don't you get tired of being together so much?" and "How can they learn without a lot of other kids around?" then all this happened. ALL the families were sent home to stay and learn.

Unforeseen benefits of unschooling are fun to collect, but I did not see this one coming. Unschoolers seemed to find that the transition from choosing to stay home to being told to stay home a while wasn't very difficult. Others, used to recitations about the crucial importance of school, of being around other people, and of scattering out every day, didn't slip as smoothly into being home.

Thank you for reading here, and for being examples others might be comforted or inspired by. Calm and peace are valuable resources.

This is my quieter-than-usual annual request for financial assistance. The main page of SandraDodd.com has a donation link at the bottom, but ignore this if you're not flush and comfortable these days. If money is short, put it toward your children's ease and stability.

photo by Jo Fielding

Unexpected experiences

Unschoolers have experiences other homeschoolers don’t have.

Unschoolers know things that teachers can’t learn in or around school.

Unschoolers who start early enough can have relationships with their children for which there are hardly any words.

That lizard looks like it's in the air, but it was on the windshield. The driver didn't expect to see a lizard there. There was a time she didn't expect to arrange for her children to stay home instead of go to school, either.

What seems shocking, at first, can end up quite interesting, safe and peaceful.

Unforeseen Benefits of Unschooling
photo by Pushpa Ramachandran