What is not a clock?

I do love clocks and calendars and the history of time measurement, but it is good to remember that we are not clocks, and our children are not clocks.


The clock is not hungry
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a sundial in Chichester

Artsy imaginings

Art, arrangements, sculpture—any art—is based on a vision or a mental image. Viewers interpret that, and respond, sometimes with thought, words, or responsorial art of some sort. Then someone will see that art, or comment, or review, and reference it somehow.

These are connections, sometimes wordless, and that is learning, even when it's far from facts and figures.

Writey-Drawey
Art about Art
photo by Heather Booth
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Hearing yourself think

Hearing what I say as a mom is crucial to mindfulness.

If I don't notice what I say, if I don't even hear myself, how can I expect my kids to hear me?

If I say things without having carefully chosen each word, am I really communicating?

SandraDodd.com/mindfulofwords
photo by Eileen Mahowald
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One layer, and another....

Like layers of an onion someone can understand unschooling, and be calm, and then discover... Oh! I could extend these principles to my spouse.

For people with young children, it will be about just the surface of an onion. Maybe that's the concreteness of it. "How can you recognize an onion when you see one?"


Text is a smoothed-out quote from Becoming an Unschooler
photo by Ester Siroky

Power

"I want my kids to feel empowered, so I empower them." —Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/jennycyphers/
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Different and better

The change you need is to live a different way. Step out of the grumpy dark into the calm decision-making choose-joy light.
. . . .

Leave the old habit to wither. Don't try to break it. Move to making better choices so that what you used to do and used to think will be left in the "choices I don't consider anymore" category.

SandraDodd.com/change/
photo by Ester Siroky

Women, mummies, Abe Lincoln

Lyle Perry, who unschooled two boys, wrote:

While watching a movie, a Kotex commercial came on and spawned a lengthy discussion on menstruation, and how all the different methods of protection work, or don't work, the reasons why women pick one method over another, and what did women do back before companies like Kotex existed. Then the discussion moved to the different methods of birth control, then to birth itself, and C-sections, natural childbirth, etc. All from one little Kotex commercial.

While watching The Mummy (cartoon), we talked about Egypt and the pharoahs, and then slavery, which eventually led to the civil war and Abe Lincoln, and then on to other presidents that had done "great" things.

That's just a few off the top of my head, but the main thing to remember is that none of these discussions were planned, and it's always the kids that initiate the talks, and when they stop asking "why, when, how, who and where" the talk is over. They may come back at a later date and want more information to add to what they know, or they may be satisfied and leave it at that.

TV is not a "bad" thing. TV can be very, very cool.

SandraDodd.com/t/learning or (bonus link):
SandraDodd.com/presidents
photo by EsterSiroky