Last-minute gifts

Something people need for Christmas is patience, sweetness and a little more attention than you think you have time for. Slow down just enough to look more closely at each person in your house, or in your video feed, or who sent you a card or note. If you can't give them more of yourself directly, think kindly of them. Maybe do something helpful for someone else, in their honor. Many people are not where they would like to be this week, and those who see each other might not hug and kiss. If you can make things better and not worse, that is a profound gift.

Give patience for Christmas.
photo by Sandra Dodd, from last year

If you give a sheep a cookie...

This photo is from another year.

I'm glad the sheep had a cookie.                    It's glorious that his mom got a photo of it.                             I'm grateful that she let me share it here with all of you.                                              🎵And glory shone around.🎵

---

photo by Christa McCowan

A gift for the child and the parent

Jenny Cyphers wrote:

Every time I prevent something damaging happening to one of my children, it's like healing a little bit of me. Every time I help my children achieve something wonderful, it's a little bit like healing that little girl that would've like that to happen for me! I love gifting my kids with that! It helps make me a better person to give my kids something better!

—Jenny Cyphers

on Always Learning, in 2010
photo by Janine Davies
__

Life, living and being

I've said before that people shouldn't live with one foot in the school (with a curriculum, or trying to keep up with school), nor even in the shadow of the school. It means to live as though school didn't exist. It means live outside of, far from, without thought of school. Learn in ways that work naturally and holistically, where the learning has to do with life, and is living, and being. —Sandra Dodd, 2011

Step away from school
photo by Sarah Dickinson

A better emotional neighborhood

Good people make better parents. Better parents make better unschoolers. If some of your transitional energy is spent being a better person, your child's working model of the universe, which only he or she can build, will have a better foundation. It will be built in a better neighborhood, with cleaner air and purer water.

Right and good
photo by Sandra Dodd
___

When the world is new

Babies and young children can see the same old world as a whole new place, because from their perspective, bubbles, Christmas lights, fountains, sand, rainbows, and chickens are phenomenal new experiences—exciting and glorious. Next year, next time, they might have forgotten, and it can be new again.

Adults, if they're lucky, can also acknowledge the chance for learning and joy when they see something for the first time. A sense of wonder comes easily for toddlers, but it can be yours, too, with a little practice.

New to the World
photo by Nicole Kenyon
__

Photos, thank you

When I came to choose a photo, I looked through the past week's to find something that wasn't too similar to something I've just used.

When the blog was new, most of the photos were mine. I didn't think it would last ten years, but it has, and others have let me have some of their photos, for the pool from which I choose.

Without it being planned, the past seven photos are from Moldova, England, the eastern U.S., Northern Ireland, The Netherlands, Brazil, and the western U.S.

The week before that, Oklahoma, The Czech Republic, California, France, my home town of Española, New Mexico; more California (thank you, Karen James!)

There have been, and will be, photos from many other places, too. I hope you will continue to be soothed and amused by these images, from unschoolers, of what they're seeing, or being.

For reading, thank you.

photo by Colleen Prieto

More snow photos, mostly; mentions, maybe

If you're at a computer, or in webview, try this for fun: Mosaic