How to be an Unschooler in 400 Words or Less
Wake up to the wide world and your sweet home. Stretch. Cuddle. Eat something. Smell the smells. Touch hair and remember the baby threads hidden in memory. Snuggle while pajamas are all still warm from comforters or sleeping bags or couch cushions or animals that lay in their beds while they slept until they were ready to awaken.
Read something. Discuss something else. Get a hug. Smell that wet, strawberry shampooed hair and brush it until it is all silky again. Play with the other child’s dreadlocks. Wear a pair of fairy wings. Treasure hunt. Write to a unicorn. Breathe. Be grateful. Love.
Record something. Download something. Check out classic movies. Check out B-movies. Read a magazine about a foreign country. Count the ants that are crawling around in the sidewalk. Take a walk in the mall, the beach, the park, the field, the museum, the city, the farm, the yard. Get a library card from as many libraries as you can. Use them often.
Make friends with interesting people, and meet everyone. Talk to the mailman, the baker, the librarian, the thrift store church lady. Bring them all cookies next time you make a big batch. Show them you are interested and they will become interesting. Find your community.
Go online. Blog. Write poetry. Sing a song and make up the words you don’t know. Laugh a lot. Make up jokes, stories, and limericks. Try to play an instrument, or lip sync. Show the kids you know every single word to Gloria Gaynor’s disco hit I Will Survive. Learn a new game. Revive an old one. Make up new rules. Cuddle again. Channel surf while the tv is on mute and make up the dialog. Watch a movie with subtitles. Watch a movie in your native language with foreign subtitles.
Breathe deeper. Do a yoga pose. Laugh when it makes you fart because this week you are all eating only Mexican food and that has involved a lot of beans. Catch your breath. Let your breath be taken away again. Love more. Be.
You are an unschooler.
Showing posts with label unschooling blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unschooling blogs. Show all posts
Monday, January 14, 2008
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
100 Posts
Wow! I looked at the "dashboard" of this blog and saw that I have posted here 100 times. That is a lot of joyful learning.
It is funny, because as I have discovered the blogosphere, some of my favorite people have decided to stop blogging. This has given me some food for thought, about why I love this blog, why I do it, what is important to me, etc.
When I started, I thought it would be so fun to have a record of what we do in our lives. Well, of course, as it turns out our life is too full for this to be a true running record of our lives. It is a snapshot, and a very tightly focused one at that. But it has been so fun to do this writing and recording, explore other blogs and the community of bloggers.
But, what is the focus here? Why do these things become what I blog about? Who is this blog for? Is it worth the energy? Is it keeping the focus in the center of my life as an active mama and authentic person and where I want to be?
I think it is.
I think that this blog reflects very well a special piece of who we are, who we love and what we enjoy.
My children both love to read it. They have asked me to blog about certain things we all do. At the same time, they are clear about what to share. We took a walk and found something special. I said, "Next time I should bring my camera!" The children said, "Yes! But don't put *this* on your blog, it is too private." And, I am keeping the pictures of Christmas morning to myself :)
In those and other ways, I feel that this place reflects all that we want to share, and none of what is too precious, internal or sacred to share with the world.
This blog is for our family. It is to reflect, to record and to create an energy that celebrates the every day epiphanies and delights.
So, although it is selfish (grin), I also hope that this gives our friends and family who wonder, "What do we *do* all day together? How can we not drive each other crazy?" a glimpse into how our every day life functions. I hope that others who wonder about home and unschooling can find some ideas here. I hope we can share some of what we love about where and how we live.
It is nice to have people visit, and visit myself in a way I could never get organized enough to do with scrapbooks or other logs.
I think I'll keep blogging for now. It is just too fun to stop.
It is funny, because as I have discovered the blogosphere, some of my favorite people have decided to stop blogging. This has given me some food for thought, about why I love this blog, why I do it, what is important to me, etc.
When I started, I thought it would be so fun to have a record of what we do in our lives. Well, of course, as it turns out our life is too full for this to be a true running record of our lives. It is a snapshot, and a very tightly focused one at that. But it has been so fun to do this writing and recording, explore other blogs and the community of bloggers.
But, what is the focus here? Why do these things become what I blog about? Who is this blog for? Is it worth the energy? Is it keeping the focus in the center of my life as an active mama and authentic person and where I want to be?
I think it is.
I think that this blog reflects very well a special piece of who we are, who we love and what we enjoy.
My children both love to read it. They have asked me to blog about certain things we all do. At the same time, they are clear about what to share. We took a walk and found something special. I said, "Next time I should bring my camera!" The children said, "Yes! But don't put *this* on your blog, it is too private." And, I am keeping the pictures of Christmas morning to myself :)
In those and other ways, I feel that this place reflects all that we want to share, and none of what is too precious, internal or sacred to share with the world.
This blog is for our family. It is to reflect, to record and to create an energy that celebrates the every day epiphanies and delights.
So, although it is selfish (grin), I also hope that this gives our friends and family who wonder, "What do we *do* all day together? How can we not drive each other crazy?" a glimpse into how our every day life functions. I hope that others who wonder about home and unschooling can find some ideas here. I hope we can share some of what we love about where and how we live.
It is nice to have people visit, and visit myself in a way I could never get organized enough to do with scrapbooks or other logs.
I think I'll keep blogging for now. It is just too fun to stop.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Tagged...weird things
Okay, so I have been tagged. My friend Madeline tagged me, so I guess I'll play.
Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself
4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.
Weird/Random Things About Me
1. My name was almost Boston. My mom and dad in their hippie days thought this would be a cool name. When my brother and his wife were expecting their second, I told him this story. He named his daughter Boston. I like to think she'd named after me, in a way.
2. I was supposed to pick my own middle name. Again, my mom had some idea (influenced by the movie A Thousand Clowns). The kind of weird thing is that I never did.
3. My feet are two different sizes. Completely.
4. I always thought I was born on the day men landed on the moon. My parents told me this. There was this story about how I was just out the womb and there lay my mom watching me land on the moon.....well, it was actually three days later. Maybe that is when she came out of her post partum bliss enough to turn on the tv.
5. I still have my teddy bear, Theodore. I love him. I am not ashamed :)
6. I am very superstitious about rocking chairs. They should not rock with no one in them. My Nana taught me that.
7. When eating with a spoon, I have to use a small teaspoon. I cannot stand the feel of a larger spoon. I never use soup spoons.
Whew! That was harder than I thought.
Okay, I am tagging.....
Ella at My Homeschool Life
Dee at Diary of a Mad Crafter
Robin at Blue Skies Urban Farm
Denise at Mom in Madison
Mandaroo at Second to the Right, Straight on til Morning
Chloe at The Mindful Home
Jean at Freckles Filled With Love
Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself
4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.
Weird/Random Things About Me
1. My name was almost Boston. My mom and dad in their hippie days thought this would be a cool name. When my brother and his wife were expecting their second, I told him this story. He named his daughter Boston. I like to think she'd named after me, in a way.
2. I was supposed to pick my own middle name. Again, my mom had some idea (influenced by the movie A Thousand Clowns). The kind of weird thing is that I never did.
3. My feet are two different sizes. Completely.
4. I always thought I was born on the day men landed on the moon. My parents told me this. There was this story about how I was just out the womb and there lay my mom watching me land on the moon.....well, it was actually three days later. Maybe that is when she came out of her post partum bliss enough to turn on the tv.
5. I still have my teddy bear, Theodore. I love him. I am not ashamed :)
6. I am very superstitious about rocking chairs. They should not rock with no one in them. My Nana taught me that.
7. When eating with a spoon, I have to use a small teaspoon. I cannot stand the feel of a larger spoon. I never use soup spoons.
Whew! That was harder than I thought.
Okay, I am tagging.....
Ella at My Homeschool Life
Dee at Diary of a Mad Crafter
Robin at Blue Skies Urban Farm
Denise at Mom in Madison
Mandaroo at Second to the Right, Straight on til Morning
Chloe at The Mindful Home
Jean at Freckles Filled With Love
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Favorites
This looked so cool, I decided I had to try it.
The idea is to use your answers to the questions as search phrases in google images. You then get some images to choose from that were search results for your favorite food or whatever.
How funny is that? There was also a picture of a dog smelling garbage, how does that relate?
Okay, what is the deal with the mushroom? I was getting a little sick of the way I was formatting this, but I will search this image again. Oh, yes, I will.
The idea is stolen from some unschooler blogs I like to read (Ren's, Kelli's, Sandra Dodd's). It seemed so fun on theirs. Actually doing it was not as cool, but I was surprised that the images were so incredibly varied, given just a phrase or word. There was some choosing then, that was going on over on these other blogs and so I will revisit with a different eye, now.
The idea is to use your answers to the questions as search phrases in google images. You then get some images to choose from that were search results for your favorite food or whatever.
1. Age you'll be next year: 39
2. Place you'd like to travel: Pretty much anywhere
Okay, I don't know this little girl, but the caption said they would take her "pretty much anywhere", and doesn't she look like a wonderful travelling companion?
3. Favorite place: Cozy with my children at home with something smelling good
How funny is that? There was also a picture of a dog smelling garbage, how does that relate?4. Favorite object: my yellow (non-down) comforter
5. Favorite food: warm chocolate chip cookies
6. Favorite animal: dolphin
7. Favorite color: beige and red
8. Nickname: Jec
9. Town I was born in: Syracuse, New York ... and this image is about as much as I remember...
10. My bad habit: Lateness
Saturday, November 3, 2007
November is National Novel Writing Month
Well, I am going to try again. It is National Novel Writing Month again. Ella is actually joining me in this pursuit and we will see how it goes. So far, I have more than 2000 words, which sounds impressive until you calculate that I will have to write 1666 words a day and so today I have to write about 3000 words to keep on schedule.
I am being quite verbose, and every minute thinking of Mr. Burns (both mine and Richie's high school English teacher) saying I had "diarrhea of the pen." I am sure he is rolling over in his grave at all these writers writing for word count and editing in December for clarity.
So, how this will effect my blogging will remain to be seen. I am thinking either I will write a lot to "warm up" (read: procrastinate), or I will actually get to writing and not blog much.
Ella's goal, as a Young Writer, is set at 18,000 words. She has writing nearly 1000, and she had to kill off a character who just wasn't working. My goal is set by NaNoWriMo at 50,000.
Okay, with the near hurricane outside, I am off to try to get to 3000 today.
I am being quite verbose, and every minute thinking of Mr. Burns (both mine and Richie's high school English teacher) saying I had "diarrhea of the pen." I am sure he is rolling over in his grave at all these writers writing for word count and editing in December for clarity.
So, how this will effect my blogging will remain to be seen. I am thinking either I will write a lot to "warm up" (read: procrastinate), or I will actually get to writing and not blog much.
Ella's goal, as a Young Writer, is set at 18,000 words. She has writing nearly 1000, and she had to kill off a character who just wasn't working. My goal is set by NaNoWriMo at 50,000.
Okay, with the near hurricane outside, I am off to try to get to 3000 today.
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