a hippie with a minivan

where's your nose?

I was talking with a friend yesterday about unschooling and an analogy popped up in my head when she asked me…
“but how to kids learn if you are not actively teaching them”

First I explained that you are always teaching whether you want to or not, you teach by example all of the time and kids pick up things and learn a lot more than we sometimes want to teach them… They learn our good habits, our bad habits, they learn how we interact with others etc… and unschooling is just an extension of that in many ways…

An example that came into my head was the way that some parents seem to believe that you need to actively teach body parts…

Have you seen those parents that for 15 minutes say…

“where’s your nose?… oh look! I’m touching your nose!…. can you say nose?…. nose…. Nose…. NOSE….. say nose…. can you touch my nose? where’s my nose? can you find your nose? I got your nose!…. say nose…”

and on and on and on….

well…. guess what…

I don’t do that…

and guess what?

my kids know where their noses are…

Now… don’t get me wrong… I am not saying that it is wrong to do it of you enjoy it… or you are doing your kids a disservice by doing it… that’s not my point at all…

my point is that kids do learn and will learn without things being drilled in their heads.

They learn by listening to every day conversations… they learn by asking questions and by getting answers…

So as I explained this to this friend I think she understood what I mean by unschooling being learning without always actively teaching… and that kids will learn the thing that they need and want to learn.

of course…

So… as I finished typing that last post and breathed in a a breath of quietness… the phone rang… Colin headed up stairs to go to the bathroom and Khéna was woken by both the phone and his brother…

I made lunch, we ate and the boys headed back downstairs and I sat down to read while Khéna was happily playing in view in the kitchen… he then went out of view… nothing alarming as he plays out of view quite often… but he became quiet… a bit too quiet…

I stood up and walked to the kitchen where I saw him sitting happily in the middle of a puddle… it was a yellowish liquid and it surrounded him completly… pee? I thought…but there was too much to be pee….

then… I saw it… next to him… an almost empty container of vegetable oil … it was full before (1.89L worth)… and now it is not…

*sigh*

A roll of Paper towels later… and I have washed the floor 3 times with dish soap…. now I need to figure out how to salvage the veggie oil soaked Fleece diaper cover…. it is soaking in hot water and dish soap as I type…

quiet…

It is freezing outside today and I am cuddled up on the couch and enjoying the little bit of quiet that I have at the moment.

Simon got out his old Star Wars toys from the shed yesterday and the boys stayed up late last night playing and I finished the skirt that I was making and I am now thinking of my next project. A late night for the boys meant that they also woke up later than usual and the moment that they got up they went downstairs to play only stopping for a few minutes to eat… and they are amazingly playing… not fighting and are having fun together….

Khéna just fell asleep and I layed him down in his new “big boy bed” that Simon also got out of the shed yesterday. He is so proud to have his own bed and earlier this morning I helped him climb up onto it and he spend about 30 min there just sitting up, laying down, playing with a stuffed puppy and looking at a book…

Last night I layed him down in his bed and he slept there for a few hours before waking up and spending the rest of the night cuddled in our bed…

so at the moment, I am drinking tea, incense is burning, the house is quiet with just slight noises of the boys playing together and I just feel really content at the moment…