I’ve said before that we try to avoid too much screen time. However, there are some very important technical skills that kids need to have in the world they will enter. There are also some incredible learning tools out there. One that we have really loved (for all ages!) is Toca Lab. It’s available for…
I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught.
— Winston Churchill
The beneficial effects of getting just a little true play can spread through our lives, actually making us more productive and happier in everything we do.
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
This. In this brilliant article, Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle writes about a conversation with a young girl in 10th grade. This girl is so afraid of not getting an “A” that she is afraid to try anything new. In our current system of education, kids almost have to get a 4.0 to feel like they…
“Any parent who has punished a child by taking away TV privileges and then watched that child play–slowly at first, then imaginatively, freely–will recognize the connection between time, boredom, and creativity. ‘There’s something about television–maybe that it provides so much in the way of audio and visual stimulations that children don’t have to generate very…
It is often said that education and training are the keys to the future. They are, but a key can be turned in two directions. Turn it one way and you lock resources away, even from those they belong to. Turn it the other way and you release resources and give people back to themselves.…
— Sir Ken Robinson
Some people talk about play as if it were a relief from serious learning or even worse: a waste of time. But for children, play is exceedingly serious…and important! In fact, play is a way for children to learn who they are, how the world works, solve problems, and to express feelings. Yes, play is…
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.
One thing that I have committed to myself, again and again, is allowing each interest and each possible topic or “subject” in my children’s learning to have equal weight. In the education of my children, I agree with Sir Ken Robinson that creativity is as important as literacy. Creativity can come into play in any…
A few of our daughters are really into sewing and design. We have been trying to encourage their creativity in this area and it has been really fun to see what they come up with. In addition to instruction on sewing, stitches, etc., we have purchased books and allowed them (almost) free reign of my…
Claude Monet is next in our favorite unschoolers series. His art resonates with me, and changed the course of art and painting as we know them. Monet spent his youth in the coastal town of Le Havre, in Normandy. He spent his time along the beaches, observing the light and the water. Though his parents…