Christine

I've asked a few questions on the loop and lurked quite a bit and slowly absorbed some of the ideas that have been passed around on this list. At first, I was a little taken aback at some of the ideas that have been presented here, but something occurred the other day that shined a little light into this (new to me) style of learning.

One afternoon, I downloaded a game on my laptop that I thought was pretty fun and it had a lot of physics concepts in it. I played it for a while and thought, I am going to show this game to Harlee and Jaired(dd & ds). When I mentioned the game, my son looked at me skeptically and asked, "what's physics?".

So I explained and later that afternoon, I ran across a visual encyclopedia of physics that I had forgotten I had and gave it to him. I told him this is what physics is all about. He read through it casually and set it aside. I figured it was forgotten...but the book was gone. Later, I gave my son an old computer and he loaded an old copy of Roller Coaster tycoon on it. Both of my little ones enjoy this game tremendously and as I overheard them arguing about the proper way to build a roller coaster, my son says, "Harlee, You have to understand the physics behind how a roller coaster works, here let me show you!"

Ha! I never would have seen that coming. I beamed privately as they worked out how to make their roller coaster work. Later, after a small discussion session, they started a competition as to who could build the biggest, baddest coaster. They worked late into the night.

Thanks guys for tolerating my ignorant questions. :-) This is not to say I won't have more later....but it sure is cool to see unschooling in action!

As a side note, the game I showed them, called World of Goo, they both enjoyed so much they finished it in 2 days!!!

Happy New Year everyone,

Christine

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Kelly Lovejoy

-----Original Message-----
From: Christine <homeschoolmom@...>


Thanks guys for tolerating my ignorant questions. :-) This is not to say I won't
have more later....but it sure is cool to see unschooling in action!


-=-=-

Very cool. Thanks for sharing that!




~Kelly








[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

leana randolph

That is so great! I had a moment like this with my son too. I am fairly new to unschooling but figured "What the heck, everything else I am doing is not working."

My son is a video and computer gamer. I can not stress how much he loves games. Well anyway to make a long story short, one day out of the blue he says "Mom, going to sleep helps to restore your health doesn't it?" I looked at him in a bit of a shock because this came out of the blue and I said "Yes son, sleeping does help your health tremendously." Then I said "How do you know that because we have not discussed this before?" and he looks at me like I am the crazy one and says " My video games, when I am sick or my health is low, my game tells me to sleep to restore my health!" HAHA I was like "WHAT??" I could not believe it! My son was successfully unschooled on something and learned something BIG!!!

HAHA!! I LOVE unschooling!!!!!! It really makes sense and when you see it happening in front of your face.......WOW!!!!!


LeAna




________________________________
From: Christine <homeschoolmom@...>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 6:54:17 PM
Subject: [unschoolingbasics] end of the year revelations (for me anyway!)


I've asked a few questions on the loop and lurked quite a bit and slowly absorbed some of the ideas that have been passed around on this list. At first, I was a little taken aback at some of the ideas that have been presented here, but something occurred the other day that shined a little light into this (new to me) style of learning.

One afternoon, I downloaded a game on my laptop that I thought was pretty fun and it had a lot of physics concepts in it. I played it for a while and thought, I am going to show this game to Harlee and Jaired(dd & ds). When I mentioned the game, my son looked at me skeptically and asked, "what's physics?".

So I explained and later that afternoon, I ran across a visual encyclopedia of physics that I had forgotten I had and gave it to him. I told him this is what physics is all about. He read through it casually and set it aside. I figured it was forgotten... but the book was gone. Later, I gave my son an old computer and he loaded an old copy of Roller Coaster tycoon on it. Both of my little ones enjoy this game tremendously and as I overheard them arguing about the proper way to build a roller coaster, my son says, "Harlee, You have to understand the physics behind how a roller coaster works, here let me show you!"

Ha! I never would have seen that coming. I beamed privately as they worked out how to make their roller coaster work. Later, after a small discussion session, they started a competition as to who could build the biggest, baddest coaster. They worked late into the night.

Thanks guys for tolerating my ignorant questions. :-) This is not to say I won't have more later....but it sure is cool to see unschooling in action!

As a side note, the game I showed them, called World of Goo, they both enjoyed so much they finished it in 2 days!!!

Happy New Year everyone,

Christine

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Deborah Resnick

My son, similarly engrossed in video/computer gaming, had a similar
situation concerning the election. He is on WoW a lot, and was on election
night. He watched as the returns came in, debated with other gamers over
who should/would win, and woke me up at 1AM to tell me that Obama had taken
it. He very matter of factly discussed (during the entire summer) bits and
pieces of the process and issue with us and his gamer friends. That helped
me feel a LOT better about his gaming.



Debbie Resnick

<http://www.resnickfamily.com/> The Resnick Family - Our website

<http://www.pandoraknits.com/> Pandora Knits - My Blog

<http://www.ravelry.com/people/pandoraknits> PandoraKnits on Ravelry.com



From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of leana randolph
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 10:45 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [unschoolingbasics] end of the year revelations (for me
anyway!)



That is so great! I had a moment like this with my son too. I am fairly new
to unschooling but figured "What the heck, everything else I am doing is not
working."






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]