Doing Two Things at Once
or, Leaning on a Truck and other parallel play
There is..a lot of conversation in our house...about behavior and character. So when people refer to teaching children good morals, they might mean by experience, example, and conversation.On that same page, Joyce Fetteroll lists ways kids learn without being taught (right below Pam's writing there):The problem with teaching is...
Good conversation is really writing development. Sometimes I see parents who kind of shush their kids or get obviously bored when their kids are telling them a rather long drawn-out story (like retelling a movie plot). But retelling a tv or movie plot or telling everything that happened, in order, in a video game are really great for writing. In fact, all that verbal stuff—conversation, summarizing movies, persuading or arguing, playing games, etc.—is MUCH better for developing good writing than practicing writing in the artificial ways that schools do it.
—pam
So much goodness happened after midnight. Conversations, check-ins, snacks... connection.
As it so often does, a late night at the island turned into an important conversation. Eventually Owen joined us too. We talked for close to two hours about important things.
The value of staying up with my kids last night is not measurable—nor is it quantifiable.
If he had a bedtime, we would have missed our 2am chat about My Little Pony, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Shakespeare, cellular peptide cake with mint icing, the two Queen Elizabeths, the nature of cats in general and ours in specific, word play, fan fiction, Lord of the Flies,specism (like racism and ageism), Harry Potter, and Heinlein.Nancy Wooton (on Late-night Learning too):
It's something I would never have known I was missing out on, and I love these conversations and insights, and how they change as he grows.
My husband wasn't too sure about unschooling at first, and was also adamant the kids be in bed and stay there at a certain time. I'd just come home from a one-day conference—probably the first time I heard Sandra speak—with an armload of interesting toys and books and a head full of inspiration. One of the books was about finding Titanic, and included a paper model, which I decided Mommy should put together (I really like that kind of thing 😊).I was working on it after the kids had gone to bed, but then-7-y.o. Alex got up. He looked at the book and we talked about it as I worked; we discovered what a fathom was, and that Titanic came to rest on the continental shelf, not the very bottom of the ocean, and I'm sure some more interesting things, but those stick in my mind.
About a half hour later, Alex went back to bed and I kept gluing. Dh came in and said, "So that's unschooling." He'd overheard the conversation. I said, "Yeah, that's unschooling." Never had an argument after that. 😊