Theory
My Unschooling blueprint is Play-Learn-Work not necessarily in this order. My understanding is that we are each different but all connected, therefore our roll is to use our common sense and resources in order to support them in their journey to become happy independent adults, find their niche, their context, and their place in the world.
I see three cycles
0-7 years old / Love, joy and play
7-14 years old / Activities, projects, social life
14-21 years old / life tools, professionalization, relationships
Around the Unschooling parents I met over the years, I see three main issues that influence the quality of their experience:
The relationship with the state
Their professional project
Their relationship status
To manage my system and for my kids curiculom, I developped this list of life main categories, I used it for research and goal settings. THE LIST allowed me to focus on the important beyond the urjence
HOME
House _ Kids _Partner
WORK
Make _ Show _ Sell
SELF
Well being _ Admin _ Social
Alphabet
A
Attachment Parenting
You know how some people write books and others create an original body of work that transform your way of seeing the world in a way that you know new things. this kind of a door opener is this book. If you had to choose only one book at all for all the baby years this is the one
Jean Liedloff wrote The Continuum Concept: In Search Of Happiness Lost as an anthropologist researching the phenomena of happy children. She does a great job at validating our common sense, and our instinct to welcome our child-born to the world in the nicest way possible.
Adobe creative cloud
Having kids at the house, they are about to use the computer sooner or later. why not turn the computer into a creative work space. The Adobe creative cloud allows the entire family to work in all their applications. Photoshop is basically a box of modern crayon and the basic program everyone uses. than LightRoom is more for photography. Indesign for editing a publication. Animate creates beautiful easy animations and the list goes on and on.
My thinking is that what ever professional path your kids are going to take, they will need to know their basic adobe. or this experience will teach them what it takes to use the program they will need.
The illustration above was created by Jhonatan on Photoshop with a wakom pad.
Anger
The White rabbit and other budhist hacks to deal with anger
B
Breath-feeding
Bank account
Craft
control vs support
Choice making muscle
Common sense
Costumes
Code
D
Drawing
Decoding a Challenge
Driving license
Divorce
E
Entrepreneur
F
Fix & Flow
food & free will
G
Gardening
Garden hose
H
House
When Unschooling, your house become a co-living co-working environment . A center for :
PLAY
LEARN
WORK
To me this is a beautiful mix. Its an endless process, the house will never be done, but these are main three I follow:
COMFORT
PRODUCTIVITY
COMMUNITY
Higher education
Hammock
J
John Holt
K
Kapla
What I like about Kapla is that it is all and nothing. The very definition of simplicity and elegance. made from clean wood planks, It is an exciting creative lego without themes, without gender.
Kapla is good both for the indoor and outdoor, It is an inter generational game, it can be played by one or by group. You can use the Kapla book for example or create your own designs with very few limitations.
We started our Kapla collection with a smalll box and another one and another one, till we submitted to the XL box that is still in use till today.
Ken Robinson
L
Language
M
Music
Meetings
The homeschool community is meetings based. Personally I hosted a meeting for few years, but lately I stopped. the way I recommend to do it is to have an open house policy. fix a day and hour and spread the rumor, over the years we had some amazing time in the garden, celebrated bday exchange info and support and so on.
N
Natural birth
O
Office stuff
A basic setting is a package of 500 A4 printer page and some markers and pencils in a cup where ever we went.
P
PARTY
Photography
Project day
Professional life
the parents - finding balance between both parents home and work life can be a challenge.
In my case I established my work practice from home in parallel to their upbringing. I know its not easy, but I believe our reality carries more and more tool for that
the kids - professionalization of their main interest is the cherry on the top of the cake. seeing your creation comes to live in a sense. nothing is more fulfilling than to see your baby taking their first steps in their chosen field of interest. congratulation, you made it to the top. when your kids is 14 years old, you may have a vague idea of where his talent or passion lies. the job now is to start looking around for a professional context. It may be a professional school, or a cluster of workshops and internships. but what ever your kid’s main thing is, its up to you now to thread a professional context around it, and than support him through the process, deadline, excitment , firsts clients, managing stress, dressing up, the admin side, a thousand different details, with a happy kids with money in their bank account in the end of their process.
Pema
R
Home remedies
S
The State - relationship with
Screens
Apple creative cloud
FB
Dropbox
T
Toys
One of the things that shocked me as I enter motherhood was the insane amount of commerce established around it. some of my family members were intoxicated with getting us everything we didn’t need. I refused all plastic-battery objects but had to replace that with an alternative wish list as an outlet to all the loving, caring and affection.
I believe kids could go for years on sticks and stones for toys, but we are part of a society, a good compromise is: one can not go wrong, directing our pockets to anything CRAFT, SCIENCE, SPORT or MUSIC instrument. and BOOKS of course.
Trampoline
Trampoline was definitely the most successful item from all over the years. here is what I liked about it : Trampoline is the only game that easily over powers screens attractiveness. My kids, literately put down their screen to go jump, and couldn’t get enough of it
Trampoline hosted bunches of kids for fun birthday parties with balloons and confetti and shiny decorations. as they grew up The Trampoline also hosted bunches of teens for summer outdoor sleepovers with lots of blankets and pillows. fun & cozy.
Last but not least, Trampoline is a wonderful exercise for moms post birth. Its effect on the pelvic muscles equivalent to hundreds of Kegel exercise.
The List
V
vaccinations
W
Wheels
Weapons
