Project

I have been frequenting some unschooling forums and joined an active Yahoo! group for unschoolers. The topics, especially for newcomers, always seem to be the same. There is a great misunderstanding that radical unschoolers sit back and hope for the best for their kids without any direction or intervention. This simply isn't true- the direction and intervention look different than they traditionally do but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

I believe one of the reasons this is difficult to explain is because it happens in the small moments. Lots of new unschoolers want to know what a typical day looks like for an unschooler but even this is misleading. I can block out the activities of the day but it doesn't convey all of the little things going on that make unschooling work. So, I've decided to do a project that I'll share here, and perhaps a few other places, to try to convey how radical unschooling works for us.

The project is called "100 Little Things" and is precisely that. I will be keeping track of all the little things I do, from using TV as a tool to encouraging exploration. Most of these interactions are less than 2 or 3 minutes but have a big impact. Because they are brief they are often overlooked by those exploring unschooling and I think that's a shame because these little moments are the HEART and SOUL of unschooling.

I'll keep you posted as I gather the moments. :)