What Unschooling Looks Like At Our House

Some photos of our last month, in no particular order, just for those who wonder what we do all day...

Making gingerbread constructions (Tal made a sort of tower with candy-stained-glass windows and a candle inside; Rhiannon made a "tunnel" with a pond, ducks and just generally a whole lot of gingerbread activity going on. I made a little "Wizard's Hut" and campfire. Making gingerbread is a two-day process, with all the dough-making, baking, and creating with icing-glue. And then all the calamity and mending... It's a mess! But so fun, and you just never know what everyone will come out with, in the end!

Two friends of vastly different ages, enjoying some reading time.

Snow pillar and snow owl. Seize the moment, they did! This is the only "real" snow we've had, so far this year, so they made the best of it for the few hours it lasted!

Uh... Tal. Your room's getting pretty messy. Oh. Look at that. Aaaand... back to my other activities...

...and the other activities happened to be: Electrolysis experiments! Tal decided he wanted to make hydrogen (I think this is related to his desire to make an extremely powerful engine or rocket). Oh look at that stream of bubbles coming off his little carbon block!

Unfortunately, then it became blue, and we asked him to please look up what he's doing to be sure it's safe. Oh -- it turns out it's chlorine he's making! No more leaning over the container inquisitively!! The experiment was safely brought outside.

Rhiannon and her Pappa after the polar bear swim.

On the way home, one day. Those sticks are beaver-chewed sticks, which it seems our children and their friends now call cheeky-weeky sticks.

Cooking mini-sausages on Tal's tiny barbeque.

I have no idea what he was doing here, but I suspect Minecraft. Notice more mess. Unschooling is just messy. That's the way it is. I hope one of these days we get the balance of creating to cleaning a little better figured-out, though.

On the day Uncle(s) and Aunt moved into their new house, the kids and I spend the entire morning making cookies and snowflakes and window stars and a happy Welcome Home sign, and then spent hours stalking the new driveway for our chance to go secretly deposit the gifts and decorate the house. Unexpectedly, one of my favourite parts of the day was the long time we 3 spent holed up in our car, singing songs together and spying on the driveway, waiting for them to leave. We should spend a little more time in close confines with nothing to do but talk and sing!