"Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how." -John Holt
We headed back to Portsmouth on tuesday to meet some of the Seacoast Unschoolers (SUN) at the home of the 2nd set of Doherty's we now know. They've got one sweet piece of real estate... a cute house and barn nestled last on a private dirt road with a salt water "creek" of sorts right in their backyard. The kids threw rocks in the water, climbed all over a fallen tree, got shin deep into the mud and collected buckets of snails. The rough, rocky terrain didn't faze Caden one bit.
Afterwards we stopped at the farm that Jen is getting her alpacas at for a quick visit. Simone loved them of course, Gabriel was grumpy about being cold and Caden missed it all, fast asleep in the car.
"By nature people are learning animals. Birds fly; fish swim; humans think and learn. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do - and all we need to do - is to give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for, listen respectfully when they feel like talking, and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest."
John Holt
"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it...and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself." -Grace Llewellyn
"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
George Bernard Shaw
Real, natural learning is in the living. It's in the observing, the questioning, the examining, the pondering, the analyzing, the watching, the reading, the DO-ing, the living, the breathing, the loving, the JOY. It's in the joy. ~Anne Ohman
"How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?" -Henry D. Thoreau
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