"Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how." -John Holt
Let me count the ways... (caution: this post is full of Sony camera pics) :P
First, they grow up and can do manual labor of the hard core sort. (And if you think a miniature horse has miniature manure you'd be
very wrong.)
They will come over in the middle of the week to clean out an entire corral in exchange for photography lessons. Isn't that handy?!
The younger unschoolers are good for keeping themselves busy catching free-range rabbits and hypnotizing them. (Pete is loving it, can't you tell?)
Even in the rain, they will entertain each other at length.
And if they find a bin (or two) big enough to make like a boat, they will experiment with doing so. (Not everyone made it out dry.)
And after some serious studying of the concepts of shutter speed, aperture and ISO, those big unschoolers produce images such as these- both taken in natural light in a dark house (end Sony camera pics):
Look at that camera tilt! Ah, my protege's... till next time!
"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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