As a Unschooling mum , I love when my child comes to me and asks a question, do you know why? Why because it reminds me of why I wanted to embrace the Unschooling philosophy in the first place.I wanted my child to be naturally curious of the world, and want to learn for the joy of learning themselves, not because they are being bribed with gold stars , high marks and awards.You will be very surprised of how natural daily living and natural learning work so well together. Even how going with the flow, of your life's adventures can turn into a great science , geography and history lesson.
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Lets take today for instance
We decide to go for a quick drive in the bush to see if we could find any dead wood,- so my husband can make the kids some branch tree blocks, who knew trying to find the right piece of stick would be so hard and take so long.Anyways half hour in , numerous tracks we randomly came to a honey bee farm , in the middle of the bush ,now this got alot of questions being asked,The kids learnt that bees eat pollen and nectar from a variety of flowers, thats how they create honey that we eat.They got to see with their own eyes how humans farm honey in honey bee hive boxes.We also discussed how plants and flowers need bees to help them grow and produce fruit , by pollinating them(we discussed how pollination works).We pulled the car over to have a better look , and had to quickly whined up the windows up, as bees were everywhere , I discussed with the kids how bees, do not purposely try to sting us only when they are threatened and that if the honey bee stings a human they die
see In that one spontaneous moment taking a random track we came across some science and geography questions we could share with the kids
But that was not all !
Other natural Questions and conversations were being said, We were nearly at the bottom of the most biggest mountain ever, and my eldest son asked how are mountains made ! Hmm I had no idea, how are they made dad ? - I said ... Luckily dad knew, they are made when earths crust moves, from the plates the collide and the pressure pushes up forming mountains.(I even learnt some new science and geography stuff today)
We drove past a few random signs , and pulled over to have a read, we realised we were closed to a old mining abended town " a ghost town" - now that got my daughters attention what a ghost town? - we explained what ghost town means , and how back 100 years ago in 1910 it was a thriving old town, families would come and mine and live but once the resources ran out, everyone moved away and only what's lefts of the buildings remain - hence they call it a ghost town. some history was also covered today in our spontaneous adventure.
The learning was still not over.
As we kept driving looking for that perfect stick -we drove past a random super old picnic spot , right next to a flowing creek, we pulled up to let the kids have a little explore and my son got out his metal detector ( we always keep this in the car, for moments like this ) and went around trying to try his luck , he waved it by a old fire, we discussed how the charcoal set it of, he ended up finding a fairly new pen in the end ? huh.. weird.
We also discussed pine wood is soft wood, and the difference between soft and hard wood,
and probably alot more that I cannot remember .