Finding Saturn

Google is a great friend of our family, even for the two little ones who aren’t reading yet. Today Aidan found a picture of Saturn! He is SO excited. He typed some random letters in and followed links until he somehow got to an internet dictionary. He has loved Saturn for a long time and calls it a “moon”. He wanted to print it out, so LIam somehow reversed it to negative (to save printer ink since the background was originally black!) so Aidan got a “black moon!” which he is carrying around and showing to everyone.

Makes me think about the unschooling truism that has become a cliche — kids have so much enthusiasm about learning when they are little — when do they lose it? The answer is usually: when they go to school. It doesn’t seem quite as simple as that to me though. I LOVE learning, even after 17 years of school, some of them quite dreadful. Kevin loves to learn too. The fact is, too, that kids go through stages and some of them are simply interested in different things than others. Sean, for instance, has an immense knowledge base in what Kevin calls “situational awareness”. We have video of him at age 10 months running and flying into a pile of newspapers. He broke his leg at age 8 and with a thigh-high cast, was leaping over the back of the couch within a couple of weeks. This is love of learning but it’s a vestibular, proprioceptive, kinesthetic kind. He amazes the coaches with some of his pass receptions in football. He’s much less interested in pictures of Saturn and the like.
Aidan is still talking about that Saturn!!

I think what happens at school is that people learn to turn the “off” switch on certain areas of learning. A few years of school PE was enough to close me off of the possibility of enjoying any kind of team sport or anything active beyond staid activities like walking. Many people drop math out of their life. Kevin’s shut the door on analytical grammar, deciding that its only purpose is to keep English teachers in business.

I am afraid that Clare is one of those who are beginning to shut math out of their lives. She wants to progress in math because her goal is to go to a small Catholic Great Books college here in California. But the textbooks leave her feeling shaky and unsure and bored. She is heading for the point of being one of those talented writers and musicians who say they “don’t have a math mind.” Sad because effective writing and music-making depend on intuitive grasp of logical and quantitative relationships.

Fostering Sean’s motivation for improving his emergent NFL pro football player, we drove down to the high school in the foothills this afternoon. It was hot and windy and they were setting up temporary bleachers for the graduation. He and Kevin did some running around the baseball field and then passed the football, and then Sean did several sprints on the long jump track (whatever you call it, red soft pavement with a big sandbox on the end). Then we went to the drug store to buy some more bandages for Aidan and some Maalox in hopes that it might help his irritated stoma. Wiped out by this, Aidan took a nap when we got back.

Brendan says his story is coming to the more difficult part and he is finding it rougher going. Clare, I noticed, is getting REALLY good at the keyboard for someone who just started in November. She can play songs from Phantom of the Opera.

I am thinking that I am going to start being a little bit more proactive with the strewing. There is a good article online called An Unschooling Landscape. A lot of my agenda is about tidiness and perhaps that’s not at the top of the agenda right now. If I put paper and crayons where the little ones could reach them, maybe they would do more drawing than if they have to wait for me to take it out. And so on. Why am I keeping things hidden away in my closet when they could be seen and maybe used?

On a broader level, I see that composing or creating a learning landscape allows for the kids to find their interests and focus in freedom. Then the second part is facilitating and supporting their development of interests and abilities. We do this already, of course, and it’s actually rather difficult NOT to do it since the kids will pick up on what’s around. But maybe it’s time to do this more consciously and work to surrender a bit of “tidy control”. I can have things streamlined and organized when my kids are gone — too soon!

Now Aidan is putting his “bunches of Pikas” (three of them) to rest. He just said, “It’s my job to rest now too!” and told me to say to him, “Are you guys so tired?” Now he’s waking them up! I love to see him pretending. Now he says they are at Mass — now they’re praying and now “they’re about to sing. Everybody’s going to stand up!” I guess that afternoon nap was an energizer.