What unschooling looked like yesterday

I am home sick with a cold, so I snuggled into Frank's new recliner with a notebook and kept track of most everything the girls did yesterday. Like all days in an unschooler's life, it was all about the small moments that connect to other small moments, that connect to other small moments, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Morning
Chloe has cycled into a day schedule, so she was the first one up. She spent the early hours crocheting a scarf and reading "Drowned Wednesday," the third book in the "Keys to the Kingdom" series by Garth Nix. When I got up, she joined me in the livingroom for a private chat. (Let me just say for the record that one big reason I write about acceptance so much is that I see how much pain rejection causes my kids.) While we talked, she finished her scarf and added a clever little crocheted pom-pom to each end.

MJ was up late and then picked up again this morning with the following activities: writing in her journal, touching base with pals on MySpace, reading blogs, researching drinking and smoking restrictions in Italy and Ireland, and planning her photography for the trip we hope to make there next fall. (Side note: Frank and I were *thrilled* to learn that both countries have recently instituted bans on smoking in public places. Yay!)

Afternoon
Later, we all came together in the livingroom for some family conversation. Topics ranged from "Look! There's a moose!" (an inside joke with their cousins); driver's ed and MJ's unique visualization technique (she puts other characters where she's supposed to be and has them walk through the routine, such as having a hopped-up chipmunk doing the walkaround); knock-knock jokes; crocheting; Christmas shopping and decorating; food; the "Golden Compass" (which they saw Sunday), original sin, the role of religion and the Church in society, and whether Philip Pullman's atheism necessarily means he had an agenda when he wrote the book. We also shared a moment of grief over Gillian's egg.

Then Frank and MJ had to leave for driver's ed.

Evening
Chloe and I talked about the distribution of the world's religions. I got on the Internet and found maps and piecharts that are fascinating but perhaps not organized quite the way we would do it. (For instance, we wondered whether Catholicism, Mormonism, and evangelical Christianity can really be grouped together...?)

Next, we talked about the girls' recent trip to the mall with their cousins. Chloe was frustrated because MJ and the other girls wouldn't let her nap during the return bus ride. We brainstormed their possible reasons, and then asked MJ when she got home (they wanted to help her stay on a daytime schedule, and no real reason).

Frank brought home some delicious Romio's spaghetti for his poor, sick wiff. While I ate, we talked about oil painting — or rather oil-paint drying, since Chloe's oil painting from a week ago is still tacky in places. From there, the conversation touched on sleep, metabolism, melatonin, housing, mortgages, privacy, overpopulation, living in the desert, honor, respect, worship, whether Jesus' love was conditional, and how one might fall prey to one's own weaknesses. Chloe also went through my calendar page by page, and we talked about our plans for the coming year and the meaning of various holidays.

Chloe went to bed early, so MJ — after another stint on the computer, reading Zenmomma and creating an animated greeting card on jibjab.com — and Frank and I watched "Men in Black." Then she and I stayed up WAY too late for a couple of sickies, watching "Firefly" episodes and the abysmal film version of "Queen of the Damned" (from the excellent book by Anne Rice).

Academic translations
comparative religions
philosophy
arts and crafts
biology
reading
writing
photography
civics
statistics
financial planning
oral reports
sociology
memory tricks
environmental sciences
...and whatever dozens of subjects they encountered in their literary and Internet "travels" yesterday