Let the kids play!!

I'm stealing another fellow unschooler's blog idea! I came across this video on Kelli's unschooling blog and felt compelled to share it here. Here's a brindis to getting our kids out of a lot of these structured activities and letting them explore the world through play! Heck, while we're at it, we adults need more playtime, too. The highway would be a happier place if people were enjoying the ride.

Every 1st Wednesday of the month...

Every Wednesday Selena and Xavier deliver papers for their routes. Selena uses the money to care for her ferrets. Xavier is paying back a loan from Grandma and Grandpa for his classical guitar. In the case of the paper routes, I am the driver. Generally, the routes take a couple hours each and we pass the time by listening to podcasts from public radio. Well, this is a roundabout way of explaining why I'm never at home on Wednesdays, but by chance, I was at home this month when the civil service sirens went off. We are only within 1/4 of a mile from the Ham Lake siren and the dogs really respond to the blare. Well, yesterday I got Jota's reaction on video for posterity!

Recent Pleasures

Selena and I are in the middle of enjoying the Masterpiece Theater series, "Cranford". For some reasons, which I don't feel like revealing here, we both LOVE these English period pieces. Xavier does not get too enthusiastic about them but he did stick with this one through the first two hours, but then he got tired of it and went back to his guitar and video game. But Selena and I were giggling and sighing through the first half of it. We were having SO much fun last night that we didn't get to bed until midnight. Selena had a full day of classes but had a hard time stopping the VCR and saving the rest for tonight!

Anyway, Cranford is based on three novels of Elizabeth Gaskell. It takes place during a period of intense change in England in the 1840's. Cranford is a small town with a set of interesting, funny and endearing characters. And we LOVE Judi Dench! I'll watch anything in which she appears. Recently we saw Masterpiece Theater's production of Oliver Twist, which was really good, and Xavier really liked it, too.

On a different note, I might add that I am asked at times about how my kids are acquiring knowledge of certain subjects. Well, it's easy to see in this case what kinds of things we are learning by enjoying a film like this and freely talking about it (as opposed to, for example, doing homework for a class on English literature or history, or economics, or, let's see, sociology etc..) If I had forced Selena and Xavier to watch these films and given them follow up questions afterward I'm sure that we wouldn't be enjoying the experience, and thus, learning as many things. The beautiful thing is that I can see it happening right in front of me. This life can be great indeed.