I love our (unschooling) life
Hey there!
A few hours in our unschooling life:
As Bo wakes me several times in the night to nurse, and sometimes I can’t get back to sleep straight away, I’m tired when getting up. This morning, they let me have a lie in. But I was still tired when I got up at 9.30am and went to my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lesson at 10.45h. In the bus I had time to listen to Mastery, Robert Greene’s audiobook that I’m really enjoying.
While I was training, Lima and Bo went swimming with Rob.
When I came back, they were having lunch with my parents.
My mother is very opposed to the idea of not sending children to school. She is worried they won’t learn anything. Our diet is also a concern for her. We choose the most nutritious foods, don’t buy anything processed, rarely anything with sugar in and stay away from flour products as much as possible. But with her fixed mindset, she has difficulties believing it’s good for them and tries to stuff them with her soups and fill them up with pasta, quinoa and oats.
For me, it was always very important that my daughters choose how much to eat and to listen to their bodies, rather than me telling them to finish their plates or eat more of a certain food so sometimes I step in and tell my mom to leave them alone…
While I was eating my lunch, Bo took a sponge and strapped it underneath her foot with a hair band and walked around with it. When she saw that she had left some soap trails behind, she took the kitchen cloth and wiped them away. Next, she started cleaning her toy kitchen and the balcony railing. She sang while she was doing it.
In the meanwhile Lima was taking photos and videos, edited them and sent them to my husband. She said she’d like a video editing app so I downloaded one. We also proceeded to clear the iPad from too many games. They each chose 7-15 games that they like and we deleted about 80% of what was on there. The iPad has been playing up a bit lately. Either because of too many apps on it or because it has been dropped too often. Either way, to be honest, I’m looking forward to it not working any longer and it not being me who’s taking it away from them. We’ve been only watching family movies (movies that the 4 of us enjoy) in the evenings and it’s been very pleasant. Only on the weekends have they been using the iPad.
Lima and Bo like clothes, putting makeup on, doing their hair and looking pretty. I’m sure it’s partly because people keep saying ‘You’re so pretty‘ and talk about their beautiful clothes. Sometimes it concerns me a little bit and I hope that they don’t think they have to be pretty to be liked or that their beauty matters the most.
While I’m writing this Lima is painting Bo’s face like a lion with water colours and my dad is next in line.
My dad brought books to read them to the two - fairy tales by the brothers Grimm and others. He’s been trying to get them to sit and listen but they don’t sit still for very long. It doesn’t mean, they’re not hearing what he’s saying.
At times, when my dad asked whether they’d like him to read, they said No and he seamed a little cross. Now, while Lima is painting Bo’s arms, my dad has taken the chance to read and they are actually listening. They walked off during the second tale.
Lima just came to me and said ‘You have 20min more minutes to finish work. I’m going to wash Bo now.‘ She’s running her a bath…
Once they’re done in the bathroom and I’ve ‘finished work’ we’re going to go to the park.
Later we’ll have dinner together and watch a Christmas movie. Yesterday we watched The Grinch, the cartoon version.
I left out a lot of details but all in all what we did was follow our interests, spend a lot of time together, experiencing an alternation of many enjoyment and challenges.
Our days vary a lot. What happened today has never happened before and I like that. It’s all new - new day, new ideas, new moments, new lessons, new memories, new unplanned schedule.
What did we learn today? I don’t ask or test my daughters so I don’t know. I learned some new things today, about myself, about my family members, while listening to my audiobook, while doing jiu jitsu, even while writing this… and I know my daughters also learned new things today, some things that they’ll keep in their minds and hearts forever.
I love our '(unschooling) life.
