Spining Plates

The other morning we overheard Pumpkin, 8, explaining the process of photosynthesis to his siblings. These moments encourage us on our unschooling journey as we don't explicitly set out to teach our children a particular topic or curriculum. It is fascinating to watch how qnd what they learn in their own space and time and from their own sources.

We have had lots of whitespace interspersed with a shopping trip to town with Bean, 9, for party supplies, an evening trip to a friends party, church and a film night at a friends house. Ostly it feels like we have been managing expectations especially with Bean as he is trying to flex his independence but is restrained by siblings. It helped that we had a pizza date during the shopping trip, just me and him. As part of our morning out we also took part in some market research, in which he was very thoughtful in his responses and i gave him half of the cash, which pleased him as he is very money motivated.

Plum, 5, went supply shopping on Sunday with daddy and they made a cake together in the afternoon before going to eat pizza and watch a film at T's house.

Plum still reads Brown Bear every night except now we substitute each of the animals for different ones every night and then we try to remember them all on the last page before we hold hands and go to sleep.

Whitespace

We were all up early with lots of whitespace (no plans) for the morning and a playdate arranged for the afternoon. Just because there are no plans, doesn't equate to doing nothing. It is actually incredibly difficult to do nothing. It is often during the times of whitespace that we discover what sparks our interest and we can use these ideas to organise or plan other things that might also interest us.

Bean, 9, and Pumpkin, 7, continued watching A.N.T Farm and then went and spent 4 hours playing on the wii working through the next episode of Lego: Pirates of the Carribean.

Plum, 4, and Pippin, 2, and me painted our nails. Plum painted her own fingernails and Pippins. We then sat and read several books together, some of them multiple times. We then face painted the dollies and finally each other. Plum face painted an excellent tiger onto her dolly. Pippin painted her dolly and herself blue, Plum said she was a blueberry. I painted a cat onto Plum's face, a yellow and green cat. Plum was showing signs of flagging after this and although we had rearranged our playdate from a nerf war in a park to indoor at their house, Plum was now saying she wanted to stay at home. She choose a film to watch (Shark Tale) and we snuggled on the sofa together. i rearranged our play date for the third time.

I went and spoke to the boys about not going to our friend's house and Bean immediately suggested that they could go their without me (this has never happened or been an option before, Bean has always wanted me to stay (except for the one camping weekend he chose to go on)) Pumpkin wasn't keen on this idea but i have logged it in my mind for another day.

Our friends arrived with a coding book for Bean and nerf guns. Pippin was asleep so nerf wars were off the agenda for a while. They played on the wii and introduced their friend, O, to bopit. He loved it so much that he asked Pumpkin if he could borrow it so Pumpkin has agreed to a loan and O took it home with him.
We played Hullabaloo together, followed by Cranium, and a nerf war before O went home.

The big three then drew each other treasure maps and hid chocolate gold coins and pieces of map around the house for each other to find. The day ended with pizza and finishing the film Plum had started and baths for all of them, stories for Pippin and Bean.