Confession, I talk a lot.  Seriously, I do.  I used to work for a radio station as a dj.  People I knew used to ask me HOW I could talk on air.  I would always reply, "Talking isn't the problem for me, but getting me to shut up, that's a problem!"

But talking is how I process things.  I find so many things interesting and as I read and hear and see and learn I verbalize it.  Now, I'm not an endless blabbermouth.  At least I hope not.  But it's no suprise in our unschooling lifestyle that a lot of our learning very naturally comes through conversations.  Things that just pop up in talking have led to the most interesting coversations.  I used to feel (looooong ago) that if we hadn't covered it in a text book or on a feild trip that we hadn't really covered it.  Thankfully I don't believe that anymore. 

I'll give you an example of how this goes on in our house.  About 2 days ago EJ was sitting in the living room reading and ED and I were planning a family event for the day after Thanksgiving while sitting in the same room.  As we were planning decorations and things we wanted to make somehow the conversation got around to some event in history (don't remember which one) and I said it's really cool to talk to people like Grandpa (born in 1908) because he is a first hand witness to so many things in the last almost 100 years.  How 50 years from now people will want to know what WE remember of things like 9/11 and we started talking about what specific things stood out to us from that day.  Now in the course of this rather lengthy, but very interesting conversation we talked about:  Japanese Military and militaristic culture before the end of WW2, the Cold War, Pearl Harbor, atomic weapons, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, past and current policy toward atomic weapons, MAD (mutual assured destruction), the current debate on CIA torture in the news, cultural and linquistic misunderstandings, and many other things I can't even remember.  It was a lively conversation everyone voicing their opinion, asking questions, very enjoyable.  Now we don't do this ALL the time but it's not all that unusual either.  It doesn't hurt that I love history and have read a lot and watch a lot of history movies and documentaries.  The kids often watch these with me.

And lest you think I'm just pouring out lectures to them all the time, many times it's EJ, ED, or S sharing something fascinating with me that I had not known before.  S, at 11, can tell me in detail about the 4-stroke engine and many other topics as well.  I often find myself saying, "where did you learn that?"

I love that about them.  That they know things I don't.  Because it shows me that they have become independent learners.  That though we often do things together and I share things I know, much of what they learn is on their own.  No hand holding, no spoon feeding, just natural free form learning.

doulos

p.s. don't think ALL my days look like this

Sometime I'll write about a day that really stunk