An untypical unschooling freestylee day

What does an unschooling day really look like?

No two days are ever the same.  Sometimes we have a plan for the day, sometimes we freestyle it. Today was a freestyle day. Woke up with no clue how the day would unfold. All we knew was - today we'll learn stuff for sure, cos we always do!

These last few days we've been hanging out with my cousin who stopped by for a few days on his easter break from uni. We've had loads of late night philosophical chats, ponderings,  and musicality :-) In between chats and games and the odd roll-up, we played music and video clips of interesting stuff, sharing what we know, sharing what's new. We've played games with the kids, went on an awesome  day trip yesterday to Castle Acre village (Norman Motte and Bailey Castle ruin, and large Priory ruins to run around sword-fighting in with newly-made friends), pondered the nature of language and meaning and success. Today, like many of our days, was pretty unplanned and unfolded quite spontaneously and naturally.

Today we did all kinds of random stuff.

* Learnt about POP art - looked at and discussed images of works by Andy Warhol like the Campbells Soup stuff and briefly looked at Roy Lichtenstein, and did some still life drawings - Herb did a traffic cone in rad colours, Finn did a road crossing street scene in pencils, I drew a mug with a picture of the Guiness toucan, and our pestle and mortar, and I drew a Pokemon for Alf on request

* Took a musical trip through David Bowie to the Dandy Warhols to Screamadelica and were treated to some guitar playing and some rag-time and classical and radiohead piano pieces, and Finn practised the SuperMarioBrothers theme-tune

* Discussed educational philosophy and exchanged thoughts on educational books

* Watched this and four subsequent parts of the same series, and had discussions with herb about the origins of language, the roots of different languages, Romans, Gauls and finally, Asterix!

* Watched videos from Shoo Rayner's website, including http://www.shoorayner.com/?p=5439

* Listened to Jarvis Cocker's Wireless nights

* Indie watched Numbertime vids on youtube, with El Nombre

* We all did a bunch of chores, Herb loaded/unloaded the dishwasher, vaccuumed the cupboard under the stairs and Finn folded up laundry and I cooked a wholesome lunch - veggie and lentil bake.

* Pete felt rough so he had a lie down for a couple of hours :-( after which he felt a bit better :-)

* Herbie read books for a couple of hours

* We had a bit of bouncing on space-hoppers fun

* I taught my cousin how to make sponge cake using the rule of equal weights. Alf and Indie were the chief stirrers and spoon-lickers and egg-smashers and gigglers and squabblers

* Finnbar did some computer programming, working on his platform game

*Finn read a bunch of Where's Wally stuff to me, and we looked for the different characters together

* I set up a jigsaw puzzle for Indie which he completed all by himself

* Discussed raw food, looked at Kirlian photography images , and energy stored in foods

* I sorted through our organic seeds and did some mental planning for planting our seeds very very soon - eeek we've left it pretty late this year!

* Had cuddles and sung and danced

* Had a relaxing bath

* The children taught me how to play Lego Pirates of the Carribean game on the wii - I don't usually join in and play wii games with them so it was fun

Tommorow the boys will have the whole day with Pete as I am off on a Doula training day in Essex with my lovely friend Nicole, and they will have to entertain, educate and feed themselves without me.

How will they cope?!

I wonder what random things tommorow will bring... hopefully better weather for some outdoorsy fun and maybe a bit of seed planting:-)

How was your day?

Xx MF xX