Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Unschooling and Essential Life Skills

Unschooling, or my preferred term, Natural Learning is a worldview that life itself is learning and children naturally seek to learn. A parent with a natural learning worldview seeks to provide children with an environment in which they are free to follow their curiosities and discover the world. In doing so children would develop the necessary life skills that they would need on their life journey.

Ellen Galinsky, the author of the book Mind in the Making identifies 7 essential life skills every child needs, namely

  1. Focus and Self Control
  2. Perspective Taking
  3. Communicating
  4. Making Connections
  5. Critical Thinking
  6. Taking on Challenges
  7. Self Directed, Engaged Learning
Over the next couple of weeks, I will be looking at each skill from an unschooling perspective. This will elaborate further and describe the principles of Natural Learning. It will also illustrate that life skills are a natural outcome of a natural learning environment.

Bye 4 now.....

Saturday, August 14, 2010

More or Less

We want more
We need less
We accumulate more
We have less
We find that more is less
And less is more
More or Less