Friday night a creative bug hit the house and all of us were doing various things. You can see what was created in this post.  One of the creations was this drawing done by Emi.

It is a house that has a path leading up to it and there is a person walking up that path to the house. If you look closely you will see that there is a pattern in the path.  Red, blue, red, blue etc. When she showed me the picture and was telling me about it she said “See my pattern mom?” I had seen it, it was the first thing I noticed because patterns are something that she has recently begun to notice and create in her play.

I have watched her pattern play develop naturally out of her  fascination with putting things into groups.  I first saw the grouping happen when she had a bag of skittles. She was about 4 maybe and she dumped the entire bag out on the table and grouped them together by color. I don’t recall if we ever talked about groups before that day. I do know we had never sat down at the table with work sheets to learn about putting things into groups.  One day, after  I gave her a jar of seashells I found her in our room seperating them into like groups.  I have seen her do this with blocks, beads and other colored candies. It is just something she does and it is fun for her. She has no idea that it is math and I haven’t told her that it is. That doesn’t mean that it won’t come up and that I won’t give this as an example of math at a later date…maybe. I just don’t see a need to tell her right now that it is anything other than something she likes to do.

*****This is a note from my facebook page. I am sharing it here just so I can have it archived in my blog since it contains so many of my favorite quotes. I just want to say that I no longer feel the same intense emotions I did when I first wrote this. It is water under the bridge.

I have spent the last couple of days stewing,fuming, and stressing over a negative comment about how we homeschool. It was made by some man(I use that term loosely) I don’t even know. Not only do I not know him, he does not know my family and yet some how, according to his statement, because we unschool our children are foolish. If I didn’t think I would deck him I would invite him to meet my girls and spend time with them. Instead I am going through quotes that speak to why we unschool. I don’t give a rats you know what if anyone agrees with me. My husband and I have not just jumped into this without thought and prayer. We do not pass judgement on those that do things differently. We do this because it works for OUR family. We don’t do it because we think we are better than anyone else. And unschooling doesn’t make us irresponsible heathen parents with children that run around with utter disregard for the world and people around them. I like my kids, I think they are pretty cool PEOPLE.  I take that back I don’t think, I know they ARE cool PEOPLE. They make me a better person everyday and I will never be able to thank them enough.

“ Q. Will they have the opportunity to overcome or do things that they think they don’t want to do?

 A. I’m not sure what this question means. If it means, will unschooled children know what it is to have to do difficult and demanding things in order to reach goals they have set for themselves, I would say, yes, life is full of such requirements. But this is not at all the same thing as doing something, and in the case of school usually something stupid and boring, simply because someone else tells you you’ll be punished if you don’t. Whether children resist such demands or yield to them, it is bad for them. Struggling with inherent difficulties of a chosen or inescapable task builds character; merely submitting to superior force destroys it.” ~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

“Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years (who does?), but he knows, and much better than anyone else, what he wants and needs to know right now, what his mind is ready and hungry for. If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. If we try to make him learn something else, that we think is more important, the chances are that he won’t learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will soon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, will before long lose most of his appetite for learning anything.” ~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

“Living is learning and when kids are living fully and energetically and happily they are learning a lot, even if we don’t always know what it is. ” ~John Holt ~ in a letter to Joan Pitkin, October 22, 1971From: “A Life Worth Living, Selected Letters of John Holt”,Edited by Susannah Sheffer

“Children do not need to be made to learn to be better, told what to do or shown how. If they are given access to enough of the world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to themselves and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world then anyone else could make for them” ~John Holt~, (1923-1985) American Educator, How Children Fail

Unschooling is *much* harder than school at home because it takes a great deal of self examination and change in ourselves to help our kids and not get in their way! —Joyce Fetteroll

The goal of unschooling is not education. It is to help a child be who she is and blossom into who she will become. Education happens as side effect. —Joyce Fetteroll

Let your kids be WHO THEY ARE, not who someone thinks they should be. Throw away the mold and let your kids LIVE. ** —Lyle Perry

“Unschooling has had an incredibly positive impact on our lives, and not only in an educational aspect, but in everything we do. It’s changed the way we live, the way we think, and the way we look at the world in general.” ** —Lyle Perry

Unschooling, in a very real sense, IS a mindfulness practice.:) Being in the moment with our children, trusting the flow of life, seeing our connections to them and to all of the universe etc… ** —Ren Allen

If you want to measure, measure generously. If you want to give, give generously. If you want to unschool, or be a mindful parent, give, give, give. You’ll find after a few years that you still have everything you thought you had given away, and more. — Sandra Dodd **