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What are you unschooling?

3K views 38 replies 9 participants last post by  SweetSilver 
#1 ·
What are you exploring, learning, studying, curious about, venturing into, finding yourself inspired by? What are you reading, watching, listening to and doing these days? Where are your interests going?

Miranda
 
#2 ·
I'm back to knitting regularly, and I'm venturing into lace knitting now. I'm doing a lovely shawl thing with a silk-alpaca yarn that's almost thread-thin. Lovely stuff. It's taking forever, not least because of the bead embellishments.

Duolingo French. I wanted to see what it was like, because I'm encouraging Fiona to do a bit. I got kind of hooked on the way it gamifies regular second-language learning. I know a fair bit of French but I'm pretty rusty. Working through it pretty steadily and will probably be done in a month. I wish they would get Japanese up and going. Once I finish with French I might have to do Spanish or maybe German whilst waiting for Japanese to come on board.

Bach Suite No. 6. Picking away at learning this on my 5-string violin. I set it aside for a couple of months and am coming back now with some renewed energy.

Miranda
 
#3 ·
Moving/ organizing all the stuff that comes with that.

Spanish- duolingo, workbooks, music.

Art always. Some but never enough. Kicking myself being snowed in without my sewing machine. I cut out a felted wool sweater to make a vest for our chilly dog.
Découpaging some wine and grape themed napkins on stone tile for boyfriend's new restaurant.
Also went to restaurant auction. And picking up stuff from Craig's list. Always an adventure. Like a blind date without having to date.
 
#4 ·
I'm starting rehearsals for Sweeney Todd this week...I think this is the first time ever that I'm playing violin (not viola) in a musical. (My husband has a left elbow injury that restricts his playing to about 15 minutes a day and another violinist who was going to play found out that she cannot commit to it, so the conductor got reduced instrumentation for the pit...one violin, one cello, bass, percussion, clarinet, flute, keyboard, maybe a couple of other instruments). Orchestra rehearsals start next work, but because I've been in town on two cast rehearsal nights already, I've gone to a part of a rehearsal and one full one, to help glue me to the keyboard before we get the usual motley crew of players that find it easier to listen than count, and so miss entrances and throw everyone else off! I happen to KNOW for sure that one of the musicians will be in this category, because it's my septuagenarian chamber music buddy! A good time will be had by all, I am sure.

Deborah

Also I'm trying to organize things. hahaha...;)
 
#5 ·
I love hearing what other people are learning! I am working on Chinese, but need to amp up my studies a bit. I tried to speak Chinese on our last Skype call with the girl we're adopting and didn't do too bad. But I also didn't do very well. lol. I need more output practice (speaking, writing) as almost all of my studying thus far has been focused on input (reading, listening, watching).

moominmamma - I also am knitting! I'm about done with the hat I'm working on and will then tackle my very first pair of socks. I'm excited to learn how to knit socks.

My reading is all over the place but very steady. Mainstream fiction, Christian fiction, memoirs, parenting books. I've read 15 books so far this year and expect to finish at least three more this month.
 
#7 ·
I am working on Chinese, but need to amp up my studies a bit. I tried to speak Chinese on our last Skype call with the girl we're adopting and didn't do too bad. .....
moominmamma - I also am knitting! I'm about done with the hat I'm working on and will then tackle my very first pair of socks. I'm excited to learn how to knit socks.
I'm very impressed with your tackling Chinese!

On the knitting front, have you discovered Ravelry yet, the online knitters' community? So many resources, so well organized, so much functionality! The shawl I'm knitting now I found by searching "free lace shawl knitting pattern, using 300 - 450 metres of fingering-weight yarn and #7 needles" (because that was what I had handy). Browsed through a dozen patterns and some of the hundreds of photos others had posted of their projects from those patterns, settled on one I liked, read through the tips and tricks others mentioned, downloaded it, and I was off and running.

I'm also moominmamma there; feel free to add me as a friend.

Miranda
 
#9 ·
Guitar, still.

And I hate to admit I am learning waaaaay too much about an old favorite band of mine and their current incarnations. Sigh.... so much useless information that I am having an amazing time with :p There are some seriously crazy, devoted people that provide me with a daily deluge of photos, performances, interviews and music that I absolutely do not need. Loving it.

I'm trying to get myself into the 21st century, musically. Is this considered unschooling? Feels like it sometimes.
 
#10 ·
What clothing/gear/ski setup and other logistics will get the four of us happily traveling hundreds of miles in the Arctic? (the main grownup project of the moment, in my house)

Otherwise, mostly writing. Which isn't exactly unschooling anything, I suppose, since I'm a writer, but I do find each new project and topic to be a new learning experience. Right now I'm finishing up final edits on a kids picture book, and on interpretive sign text (both new realms for me), as well as writing a commissioned essay for a book and working on my own next book. Actually, I'm pushing my own book aside right now for trip prep, and hoping the deadline won't bite me later.

Also, a heck of a lot of chemistry, with my 6yo. He's leading the way, but I'm learning a ton, so I want to count it too.
 
#11 ·
Everyone else's projects seem a lot more enticing than mine today!

Today's Family Unschooling turned into "what sometimes happens when you have a bunch of old cars".

The only functional one is the one that's gone the longest on one engine (308K) miles: that's the '97 Corolla my daughter had to take to work today, because her '91 Honda would not start, because her brother fixed it last night. Two things failed on that car in quick succession: the dash lights and then the tail lights. So, Son repaired a switch that restored the tail lights to order, and in the process blew a 50 amp fuse, a $5 part, that makes the car go. Of course this fuse is not available in town. And when the fuses were switched to diagnose not going problem, one of the turn indicators decided that its default position is "ON". I had to drag Son (a serious night owl) out of bed this morning, because a Wintry Mix Weather Event is maybe/maybe not on tap for this afternoon.

I'm feeling nostalgic for the days when we only had one car...even after Son got the second car four years ago, it was usually away at school with him.

Deborah
 
#12 ·
Oh I'm also arranging music. I've just finished an easy string orchestra arrangement of Dust in the Wind by Kansas and an intermediate string quartet arrangement of Breakfast in America by Supertramp. Channeling the 70's, yup. Trying to stockpile some fun arrangements as extras for the summer chamber music program. I have a couple of mass orchestra / multi-level tunes I want to adapt as well.

Miranda
 
#18 ·
Last year while the girls were at their GS day camp and I had 5 days to myself, I explored the town's new (amazing!) yarn shop that I had seen under construction the previous year. I bought myself an any-size pattern book and some yarn to make mittens. Never got around to finishing the other mitten (I will, but when?) And I sat in on a knitting clinic session, all as my treat. It was wonderful.

I love knitting, but I don't like changing color, and I like my fabric to be very simple. I'm a huge fan of stockinette stitch and only get bored with it making sweaters (but I like sweaters worked in stockinette, so what can you do?) Once I get going, it's so relaxing and wonderful. For fancier fabric, I like working with cables but simple ones. It's mesmerizing to watch the stitches get pulled across your work.

One added thought-- it's a stereotype that women don't process and work with 3-dimensional space as handily as men do, but when I look at all the patterns and knitting skills (e.g. knitting a mitten with longer cable needles) and I see how women are working out all this cool stuff (sorry, my brain is stiff this morning and "cool stuff" iswhat is available :p ) I think to myself that whoever thinks that has obviously not seen knitters in action. It is not only 3-dimensional, but linear and sequential as well, folding and looping a long "line" into a 3-dimensional space in a very particular order.

Amazing, really. Amazing that I can look at a piece of work and see what's happening or where I made a mistake, what the mistake was and how to fix it. Your brain needs to internalize this pattern of yarn that varies quite little, visualize the yarn going into and out of each stitch and how it connects to the stitches above and below.

Stupid stereotypes.
 
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#19 ·
I love this thread, it has really made me think. My answer for Little is, outside. We are at my mom's for a couple weeks while my brother and his wife who live with her are in Cuba. She lives in small town Ontario, so I've made a commitment to be outside for 2 hours everyday. It has been beautiful and snowy and cold so it has worked well so far. Today we are going to try a hike along side the mountain. Not much for all you outdoorsy people, but left to our own devices, we can stay in and veg for very big chunks of time. I'm seeing a big difference in attitude and happiness, and cooperation too. Okay a little difference in cooperation. Can we say we are studying physics, in the form of toboganning?
My 13 year old is unschooling Manga and anime, and has been for about 9 months with no end in sight, quite remarkable actually. And my 17 year old is continuing a long term study in music from the 1960 's which of course led to the Hippie revolution, and a stint at veganism, but now back to just vegetarian. My oldest (23) is doing a long term project on dogs, specifically poodles.
Myself, neurology, currently reading Anat Baniel, fascinating stuff. Which is a spin off on a year long intensive on ADHD, Dyslexia, and learning disabilities. I do tend to hyper focus obsessively when I'm interested, but have come up for air right now.
Anna
 
#21 ·
Okaaaayyyyy...my life has officially slipped over into farce...

so,...I'm walking down the hall and I practically run into Youngest (who overtops me by two or three inches) and...she has a puppy in her arms. A large puppy, a puppy with a sad life story, spent three days with a sibling or two, trapped under a cattle guard. The person who gave it to her (her horse mentor, and mom of one of my former students) might want one of the kittens in exchange, to keep their barn cat Charlie company. I explained that the kittens are House Cats, but I might be willing to trade Paws, a cat inherited from my dad, who never lets a day go by without spraying some surface in the house. Now, what to tell the husband? ;)

Deborah

p.s. So I guess we are unschooling Animal Hoarding.

p.p.s. So, also we got the radon results back from this (rented) house: 0.3, 0.7, 0.7 pc/l. No way can the house we are interested in (11.6, 12.6, 15 pc/l) be remediated to that level.
 
#29 · (Edited)
Welding!? That is so cool! My dh is a blacksmith. He's done a little bit of arc welding, but not much.

I finished knitting my shawl. My cast-on wasn't quite as stretchy as would have been optimal, but overall I'm pleased with how it turned out. I blocked it today.

I also got a little automated counter-top hydroponic garden. I've got some basil that I pre-germinated going in it already, and lots more basil, parsley and cilantro germinating. We have a 3D printing workshop to go to at the end of the month, and I'm hoping to learn enough to be able to use the Tech Club printer for some hydroponic fittings later.

I'm doing pretty well with DuoLingo French. Thirty years ago I could read enough French to lurch through a novel with occasional reference to a dictionary, but I lost a lot of it. DuoLingo is really helping me reclaim a lot quickly. I'm about halfway through the whole course, slow but steady, not skipping anything because I'm discovering some weird gaps.

We've put in an offer on a house. Fixer-upper, a bit of a low-ball offer. We'll see. But I'm starting to get excited about home improvement / renovation stuff.

Miranda
 

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#30 ·
Gorgeous work, Miranda!

Yesterday I learned a few things that I had been wanting to get to, but it has a sad ending.

I learned about prolapses in chickens, how to (attempt) to treat it. It was an experience, and you will be thankful I don't describe it here for you. You are welcome to google it at your own risk.

I finally got out the tools and sharpened the hatchet (you see where this is going).

And I worked up the bravery to cull the hen that was afflicted.

Phew! Broke a barrier on that one, having never killed a higher life form with any intention. It's been my goal to raise my own mixed use flock to avoid buying meat that is raised for profit, and to ensure in the only way I can that the animals have the best lives and-- key here-- the best deaths I can possibly give them. Lucky (or should I say, Not-so-Lucky) was docile the entire time, calm in the only way an animal can expect to be when being placed into an unfamiliar situation. And, sure enough, the hatchet was dead sharp and my aim secure (that I wasn't worried so much about).
 
#31 ·
Well done SweetSilver. I honestly (and I'm not exaggerating here) think of what you did yesterday as a really important life event. I killed chickens for the first time about 5 years ago. (I used a killing cone, and it worked really well.) For me it was about experiencing, and making my peace with, the full implications of eating meat. I had been avoiding eating meat in large part because it felt dishonest to me be uncomfortable with the killing of animals yet to eat their meat if they were killed in a remote, factory-processed way that I didn't have to think about. I killed our roosters, plucked, dressed, cooked and ate them. And now I feel honest and ethically comfortable with eating ethically-raised meat.

(The accompanist for Fiona's choir is a neat guy who killed chickens on live radio once, for a co-op radio show called Deconstructing Dinner that was syndicated throughout North American from 2006-2010. The whole thing was done with such a sense of calm, respect and honesty. I listened to the podcast, talked to Christophe, and thought "I think I can do this.")

Congratulations. :thumb

Miranda
 
#33 ·
That's why I become more and more vegetarian as time goes by (my dad became a complete veggie at 70 or so); one of my sibs and one of my kids likely fit the "militant vegetarian" category, as was my husband when I met him. We've come to a sort of compromise: I don't buy meat except for some sustainable (theoretically) fish and some local free range chicken. We'll eat whatever is served at other people's houses. We respect our bicycle guests food choices and err on the side of the vegetarians: if anyone is one, a veggie meal is served. (Tonight we are supposed to have five. They are getting roast chicken, organic rice and/or potatoes, apple pie made of organic ingredients. I think.

Now that even my youngest is mostly tied up in her own concerns, I'm getting more time to figure out a) what has gone wrong before, and how to fix it (mostly organizational!), b) teach violin & do music c) do the more optional parts of my part time job, in other words, the things that actually count. A couple of days ago I made the first significant changes to a website that I inherited when I moved here almost eight years ago...I've made small functional changes in the past (when things went obsolete and didn't work), but now I'm gonna rip the whole thing up and start over. (Actually, I'm going to put all of the elements that fit in it, within its constraints...it was built with a program that no longer functions, Dreamweaver, so I'm editing everything the old fashioned way, with vi, and then I'm gonna build a parallel site with a content management system, and then we'll see what happens. Maybe nothing, if I keep on getting more students.)

Skip this part if you don't want to read about violin stuff:
So yesterday I took my toolbox and a handful of old strings (a combination of used Zyex & Helicore) and visited my newest student, with the intent of changing her VSO (violin shaped object) into something functional. All of the strings were broken but for the A, and it had a weird look, like a guitar string pressed into service as a violin string or something. First I sandpapered the feet of the bridge, so it would stop popping out whenever it was strung up. For some reason the foot on the treble side was about twice as tall as the foot on the bass side, so I took care of that too. Then I took the sandpaper to the softwood nut (it's supposed to be something hard, like ebony) and cut that down quite a bit. Then I put on a set of well used Zyex strings, but the A was damaged, so had to use a used Helicore A. (Those of you who know about violins will see that this is not optimal, but functional, because the result is that the two lower strings have nylon cores, and the two upper are steel.) Then I showed her how the tuned I'd showed her when her violin had one string really goes, and she learned it on one go, which made me realize that I am going to have to teach her and her friend (also taking lessons) different stuff, or a mix of my standard repertoire and individualized things. Okay... (I've had the "friends learn at different rates causing problems" before, and I hate it. Some people come wired to be able to put the brain and the fingers together much more quickly than others...I've found that it doesn't mean that much in the long run. But it seems important to those who think they are not playing as well as others.)

Back...I've just made lunch. Lunch is our big meal because husband feels best when he has very little to eat later in the day. I had planned on making the pie at the same time, and I had the pie crust flour (mixed with oil, from the last time I made one) in a mason jar in the fridge...dumped it in the bowl, poured water in from the filter jug, and the lid fell off, turning the pie crust mixing bowl into a lake of water. So, I poured that off and put the whole mess in the bread machine, along with yeast and more flour and stuff. I think it might be a supersized loaf, but I'm not gonna look until it's done.

That other stuff for today? Not done yet.

Except I called our Nurse Practitioner's office to enable Youngest (17) to get vaccine boosters, if she goes to town today. Otherwise, Saturday starts Tech Week for Sweeney Todd, and I get to be in town almost every day, so we'll do it then.
 
#34 ·
Bizarre coincidence
Had tons of great work time today, one ignored thing that I got to, was sending updates to my website woman..... ...... She uses Dreamweaver! And it works great so far.
Not much actual learning going on though I have to say, with the olders messing up our schedule, Little and I aren't getting to do too much, and all our usual out of house activities are too crowded so we are having a week off. Which makes him quite bored and unhappy.
Anna
 
#35 · (Edited)
I'm not sure I know what "actual learning" looks like any more!

Haha...my Dreamweaver is a really old version (2005?), that used to live on a computer that failed (one of those Dells that had fake supposedly Japanese capacitors from China...one of the tech guys put in the 19 or so new caps for me, a big job because it was a multilayer board, but there were some not on the motherboard that were bad too, so gave up the whole thing as a bad job. I've learned to not try to fix Dells...had similar experiences with some others.) I have the old disks around, but the operating system has changed anyway and I'm busy throwing stuff away: she had something like a dozen different scripts (auto generated by Dreamweaver) that made lists of things, but it turns out that each script differed from the other by only a couple of lines; rather than maintain them all, my plan is to consolidate. Also I'm not all that happy with security issues of php, so this might just be a bandaid.

p.s. I got rid of the "mission statement" too. With all due respect to Mr. Covey, I hate mission statements. Put it some place discreet in the office (like print it on the toilet paper rolls) if you must, but on the home web page...NEVER! ;)

Deborah
 
#38 · (Edited)
I'm trying to learn some new coding skills. I learned Basic and TurboPascal in a previous life, and HTML4 15 years ago, dabbled in CSS. Started with the Python course at Codecademy a couple of days ago. I'm now 38% of the way through, but I'm going to have to repeat a lot of the stuff I've already done because I know the details of the syntax aren't going to stick without some review. My middle dd is keen on learning enough coding to start tinkering with robotics, and mentioned Python (which is a language I know my ds has learned, and he has a reference book he'll be bringing home in at the end of the month) so I thought I'd dig in. That way if we get a little Arduino or Raspberry Pi kit, I'll have some clue how to start doing stuff with it, and might be able to learn along with or help out either of my girls.

Miranda
 
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