Younger Unschoolers: Our Learning Adventure Rules

If we’re willing to seize the moment, we can have some fabulous spur-of-the-moment learning adventures. We could find ourselves unexpectedly sitting on a beach watching breaching whales.

But can we also have planned adventures with our unschooling kids?

Oh yes! When my kids were younger, they loved exploring new places and experiencing new things. (They still do!) They were ready at any moment to head out the door on an adventure. But sometimes I wasn’t ready. Other things claimed my attention. Time would pass without us doing anything. I realised we needed to do a bit of planning. So I suggested that we turn every Wednesday into an adventure day. My kids liked this idea. Each week, we’d brainstorm ideas. Where would we go? What would we do? Did we need a picnic?

One day, many years ago, we decided to go to a nearby harbour for our Wednesday adventure. This was a place that we’d driven past lots of times but not explored on foot.

”Put on your exploring eyes,” I instructed as my young, curious kids piled out of the car. “I bet we discover lots of interesting things.”

And we did. Hidden in the rock pools along the shore were lots of fascinating creatures including barnacles. We even saw a few sea horses that had been washed up on the beach. In the distance, we saw a lighthouse. And then we spied the fish markets.

Soon we were trailing around a very fishy smelling building. We watched apron-clad men and women with loud voices slapping fish onto scales before wrapping them in some paper, and then handing them to the customers.

We pretended to be customers. What would we choose if we wanted to eat fish for dinner? Normally, we’d eat fish in batter, served with chips, of course. But that day we were curious adventurers who’d buy something they’d never had before.

And then we became real customers, not pretend ones. When we returned home, one of my children was clutching a bag of mixed seafood which included baby octopus and squid.

Of course, the next step of our adventure was cooking our seafood. I don’t remember how we did that. Did we add everything to a pan of boiling water? I do, however, remember my kids helping me. They all wanted to be involved. This meal was going to be special because we were going to eat adventure food.

I also remember how a couple of my kids didn’t want to try the baby octopus. I didn’t either, but I did! I discovered it was rubbery and hard to chew. (Perhaps we didn’t cook it properly.) I didn’t really like it. Nobody did. But we’d tried something new. We could now say, “We’ve eaten octopus!”

After our day out at the harbour, we had a few questions. Where had the sea horses come from? What exactly are barnacles? When we buy fish and chips for dinner, what kind of fish is inside the batter? Our adventure continued as we read books and discussed all kinds of fishy things.

Our Rules for Having a Fabulous Unschooling Adventure

It doesn’t matter where we go for an adventure, the rules are always the same:

♡ Adventure with exploring eyes and curious minds

♡ Talk about what we discover but don’t interrogate or lecture

♡ No worksheets allowed. If we have our eyes on a piece of paper, we won’t see what’s around us

♡ Adventures are all about being free to try new things and experiences – or not – without any pressure. Kids don’t have to get involved with all parts of an adventure

♡ No follow-up assignments are allowed. Required work kills curiosity. It spoils an adventurous day.

♡ But it’s okay to strew things later to extend the adventure as long as kids are free to accept or reject what we have to offer.

♡ Focus on the enjoyment of the experience and being with each other. That’s the best and most important part of an adventure.

It’s amazing what my kids learnt when we followed these adventure rules. More importantly, everyone always had a lot of fun.

There are adventures waiting in all kinds of places. We don’t have to plan a big trip to somewhere we know will be interesting or exciting. We could just fill the car with adventure juice and then set out with no idea of where we’re going and let the adventure unfold before us.

Where will we end up? What will we see? What will we learn?

We’ve no idea. That’s part of the adventure!

Some Extra Things

Another Beach Adventure

In September 2013, we had a fabulous beach adventure, and then I wrote about it in a post called The Problem of Applying Sunscreen to Wet, Sandy Bodies.

Here’s an excerpt:

We’ve been on an outing to the coast. We could call it a field trip. Did we learn much from our day at the beach? Did we come home with our minds brimming with further questions? Yes!

What did we learn? We learnt…

Dad’s hat makes a good bucket for collecting shells.

An older brother is perfect for holding onto when the waves are strong.

Jumping waves is much more fun when Dad jumps too.

It’s necessary to keep out of the way of younger sisters’ legs in the water, otherwise, your own legs will end up bruised.

The van might be 25 years old, but it can still climb up and down the escarpment.

A day at the beach is a lot of fun.

And further questions?

I want to know…

“What’s the best way to reapply sunscreen to sandy wet bodies?” Gemma-Rose turned into a piece of human sandpaper as I rubbed in the cream. There must be a better way.

Some further research is needed perhaps. We’ll have to think up some ideas that might possibly work. Of course, they’ll need testing out. We could set up some scientific experiments… sand, seawater, children and sunscreen.  Another day at the beach?

Yes, please!

Perhaps you’d like to read the whole story.

Or you could just watch my video of our adventure. Or you could do both!

A Video Adventure

Making the video was an adventure of its own. It was one of my very first videos. I used a flip video recorder which explains why the focus isn’t very sharp. And I edited the recording using Movie Maker. These days, I use a better camera and I’ve gained more video editing skills. But sometimes simple is good enough. What do you think?

Turning an Adventure into Homeschool Records

When we have to keep records for homeschool registration purposes, there’s a temptation to make our kids do some follow up work when we get home from an outing. We need evidence that our kids actually learnt something. But such work takes the magic out of an adventure. So what do we do? Well, there are plenty of ways to make some behind-the-scenes records notes. If you’d like to know more, please see my post Turning Outings into Homeschool Records Notes.

Photos

I took these photos on yet another beach adventure. In October 2016, we went to a saltwater lake beach for a few days. That was the last time we visited the coast. Perhaps it’s time we filled the car up with adventure juice and headed to the beach!

So, do you have regular adventure days? Do you plan where you go? Or do you just set out not knowing where you’ll end up?

By the way, I solved the sandy body sunscreen problem. Of course, all we have to do is use spray-on sunscreen!