There were several great examples of unschooling here. We went to our local dam to check it out. What would they be interested I wondered; water levels? water pressure and flow? lake/river transition? Height? Cement and steel? I figured I’d show it to them from the road up top, and then drive them down the road to see it from the bottom.
They were excited about the view from the top and when it was time to go down they were more interested in walking down the road instead of driving down….great, let’s just start the adventure a little sooner than I was picturing. I also understood that walking along (down, then up) a gravel road was going to be the longest time spent on our journey…so let’s ‘start our learning’ on the way down.
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I was pointing out some various vegetation I could recognize or the human planted section of forest, and mostly letting them take it in, and walk freely along the road knowing we would hear any cars in plenty of time.
And then the snails.
Every snail he had seen in his life thus far have been dead, empty shells. And he just found one. And another. And another. And she found some.
More and more the closer we got to the bottom. We were still nowhere near there on account of all the snails…and two kids picking up, inspecting, and returning each one to its habitat.
We got to the bottom, took a look at the dam where the water comes out and headed for a walk in the forest.
A little early in the season, and a little too early on a dewy morning, the kids were pretty wet and might be getting uncomfortable (especially the 2yo) if we continued along the main path.
See how easy it is to get lost in the woods?
We headed off the main trail and along more of a deerpath off to the side. We walked less than 50 metres where I pretended to be a bear or something and ‘get them’ in our typical dad gets them and makes them laugh fashion. Only for a few seconds, just till they laughed.
I told them to turn around and point out the direction we were coming from and headed. No clue.
Then I told them about landmarks. While I have technically never been to this section of the woods before, and only have a ‘mostly understanding’ of where we were…what I did know is there is only one section of human planted trees around there, and we can see them over there.
That means our road is just over there.
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