A perfect example of unschooling? I think so!

The five year old was watching youtube. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t about some lady opening toys! He asked if we could do a science experiment…but we needed a syringe and we didn’t have that.

I let him know Walmart probably had them, and I knew of the general area where they might be.

“We need to ask someone if we don’t know where something is,” he reminded me.

As we got closer to the store, he asked me if I could stay back, and that he would do all the asking.

“Sounds good bud, you’re on your own!” …”No, well, I’ll be there with you, just back so you can ask…”

Hw walked up to the pharmacist who saw him coming and talked to him as the customer instead of me, I loved it!

“Excuse me, do you have a syringe?”

“For insulin?” she asked…a word he had never heard.

“No thank you. For SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS!”

“Ooh, what sort of science experiments?”

“Putting food colouring in a banana with a syringe!”

“Well those are exactly the type of syringes you need for that.”

And there you have it…the simplest way to get ‘socializing experience’… (and an easy way to introduce the ‘hey, don’t touch syringes if you see them’ conversation…he already knew not to, as I hoped)

We went home, and after a few minute safety warning about the tip, the three and five year old were handling actual needles.

Luckily the syringes came in a bag of several, as the first two tips broke off.

Hopefully, the bananas are green on the inside tomorrow. One light, one dark.

Wait a second…wouldn’t a perfect unschooling example also include some fitness and other challenges? (well, it could, but doesn’t need to…)

Parkinglotcour

UPDATE:

We didn’t use enough food colouring. They just looked like bananas with some gross green splotches when we opened them up. So they wanted to see if they could extract apple juice. They got a drop or two… (yes, and at the cost of another syringe!)