Category: City & Urban

Cities provide countless opportunities for education

Sure cities have libraries, book stores, and recreation facilities, but there’s even more.

Walking down the sidewalk we came to a section that had been removed. Instead of just walking around it, we studied it. We could see a cutaway of the ground to see the later of grass, then mud. We saw the gravel and rocks underneath where the sidewalk was. We saw broken pieces of concrete.

How did that broken piece of concrete end up there?

How is concrete made? How did it get there? How do they have to prepare the ground? What construction trucks were involved? How do they work together? How did the concrete get torn up?

Do you see a bridge? A traffic light? Skyscrapers? Parking Garages? A city bus to tour around on? (You can talk interact a lot more on a city bus than in a car!)

Play Now. Learn Later. Record Your Edventures.

We went to their first airshow! The were super excited about the first few planes that flew over, the Super Hornet (only during an upside-down fly-by), and the snowbirds…mostly when they drew the heart in the sky.

Advantage Unschool : Skate Parks During School Hours

unschooling at skateparks during school hours

We didn’t even come here to run, we came to scooter. I had to ask them if they were ready to put their gear on and ride yet..before they tired themselves out!
During school hours, no one is there. Kids as young as brand new crawlers can have a blast here with so many slopes and angles and risk levels.

Find Out What They Love : Do That. How They Love It.

What do you do with a toddler who loves the music time you have together, but you aren’t a music teacher and you only really have some plastic instruments and a banjo you only have because someone once asked you if you wanted a banjo or a ukelele?

Instant Exercise with a Side of Science : Slacklining

Slacklining allows a person to quickly and consistently experience and work against a range of stresses and forces that our bodies are fighting against all the time…without the advantage of the ground’s stability! One of the reasons you don’t really pay attention to all these forces throughout your day is because the ground you are walking on or the chair you are sitting in is stable. The ground is pushing up on the chair with the same force you are pushing down on it…but on a slackline, what you are pushing down against is flexible. And wobbly.

Anything + Fitness

Hey, go run to that tree and back!
Wow, great job!
Hey, go run to that tree and back!

What is your favourite way to incorporate exercise into your day?

This is an example from just a 10 minute break

Surprise Spider Family

This was exciting a couple of times. At first, I showed them the dead wasp in the spider web. A whole ‘even the mighty wasp can get stuck in a tiny web’ kinda demonstration.

The five year old reached down to touch it, and a spider who we didn’t know was on it sprinted up the web way faster than any spider web travel I have seen.

Why There Is No Recess At Unschool

Why separate learning from play?

Here was a neat little impromptu climbing adventure on the way home from our adventure. The trees along our river are quite large and old. Seems one of them had gotten struck by lightning recently and had been started to be taken away. Clearly only a several-day job; we had to experience it now, if we ever..haha..wood.

Multitasking: Taking Toys & Things Outside

Little kids love (well, whatever you teach them to love, in this case, toys and instruments) toys and instruments. They also love the playing down by the river. (The nitrate-heavy, city-gross, unswimmable river) Dad loves to unicycle. Sounds like a plan!

Low Water & High Grass at the Swamp

Ooooh, look at this! I taped a strainer to a pole. Let’s go see what the bottom of the swamp looks like!

It was almost summer time and there were big differences at the swamp. The water was clearly lower, and the grass and other vegetation had massive growth. The last time we came here was less than a month ago, fast changes!

There Are More Advantages to Pop Research than Pop Quizzes.

Here’s a nice little gem we found on our way to mom’s work, a lake surrounded by trees and a walking path, nestled near the industrial area of town.

A little section of nature that I had passed by countless times over the years. It wasn’t open to cycling, why would I ever pop in?

Because now I have kids!

When Things Don’t Go According To Plan

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? 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.

Night Time Adventures

Kids tossing and turning? Just can’t get them to go to sleep? Go out and learn!

The world is a different place at night. I found a $20-$30 LED worklight, and brought it outside once when I couldn’t find one of their flashlights. It has a stand on it, and it has sparked many ‘can we do a night time adventure?’ long before they are tossing and turning!

Thin Strip of Forest and a Lake in a City After the Rain

We had a great little adventure in a neat place we found on our way to pick up mom from work…so we go a little early and get some ‘great outdoors’. I didn’t think about bringing the bug spray as it has usually been pretty ‘annoying bug-free’ the times we went.

Are the deer still there in the winter? I don’t know. Let’s go see!

She asked me, ‘do you think the deer are still there in the winter? I figured they probably were but didn’t know for sure. There was only one thing to do. Well, two things. Get the camera, and go to the graveyard. It was a beautiful winter day and we didn’t even need coats for […]