Learning from the everyday

Learning is all around us. As unschoolers, learning is embedded into our daily life, woven into both the mundane and magnificent moments in our home, family, and community.  We learn as we live, through happy and sad times, exhilarating and challenging times, ordinary and extraordinary times.  There is no separating our learning from our living.

This morning, the children watched intently as an electrician replaced a ceiling light fixture, a process that led my five-year-old to ask interesting questions and that later wove its way into my three-year-old's imaginative play.

Our everyday learning continued on an afternoon bike ride through a city park where we stopped and spoke with landscapers about their efforts to stall soil erosion and work naturally with the soil to create a healthier trailside.  We peeked into chipmunk holes, spotted a colorful array of birds, admired the blooming flowers and trees, splashed in a log puddle, raced and rested.  So much learning, so much living all in an ordinary Thursday.