What do unschoolers do all day?

On our Norman Secular Homeschool Association message board someone posted a message today about record keeping. There are many reasons I have never kept records for what we do everyday as far as homeschooling. First of all Oklahoma doesn't have any requirements to do so, since Jude is still preK age I don't think it's necessary, and we are unschoolers so we don't have a specific lesson plan we just learn as we go. Anyway, it got me thinking about what I would write down for today if I was keeping records.

Date: Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Art lesson- 5 minutes
The other night Jude and I read and looked at pictures in his ART FOR CHILDREN book. This morning Jude was sitting on the couch waiting for me to make his breakfast and he asked me what the picture in our living room was. I told him it was painted by Picasso and was called Guernica. I told him what style of painting Picasso does, where Guernica is, what the picture represents, and a little bit about Hitler.
Vocabulary- 5 minutes total
Throughout the day Jude asked the what the meaning was of about 5 different words or phrases and we gave him very detailed definitions with synonyms too.
Creative play- 5 hours
Jude played Lego's some but spent most of the day outside building things with PVC pipe and pretend shooting with Jimmy's old BB gun.
Science- 15 minutes
Jimmy found one of those lizards that shed their tails when you try to catch them. He told Jude the name of it (which I forgot) and we talked about why they shed their tails and how that has helped them survive over the years. We also talked about dinosaurs, lizards, and evolution.
Life skills- the rest of the time
Jude went to the barn with me this morning and helped me feed calves and milk cows. He also played with his kitties and helped his Pa work on something in his shop. We also went grocery shopping today.

This picture was from the other day when I brought home a butterfly for Jude. It was on our desk at the barn and had a damaged wing we let it go outside after Jude observed it for a while.

Unschooling quotes:

"You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself." -Galileo


"I do not believe much in education. Each man ought to be his own model, however frightful that may be." -Albert Einstein

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
"It is... nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreak and ruin. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty." -Albert Einstein

"We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I hate, loathe and despise schools....School is bad for you if you have any talent. You should be cultivating that talent in your own particular way." -Maurice Sendak (author of "Where the Wild Things Are")

"The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders." -John Taylor Gatto

"Public school--where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression." -Emma Goldman

"Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." -Oscar Wilde

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind." -Plato

"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." -Isaac Asimov


"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it...and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself." -Grace Llewellyn

"Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how." -John Holt

And of course I had to throw this one in because I do LOOOOOVE Pink Floyd : )
"We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control. Hey teacher, leave the kids alone." -Pink Floyd