Being able to attend nature school and be outside for several hours learning about the natural world has been awesome for Ethan. He comes home soaked and covered in pine needles but he’s had a great time. If there’s a nature school program in your area, I highly recommend it as a complement to unschooling.
But once Ethan gets home, it’s full-on with the other things he enjoys, such as math. So here’s what happened today.
First up was nature school and spending time with other 7-9-year-old kids in a beautiful forest setting. To be honest, I was a bit worried that he wouldn’t enjoy the rain, but even though his jacket and pants are wet on the outside, he stays dry and warm and is able to enjoy himself. We also lightened up his backpack by quite a bit so that also helped him enjoy the day more.
When Ethan came home, he came back with some salal leaves. Salal leaves can be brewed as tea and are an appetite suppressant if you’re out in the forest and getting hungry. We also Googled the leaf and found out it has been used by Salish people for centuries as a medicinal plant. Very cool.
After a day outside, it was time to relax. He was checking out the Möbius Strip again because there’s another version that he wanted to try making.
The math books that show different concepts and topics are quite enjoyable for Ethan because he can pick and choose what he likes and explore those topics.
Reading up on climate change in a Magic School Bus book and the climate change comic book.
He wanted to clean up and rearrange the pins on his bulletin board.
And then he started working on the special Möbius Strip, which is two strips looped together.
Success!
And he made a second version of the intertwined strip.
He then watched Bill Nye’s Save the World on Netflix. This episode was about AI, which was quite fascinating. We will see if this is a subject that Ethan is interested in.
After Bill Nye, Ethan learned about calculating the area of a sphere from the Korean math book.
And he also worked on calculating the area of a cylinder.
So that was today! Nature school followed by AI and math. As an unschooler, there isn’t a moment when Ethan isn’t learning. We heard in a podcast about unschooling about how it’s pretty much impossible to not learn anything.
We feel that this is one of the benefits over traditional schooling because most of the time, once kids are home from school, the last thing they want to do is “learn” more, but unschooling provides an environment where Ethan is eager to learn any time of the day, every day. It’s pretty awesome.
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