开云体育

I've just modernized this page, replaced one video code with a newer one, fixed links, added a credit....

There are four videos there and one song (sound recording provided by?Jane Clossick, who was a mom in the discussion then and might still be here now :-)_

If you have younger kids, they might be interested in one or more of these.? The music is interesting on all of them.??

?

The game discussed there, Metamorphabet, is on my iPad and my phone.? My granddaughter who is 14 used to play it, and three little granddaughters (3, 4 and 5) play it nearly every time they're over here.? ?It's art that does things, responds to touch, has sound... not "a game" one can lose, but more like a toy, and it reads itself to you.? It's available directly and it's on Steam.? Theres a link on the page,

?

If people want to discuss the alphabet here, I'd be happy to. :-)? It used to be crucial for looking people up in phone books, for finding things in dictionaries, for using a library.? ?What now?

It's fun to think about, and those songs are sweet either way.

?

Sandra

Random alphabet thoughts:

Crazy ABCs by Barenaked Ladies on their kids album (Snack time) is cute.?

Dr. Suess's ABCs is one of the five year olds favorite books right now too.?

My third daughter's name is ?owyn with an accent on top.? Her birth certificate includes the accent. Her social security card does not because it's not officially in the alphabet.? When she was little she would tell people writing her name, "Don't forget my accident!". The other day she and her sister were talking about the names of Elon Musk's kids and how they had to change the names because the State of California didn't recognize symbols in birth certificates.? That conversation was an evolving one where they started with one thing, ended in a totally different place, and fact checked a few things online along the way.

The alphabet has been useful for helping my kids write something down when my hands are busy with another kid.? My 14 year old asked me to help her alphabetize her Pokemon card collection a couple weeks ago.? (She knows it.? I never "taught" it to her.? It was a lot of cards).

I bought that app today thinking my 5 and 3 year olds might enjoy it, and my 9 year old got excited because it says the words and has them written down.? He went through the whole alphabet twice in a row on the game.? He's VERY close to reading fluently.? I think he actually is at this point but shy about maybe being wrong so still asking me what words say.?

On Sun, Oct 22, 2023 at 08:31 PM, Katie Robles wrote:

The alphabet has been useful for helping my kids write something down when my hands are busy with another kid.? My 14 year old asked me to help her alphabetize her Pokemon card collection a couple weeks ago.? (She knows it.? I never "taught" it to her.? It was a lot of cards).

Katie, I saw your October post on December 21.? DOH!? I thought maybe this group was quiet because people use e-mail less frequently than they used to.? ?I use e-mail every day, but still I didn't see a notification for this.? ?Maybe google sorted it into "social" or something.? ?SORRY!

Alphabetized Pokemon cards (Pokémon... don't forget its 'accident'! :-) ) would be useful.? I don't remember how my kids ordered theirs when they had them in card sleeves in binders.?

?

Of Metamorphabet, Katie wrote:

-=-I bought that app today thinking my 5 and 3 year olds might enjoy it, and my 9 year old got excited because it says the words and has them written down.? He went through the whole alphabet twice in a row on the game.? He's VERY close to reading fluently.? I think he actually is at this point but shy about maybe being wrong so still asking me what words say. -=-

I like the game myself, to play with the animation.? It wouldn't be easy to discover all the things the figures and images will do if they're touched or dragged or tapped. :-)

I like your stories, even though I saw them late.?

?

Sandra

?

I had another thought about unschooling and "alphabetical order."

If the alphabet is just a thing in the world, or a song, a game, a book, then it's not "academic."? There have been a few accounts over the years of a family where they avoided the alphabet because it was schoolish. Maybe a parent had been traumatized by something involving alphabetical order; I really don't know.? I remember one parent bragging that a kid "didn't even know the alphabet" as thought it was proof of unschooling success.

Avoiding access to something seems wrong to me, but that could be interpreted by people who were new to unschooling, and fearful, that I had "avoided access" for my kids to things like book reports, or higher math.

Keep reading about unschooling on my site, and at links from there, if you're trying to settle on what is too much pressure or control one way or another.? ?Things CAN be learned in fun ways without control or pressure.?

Don't prevent learning. :-)??

?

I remember one parent bragging that a kid "didn't even know the alphabet" as thought it was proof of unschooling success.

That very well could have been me with my oldest, who is 16.? I recall maybe saying something like that when she was much younger.? She's happily going to high school now and intending to graduate.? I've calmed down with being "anti-school" since then.??

The (unschooled) nine year old is reading more and more since October.? He made up is own Pokémon ( ;) ) game with his cards, so all of his got sorted by combat power yesterday.? They previously were sorted by type (grass, fire, electric, etc.).

Last Sunday I laid the tablet with the metamorphabet game on it on the floor at church with a pile of other toys for my 8 month old to play with while I was paying attention to a class.? It caught the eye of a 20 year old sitting next to me and he got really excited about the game and thought it was pretty cool.?

-=-That very well could have been me with my oldest, who is 16.? I recall maybe saying something like that when she was much younger. --=-

It was an older male human being described.

?

It's interesting, the arc of learning that deschooling takes people through, most of them.? ?Though it helps to extinguish attachment to school at first, sometimes it goes too far toward fear and hatred of school.? ?

Some people start with the fear and hatred.??

Realistic relaxation about choices and possibilities is the ideal place to be.? :-)
It can take a while to get there.:-)

From this page:??

New unschoolers can feel that they're moving between extremes, and it can take a while to settle where the whole family is content. Sometimes it takes years, but there are ways to feel better in the meantime.

If the old rules were that school is vital and "an education" (defined as the curriculum of an ideal school) is necessary, will the new rules be that school is not important and an education is not necessary? We don't make school disappear by turning the other way. It's still there. Our kids might want to go to school someday, in some form. We don't deny that knowledge is important by becoming unschoolers, but many come to prefer the idea of "learning" with its vast possibilities over the narrower "education."

I'm grateful to those who came to that "peace'n'love" spot already who share the process with those who are just working through their newfound fears. THANKS!

?

?