So it’s been a few months since I last posted an update on what we’ve been doing. In that time, we’ve had some major changes in our family and, to be honest, it would have been easy for me to just let “learning” go by the wayside and figure, hey, we’ll catch up later.

But that’s the coolest part of our unschooling lifestyle. We have never done much that looks like traditional learning, and in the craziness that has been winter 2015, if we were trying to do a standard curriculum, we’d be hopelessly behind.

Instead, we’ve learned and experienced a ton, and by taking the time now to try to document what I can, I’m trying to show that learning really does happen anywhere, anytime.

(If this is your first time catching our month(s)-in-review posts, welcome! Check out our archive of previous wrapups here for some more info on why we take this approach to documenting some of our unschooling learning adventures.)

Books

• The Matrix and Philosophy
• More Matrix and Philosophy: Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded
• The Raven
• Batman/Superman Vol. 1: Cross World
• Batman Detective Comics Vol. 5: Gothtopia (New 52)
• Is Data Human? The Metaphysics of Star Trek
• The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews

Movies and TV

• The Bourne Identity
• The Bourne Supremacy
• The Bourne Ultimatum
• Video Game High School

• Grease
• Sherlock
• Star Trek: Voyager (This ALONE more than pays for our Netflix subscription!)
• Guardians of the GalaxyGuardians of the Galaxy
• Big Hero 6 (This might get our vote for “Movie of the Year.”)
• Into the Woods
• Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
• Defiance
• Annie
• Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow
• Equilibrium (Side recommendation: Read the book “1984” and then watch this movie – great parallels!)
• The Wolverine
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Video games

• FIFA Soccer 14
• FIFA Soccer 15
• Club Penguin
• Skate 3
• Destiny
• Assassins Creed: Rogue
• Call of Duty: Ghosts
• Call of Duty: World at War

Videos

This is Ashar, reciting the first stanza of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

She’d mentioned a couple months ago that she wanted to memorize the whole poem, but I never saw/heard her working on it, and I assumed she’d lost interest until, one night before bed, she said, “Hey, Mom, want to hear something?”

Places and projects

• Ashar had art on display at shows at the York Art Association and The Parliament, area galleries.


At Ashar’s request, we checked out the site of the World Trade Center in New York. This building is a ceremonial 1,776 feet tall.

• We took a three-day trip to New York City to see The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway (!!) and the new World Trade Center site.
• Not for Ashar, but for me: I spoke in December to a group of parents in my county interested in learning more about unschooling, yay!
• Christmas! We celebrated belatedly and in true night owl style, on New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day, but before that Ashar had marked three other Christmases with different parts of her family.
• We went to see Northeastern High School’s production of Night Tales, a Poe story collection, as their fall play.
• Ashar went hiking along the Rail Trail with Chris.
• At the York County 4-H alpaca club elections, Ashar ran for and was named the club historian.

Odds and ends of stuff we’ve talked about/read/geeked out over

• What jobs you can get with a philosophy degree.
• The Pennsylvania governor’s race between incumbent Tom Corbett and Democratic challenger Tom Wolf, who won.


New hair color was had.

• Population vs. population density (and did you know that the populations of London and New York City are almost the same?)
• The Matrix Reloaded, machines and control, as it relates to the democratization of learning and information.
• In sad news, our cat Floyd passed away due to complications from surgery. We talked about why it was still the right thing to do to get him the surgery, and why they didn’t bother to biopsy the tumor they’d removed after he passed away – Ashar wished they had, “Because then we’d know.”
• Political slogans (like “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”) and the pros and cons of a two-party system.
• Tons of facts about the Eiffel Tower as part of our “Words of the Day” series (more on this to come).
• All about the Bielski Brothers and the Jewish resistance during World War II, and also some information on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
• A skinny pig on display at the pet store.
• New haircuts and colors!

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”