Unschool Rules

WOW, it’s October. I feel like we crammed a ton of things into September, and while it was fun, I’m looking forward to things slowing down a bit as it gets colder. They probably won’t, but I can dream, right? Anyway, here’s a look back at just a few things we got into as a family this September.

(If this is your first time catching our month-in-review posts, welcome! Check out July’s here and August’s here for a little bit of background on why we’re taking this approach to documenting some of our unschooling learning adventures.)

Our biggest project this month was the 4-H alpaca show at the York Fair. Here are Ashar and Jupiter.

Books

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!

Remember our Bionic Blox? Ashar dug them out and built this cool, somewhat anti-gravity tower this month.

Movies and TV

Ghostbusters – Chris and Ashar went to see the theater rerelease and realized they both watched it at the same age, 14. Fun fact!
Zombieland – This was a follow-up to Ghostbusters because I remembered it had Bill Murray in it. I didn’t remember a lot else. Oops. Parental discretion is advised.
Captain America
Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Les Misérables – This was a BIG DEAL for us this month, and we’ve watched the movie, listened to the soundtrack, read book excerpts, learned about the time period…
Guardians of the Galaxy (for the second time)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
The Maze Runner
Meet the Robinsons
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Another musical. Not super happy. A little gross. But still neat.
Back to the Future
Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part III

One early morning, this katydid (leaf bug) was on the windshield of our car!

Video games

Dragon’s Dogma
World of Warcraft
Club Penguin
L.A. Noire

Fibbage – Think of this as a “digital Balderdash” played through your TV using your iPod, iPad, phone, etc. We crack up playing it! (Watch out – there’s no rating on the questions, so sometimes you get some that are not topics you want to discuss. But it’s A TON of fun if you have teens or adults.)

The terrarium Ashar made over the summer for 4-H won second place at the York Fair!

Videos

Um, Ashar had never seen this, I don’t know how. I feel like a failure as a parent. But less so now.

Places and projects

Words of the Day. This is going to get its own entire post soon, but essentially, every day, Ashar is choosing a word and making a poster about it, with facts, the word in other languages, a quote and more. This was entirely her idea and the sum total of my contributions has been to download A LOT OF FONTS for her formatting pleasure. Some of her favorite words so far: Barricade. Matrix. Apocalypse. Space. It’s been awesome and a huge rabbit-trail starter.
2014 York Fair. At our county fair, Ashar and I both entered paintings of ours; we both won prizes for two pieces! She also showed her 4-H project alpaca, who was kind of a poop, but she had fun. The best part was dressing him up in costume – she was James Bond, and he was Jupiter, normally an evil henchman to one of Bond’s enemies who was working with Bond on one mission. They dressed up, and she wrote a story to accompany their appearance.
Coursera philosophy course. Ashar and I have been checking out Introduction to Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Not just because we like the lecturers’ accents, but it helps. Another huge conversation-starter.

The alpaca costume contest. Ashar, aka James Bond, with Jupiter, henchman to her enemy, but who she was using to complete a mission. You know, because he has a long neck and makes a good lookout.

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

In a rather long philosophy discussion, the ideas of religious plurality and Universalism, why most religions including ours fundamentally involve other religions being “wrong” and more.
The Scottish independence vote and why it mattered (even though it was “no”).
An overview of military history in the 20th century and beyond thanks to Wikipedia’s List of Invasions page.
That Daniel Craig is going to have a small part in the new Star Wars.
How a genet is making friends with large animals like a rhino and a buffalo.
Whether our society’s opinions about eating animals in the future are likely to change, either because of how the animals are treated and might feel or because of the health concerns things like antibiotic use bring for humans.
How Hitler convinced many Germans to either ignore or tacitly or actively support the killing of the Jews during World War II.

Sarah's paintings - Jazz Bluebird, top left, and Geordi's Visor, bottom center - won ribbons at the York Fair.

Ashar’s paintings – Jazz Bluebird, top left, and Geordi’s Visor, bottom center – won ribbons at the York Fair.

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

I’ve shared several stories about our family’s journey to radical unschooling, and in all of them, there’s a theme: Public school didn’t work for Sarah, who we began homeschooling midway through her sixth-grade year in 2012.

What did work?

Pursuing her passions.

Learning from life.

Ashar loves video games. I do too. And so at first, they just seemed like “a good place to start” in pursuing passions and life learning.

What video games teach about learning

But I quickly found out that there’s WAY more value than “a place to start” when it comes to video games in learning. In fact, I discovered that there’s a lot to learn about how we learn in video game design, and I’ve become kind of a student of video game methodology and educational philosophy myself.

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!

And that’s why I contributed a chapter on “Learning from video games” to The Big Book of Homeschool Ideas.

I talked about the ways we learn from specific video games in detail – pieces of which you can find in my series on video-game learning from January 2013.

But today, I’d like to tell you a little more about why I think this is so important.

How we can learn about learning from video games

Earlier this year, I took a course on video games and learning from Coursera. Previously, I’d taken one on gamification, or the application of game principles to non-game situations, usually business but education as well.

It was an amazing chance to think more critically about games in general – not just “educational” ones.

I was already seeing Ashar’s interest in what some might consider educational topics that sprang directly from the games she played, from an interest in the Revolutionary War from Assassins Creed III to her problem-solving and math skills from Minecraft.

But among the things I discovered, starting with those Coursera courses, was how much video games of any sort teach players how to learn.

Onboarding is one of the biggest pieces of video-game design. Think of any computer game, console game or game app you use. The levels get harder as you go, right? There are tutorials or tips or early missions or challenges that show you how the game is played. World of Warcraft, one of Ashar’s favorite games, is GREAT for this – the early missions teach you how to use weapons, how to interact with other players and non-player characters and more.

These experiences build on each other, and the game offers less and less direct advice as you go, instead leaving decisions more and more in your hands.

Does that sound like educational mastery? Onboarding in games has taught Ashar, who sometimes struggles with “putting things together,” how to take her skills in one area and transfer them to new problems and questions.

Talk about learning how to learn! That’s a skill that, even more so than math or history, will take her far in life.

Then there are the real-life discussions we have because we game together. What about violence? What about gender roles and gender depictions? What about the treatment of Native Americans? These are ALL conversations – deep ones – we’ve had as a result of our family gaming.

While our family doesn’t enforce any video game “limits,” I say often – and will say again – that it doesn’t mean I think you should give your 10-year-old a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and set ’em loose on their own. But Ashar is 14 (well on the way to 15, sadly!) and able to handle some pretty mature themes, which I’m glad to talk about openly with her.

And then there are the actual topic lessons, which are not insignificant. At an “unconference” earlier this year in nearby Harrisburg, PA, I was privileged to meet the founder of Submrge, a site dedicated to the classroom use of commercial games, which was amazing. Hearing from classroom educators who see the value in this really reinforced my thoughts and made me want to learn even more about learning through games of all types, and I highly encourage you to Google “learning with” your family’s favorite games to see more of this type of material.

In fact, if my work schedule hadn’t gotten in the way, I’d be spending next weekend at THATCamp Games, an unconference in Baltimore, Maryland, about humanities and technology, which I highly recommend if you’re in the area!

Updated to add: I found a link the day after I published this post that I’d forgotten about – a short but good read on Lessons from Assassin’s Creed for Constructing Educational Games on a site I like, Play The Past (about history and gaming).