Sophie's Unschooling Holiday

On the official last day of the school term:

Sophie: No more learning for two weeks!

Imogen: No more learning? We learn all the time, not just in term time.

Charlotte: What are you planning to do for the next two weeks? Sit in a box? That’s the only way you’ll avoid leaning anything.

Imogen: And even then you’ll learn something. You’ll learn it’s very boring sitting in a cardboard box!

I’m glad to report Sophie decided not to sit in that box. And so she is learning despite it being the holidays.

So far Sophie has been drawing, trying to make her people look more realistic. She has pages and pages of people in a new folder she’s put together. I searched the bookshelves for a how-to-draw book and Andy has been offering his suggestions. Now Sophie thinks she might write some stories to go with the pictures.

Sophie’s been finishing her confirmation preparation work. Only a page to complete, and a week to go until the ceremony!

Sophie’s been to visit her cousins where she could talk and play and talk. She visited the beach (first time in 4 years), collected shells and built sandcastles, played soccer and catch, and got wet in the sea.

She's taken a lot of photos and played around with them on the computer.

She’s read a dozen books.

And listened to Andy reading out loud.

Sophie discovered what it is like to live without electricity.

And printed off some knitting patterns from the Internet and started knitting some fingerless gloves.

Now that might not sound like a lot of learning. However...

Sophie has been sick since the second day of the holidays, and there's not much you feel like doing (or learning) when you have a headache and a cough and feel weak and tired.

She'd had planned to make a clay wind-chime, tie-dye a T-shirt, bake a cake, write blog posts about the wild windy weather and our visit to the cousins, answer a letter, play outside, ride her bike along the tracks with Andy, go to the cinema ….

But, there’s still one more week of holidays to go before we are officially supposed to get back to work. Plenty of time for some more learning!