What do you do all day??

In response to this often asked question, I have to say that no two days are ever alike for us in our unschooling life. That's the magic of it! We certainly have a flow to our days, but letting them unravel the way that we want to, each uniquely following the other, is really what this lifestyle is all about. Here, I'll write about Wednesday, January 7th, a typical (and yet unique) day in our lives.....
We woke up to more ice this morning! It was beautiful, the trees all creaking and swaying with the tinkling music to accompany the movement. Oh, well....I guess swimming at the Y is out....we have too many hills to get down to make that work. To my surprise, CC and Grace wanted to have hot chocolate on the front porch to watch the ice. It wasn't so cold, so out they went with their blankies and cups of hot chocolate, to sip and wonder at nature. Will was already up, reading Harry Potter with John, so they opted for the warm indoors. After John left for work, Will and I played "Toss Up" (Grace was my roller) up to 150 points, while CC played on Webkinz. We then played Ten Speed (we haven't played that for a while and I had forgotten how much fun it was!) and then when Fran woke up, we played Sleeping Queens, while the girls colored some pictures.
Fran and Will decided to open their new PC game Civilization that they got for Christmas. It was a bit daunting, looking at the manual (which was organized into chapters!)....however, they quickly started having fun after about 20 minutes of working through the frustration of figuring out something completely unknown for the first time. They played off and on all day, until John got home. Meanwhile, the girls wanted to give their new stuffed kitties a bath in the tub, so they jumped in, too and played happily for about an hour. Then, I read with the girls (some books that we had gotten at the "new" library!) and we made pumpkin muffins. We decided to have tea with muffins and of course we needed appropraite tea party music, which led to full dress up and dancing in the kitchen.
Amidst all of this were the questions. I tell people that the most important thing that I can do is to answer questions for the kids, or help them to find the answers. Unschooling is about the discussion, the searcing and finding, the question leading to the next question. So, we talked about Alexander the Great (and looked him up in our REALLY old encyclopedias that I had as a girl).....Mao Zedong, Ghandi......we talked about where cities are built and why. We talked about how words are spelled (for CC...she's trying to crack the reading code), we talked about math and how things add up and why it's good to know how to do things in your head and how to figure out how to group numbers so it's easier), we talked about credit cards and how things have changed since John and I were growing up (my parents only used cash!) and why the interest on cards is high, and mortgages and when we'll own our house outright and why the people up the street needed to foreclose and the state of the economy today and how much we spend on our family's expenses. We talked about different characteristics of animals and the olders helped the youngers to understand what makes a mammal a mammal. We sang and we danced and we cleaned and we played and we discussed and we solved problems.....together.
That was our day. We weren't out and about as we usually are thanks to the ice. But sometimes, the inside days are the best. Time to reflect, to enjoy, to absorb and let things sit. Does it fit the standard "expert's" idea of learning A to get to B to get to C....NO! It's more of a winding, building, layering of knowledge. A natural one thing leading to another. It's not clean...sometimes it's really messy. And most "educational experts" couldn't readily see the learning going on (heck, I used to BE one of those experts!) But I sure do see it now...and so do the kids.