After years and years of learning every day, here comes a holiday for unschoolers! 
It's less than a month away now, so start thinking of how you can be ready for this momentous, first annual day of leisure for learners.
Learn Nothing Day
The art above is by Sandra (me) and Holly Dodd (my talented daughter).
How to Screw Up Unschooling
http://sandradodd.com/screwitup
New story on Late-night Learning
http://sandradodd.com/latenightlearningcomment.html
New link to a PBS program online about problems with food controls added here:
http://sandradodd.com/eating/longterm
Italian links added here:
http://sandradodd.com/world
There's some new stuff here, and something beautiful by Pam Sorooshian:
http://sandradodd.com/unschool/radical
Unschooling's second cousins
http://sandradodd.com/unschool/unitstudies
http://sandradodd.com/unschool/marginal
http://sandradodd.com/unschool/vsRelaxedHomeschooling.html
I've been saving this hoping to add more to a couple of those pages
before sending. I will add more, haven't yet, and when I do I'll
send the links again.
Here's the news:
http://sandradodd.com/yesGraphic
A graphic representation of thoughts about saying yes to children.
For the visual thinker!
(For everyone. By Katherine Anderson.)
http://sandradodd.com/why
I especially like the links on this. I like the way they look, and I think that if someone read that page and those six links, it would change their lives enough for them to improve their children's lives in wonderful ways.
http://sandradodd.com/unschool/gettingit
Something new there.
http://sandradodd.com/modeloftheuniverse
Your Own Model of the Universe
http://sandradodd.com/consideratechildren
Thinking I might have the only webpage in the world called "Considerate Children," I went to check. Just google, just one search. Results 1 - 10 of about 199,000 for considerate children. Of those first ten, seven were describing the traits of particular dogs. "The breed does fine with older considerate children" and such. One was being critical of a child (but not mean; slightly sarcastic, not bad). Two referred to an Emily Post book called Emily Post's The Gift of Good Manners: A Parent's Guide to Raising Respectful, Kind, Considerate Childrenhttp://www.amazon.com/Emily-Posts-Gift-Good-Manners/dp/006018549X
Second page had an article in Japanese, but in English it said "Considerate Children to Be Educated ..." I don't think it's a public article; can't read Japanese anyway. Two on the Emily Post book; the rest about dogs.
As comparison to the 199,000 hits for "considerate" and "children" even on the same page, I thought I'd look up "brat." I don't like that word, but I'm guessing there will be more than 199,000 occurrences.
Ah. I was right:
Results 1 - 10 of about 31,000,000 for brat
And so based on that, I hope my page on considerate children will continue to grow. If any of you have stories of your children being considerate that would help some of those millions of people who might never have considered it possible, please send them to me. I'll get it if you reply to this list (and it won't go through to
everyone).
An update and comment on rude feedback:
http://sandradodd.com/feedbackrude
Joy truly is invaluable.
I've scanned an article from the local paper. It's eight years old, but hey.... I didn't have a scanner then. For a while, after it was new, it was freely available online, but no more. (Now it is again, in a home-job fashion.)
http://sandradodd.com/media/ABQjournal
There are two other articles I had already scanned, and some of you might have missed them the last time they came around, but now they're linked on another new page:
http://sandradodd.com/media
WOW.
First part of the first episode of The Addams Family is quite an unschooling extravaganza, and I had just the place to put it!
http://sandradodd.com/museum
"Doddian"—I've become a footnote AND an adjective. Cool!!
http://theexcitingworldofcricket.blogspot.com/2008/05/problem-essay.html
Read the solution essay, too.
http://sandradodd.com/game/zach
has links to his essays easily found from my site.
Allowance never had its own page before. Now it does.
http://sandradodd.com/math/allowance
On the movies page I'm adding lists of movies that might be good for discussing relationships. There are three lists:
relationships between younger children, between older children, and between children and adults. They're in the righthand column.
http://sandradodd.com/t/movies
There's some more positive feedback, some in Spanish, and I put the most fun negative feedback I ever got on its own page, because of language (use of "the f word," in reference to MY LIST! How shocked should I be? Yeah, not very...).
http://sandradodd.com/feedback
http://sandradodd.com/feedback/rude
I've been spending lots of time outside in my gardenYARD, in case I seem to be less productive online lately, but most of you are probably busy outside too and didn't even notice! (It can't be "garden" for not having rows of food (I have decided). Maybe a flower garden, but nah... yard.)
New writing, lower left:
http://sandradodd.com/eating/monkeyplatter
News on an unschooler who chose school, and how his math went
http://sandradodd.com/math/schoolmath
and it's linked at
http://sandradodd.com/math, beginning of the links section on the left.
Recently on the Thinking Sticks blog:
REAL libraries
Food, History, Fun!
Numerals and Counting
Mystery Art
Keith, Holly and I visited Kirby in Texas:
Birds in Texas
Holly [one morning]
Kirby in April
Monday with Kirby
Twinkies, Texans and Tortoises
http://sandradodd.com/rebellion
I had forgotten about this, so much so that when someone asked a straight-out question about rebellion, I didn't send this link. I found it in fortuitously accidental fashion (as usual).
There are additions to these pages:
http://sandradodd.com/unschool/gettingit
http://sandradodd.com/feedback
New title art (by Holly) and rearrangement; deletion of deadish links.
http://sandradodd.com/help
(still working on that one)
http://sandradodd.com/myths
This one looks fine on my Mac, but not so good on the kids' PCs. It's readable either way.
NEW (but not on my site): Two thirds of the way down is a link to something new by an unschooled teenager in Iowa, about parenting and video games. He interviewed me for it.
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Another peaceful kid with a toy gun:
http://sandradodd.com/peace/guns
A new song is added to the "small words" collection, a page to note ancient language in modern literature.
http://sandradodd.com/smallwords
Magic Window
http://sandradodd.com/magicwindow
The congruence passed when Marty turned 19, but the magic remains.
It's been busy lately on the Always Learning list, which usually leads to more page additions and new pages. Things will slow down again before long, I'm sure.
New material, up top:
sandradodd.com/peace/newview
Spouses—how unschooling can improve relationships
sandradodd.com/spouses
Your House as a Museum has been touched because I found the bongos,
and cleaned up the format.
sandradodd.com/museum
The aforementioned and long-previously mentioned bongos:
sandradodd.blogspot.com...bongos
Holly took that photo a few days ago.
This is a problem: "dads, times tables, math"
It's misleading. None of those three had anything to do with either of the other two. Fun, huh?
I left them there because that's the order in which I added the links to draft, but seriously, they're unrelated.
And so, to the links:
new bits and clean-up on the dads page
http://sandradodd.com/dads
new stories about multiplication (the scary "times tables"), and some
older stories moved from a more obscure page to this guessable-link page
http://sandradodd.com/timestables
The Return of Linda Wyatt! (with updates, for the front page of the
math section, which has always featured Linda's writing)
http://sandradodd.com/math
There's a new "Typical Days" account, in photos:
http://sandradodd.com/day/amanda
(Those are Amanda's girls to the right.)