Big Sister has always been fascinated with weather. Not so much the actual weather so much as our ability to analyze and predict it. Weather maps fascinate her, as well as hearing the weather reports on TV. In this past year, as we are becoming more comfortable with use of the internet, Big Sis has been checking the weather electronically.
One of her favorite sites shows a radar map of the local weather. But while exploring one day, Big Sis discovered that she can view the entire earth from this weather map! She spent a good two hours searching out the weather patterns over the Sahara Desert, in the rainforests of Brazil, in Antarctica...
It dawned on me that she might really enjoy the satelite maps offered by Google Maps. So we logged on together. And then, for the first time, I downloaded the simple programming to view Google Maps Earth. (click on the button "Earth" on the far right side.) WOW! You see, we had slow dial up before. Now we have high speed. (still on the phone lines, but much faster) Before it was tedious and incredibly slow to view a satelite image. Now it is nearly instantaneous! Wonderful!
For the past several days, Big Sis spent many hours exploring close ups of the city of Rome, iceflows in the Antarctic, ocean topography, Manhattan Island, our old home in Stark County, and so much more. She can view the Greek ruins in detail, both from the sky and from the ground. Its just amazing.
When she ran out of her own ideas, which took several days, she grabbed the globe of the earth and started looking for places to see. Even Little Brother is getting in on this, quickly adapting to the computer controls.
Why is this unschooling? Well, mostly, because it was NOT my idea. We have what Maria Montessori would call a prepared environment. Certain juicy morsels are laid out for the children to ponder, enjoy, choose or not choose. A globe is pretty standard food. (I spent hours with the globe and atlas as a child!) Big Sister was completely able to choose this morsel, and when to apply it. She is able to seek out her own food, such as the weather map on the internet. I still supervise quite a lot on the internet, but the freedom is there. She was able to put things together to fill her own need to learn.
If I had planned a unit arc on world maps, it would have been so contrived and about MY interests or motivations. Can we trust that our children WILL be motivated in ways that will help them learn? You bet! Parental wisdom tells us to offer healthy choices. AND it tells us to be open to offering other things that do not, at first, seem obviously healthy. We are not IN our children's minds and so we dont always know what their needs and interests are. We can step back and trust that our children know what they need. And we can, on occasion, offer some guidance. But keep it rare and poignant.
Big Sister "learning herself" about our earth!
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