Fun and games.

Today we went to the swimming pool. It's my regular day there as a volunteer for three hours. Running the kiosk and being life gaurd. Being a Monday shift though we're lucky to get any customers. It's a small town and most of the towns children are all at school on Monday morning. It was so hot and sunny that we thought surely a few tourists from the local camping ground would call in but nope...just me and the kids all day.
The children love it when no one comes. It's like we own this huge swimming pool, and have it all to ourselves. All the other kids in town are at school (which is just acros the road) You can hear the lunchtime bells from the pool and every week when we are there one of the children comment about the 'structure' of school. How you have to eat at a certain time. How you have to continue sitting even after you've finished eating. How the teachers would tell you to do this and that. How you are not allowed to do this and that.
It makes me feel good that they only experinced that kind of education for six months, and not for their whole young lives. It's been over a year since I started homeschooling again and about six months since we started radical unschooling. Things are going great. I feel at last like I kind of know what's going on!
My kids have had a great big long summer holiday and most of the time I've ben wondering if and when they'd learn anything.
Now I've finally gotten to the point where I can see learning in everything that they do. Whether it's sitting in front of the playstation for a few hours or riding their bikes or jumping on the trampoline.
Monday is our PE day. Today at the pool it was too hot to be out in the Sun for too long so after a quick swim we pulled out some games. Zan and Rain played this gaint game of chess and Mr T and I got out some gaint Ten Pins. Now the game started out sort of like ten pin bowling but after every couple of goes Mr T would change the rules. Soon Rain and Zan joined in with us and when Mr T had his next go he changed the rules again. The older kids started to say that that was wrong but I told them that it was Mr T's game and we should follow his rules. So each turn around Mr T made up a new version of the game. Zan and I ended up dubbing it "Basket, Tenpin, Soccer, Handball...because it seemed to encompass rules from all these games. We all ended up giggling so much. It was so cool to follow the little one's rules and to watch him being 'master' of the game. He was really fair and happy compared to how he is sometimes if the older kids try to engage him in a game that has set rules. I was surprisd at how I felt letting him set the rules. It was the first time in ages that I actually felt really chidlike again. What a eautiful thing to let children do what they want and learn from it!