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How full should a day be?

How full should a day be?

La Paz Farm blog asks: What makes a good day of learning? And provides some beautiful answers.

Then there’s Suzanne Temple’s take: Inch by inch

And Karen Edimsten’s first thoughts ont he subject of a good day’s learning and second thoughts.

And then Melissa Wiley addresses the topic, from the perspective of slowing down, finding a rhythm, and not trying to cram too much in.

I don’t really have any thoughts of my own to add, as I’m not homeschooling yet. For me a good day is one when I put my own needs and desires aside and get down on the floor and laugh with Bella. For Bella learning happens naturally as breathing and painfully as the dozen times a day she falls and screams. I hope that learning will continue to be as natural and beautiful but that we can keep the bumping and screaming to a minimum.

Update:

(Because I have to be a completist.)

Karen responds with a post collecting good learning days. She includes some that I missed and says some very nice things about me. Thanks, Karen.

Karen updates the list here.

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4 comments
  • I don’t know.  I do agree that wooden toys are certainly more aesthetically pleasing (and man, do I hate stepping on Legos in the middle of the night!) but certain plastic toys do have their purposes.  It’s a kind of snobbery to dismiss them out of hand.  There are certain kinds of architectural fun you can have with Legos that you can’t get from wooden blocks, for the simple reason that Legos stick together and wooden blocks don’t.

    My crusade is against a glut of toys.  I’m overwhelmed and appalled sometimes by the sheer quantities of junk (yes, most of it cheap plastic!) that my friends have accumulated in their playrooms.  I don’t have enough room in my house to deal with that kind of mass.  I’ve been fairly proactive about clearing out old toys, or toys that I don’t really care for.  It’s funny how no matter how many toys are laying around, kids will still reliably gravitate to a few old favorites.

    I do wholeheartedly agree with the substitution of books for toys.

  • I agree that plastic toys have their purpose. I don’t seriously mean to eliminate them altogether. That would be impossible and pointless.

    And to be fair, neither does Regina. She also writes about her storage system for the Legos and bristle blocks and other plastic building toys. (She keeps them in decorative popcorn tins.)

    I’m in wholehearted agreement about the crusade against the glut of toys. Part of my solution is to simply ask friends and family to give books rather than toys. however, I also have a pack rat nature and have a hard time throwing anything away, even stuff I don’t like. I know that once we get to a certain level of glut it will get easier; but I still feel guilty giving away stuff that was given to us as gifts.

  • I kind of like Legos and Erector sets and model trains, all of which are not wooden. I think the real culprits are toys that blink and flash and beep and buzz and whatnot.

  • I have to say my kids could survive with 4 “toys”:  Legos, Sand, Playdo and water.  (Not the little tiny Legos (useless)or the big blocks – the medium size ones.)  If you want to encourage creative play amoung multiple children of various ages and sexes, I find nothing so useful and comsuming as about 20 pounds of legos!  (And now the magnetix are making a run for the money.  But they are heavy and smaller, so not as useful when there are lots of younger siblings.)

    A problem you will find is that once you get a large number of a kind of toy (see Legos) then people think “you have too many of them” instead of “wow, your kids must love these, let me get you some more.”  So everyone is always amazed when I say what they want for birthdays is more legos and magnetixs.

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