May 1

Oh my goodness! I just realized that it's MayDay! sheesh.

Keeping track of things here has not been easy, lately, I'm not sure why. Maybe because every time I sit down to write, I get interrupted, and forget where I was going, so I scrap it, then start all over, and then it happens again. It's gone on like this for about a week, now.

I think I have something in drafts, I'll have to see if it's salvagable.

I was reminded of my mother's inquiry the other day of "But how will they learn Math?"
I thought of it this morning when Trev asked me to make popsicles.
"How long will it take?"
I looked at the clock, it was 11:00. "I dunno, probably 'til around the time Daddy comes home." This led, naturally, to a comment of the time, and a reminder of how the big and little hands of the clock represent the time and how it works. "Hmm. What do you say that we check on them every hour, to see how they're coming along? And then we'll also know exactly how long they take to freeze!"
So that was our plan, and what we did.
I probably did get a little too technical in the morning's initial explanation of time-telling, but after seeing the light start to dim (lost him somewhere around "every number represents five minutes, ugh, who wouldn't get turned off?), I immediately backed off, and we let it all happen as-it-would, again.
It wasn't our first conversation on time-telling, and surely not the last.
And I won't pretend that after this particular discussion my son is now able to read time.
But this is how unschooling works. It's real life. It's organic learning. Living and learning naturally.

If my son chooses to learn paleantology facts and processes at age five instead of 10, and was interested in bacteria and molecules at four, instead of nine, and whatever else, why not let that be what inspires him? By this same token, while noticing his remarkable ability to learn and grasp certain ideas, I cannot condemn him if he does not yet fully understand the concept of "even and odd". Or counting by two's, or fives.
There are just some things that have to come when one is ready.
Indeed, I believe that all things will come when one is ready. That's the sort of magical, marvelous, wondrous world we live in.