After dismal failures in 2010 and 2011, this year we had high hopes….NO learning would happen in our house today. We were going have an entire day off learning….yep – today is Learn Nothing Day!
It all started promisingly. Kai got up late, around 9.30am. It looked like a picture-book, stereotypical, radical unschooling morning (in the mind of a non-radical unschooler, obviously!). Knotty hair. Slept in yesterday’s clothes. Sugary cereal for breakfast in front of the TV. I was happy with our non-learning progress up until around 10.15am when it all started to go horribly wrong….
Kai found a collectable card from somewhere or another, and asked me what it said and what the super power of the animal on the card was…..these questions were a little disconcerting, but I decided that no real learning was happening….but then he asked me to look it up online. We found out it was called Charger, a Core-tech Monsuno, resembling a mixture of moose, buffalo and armadillo (seriously – check it out!)
Still, this was information about a fictional animal, so it doesn’t qualify as real learning….right?! And I’m choosing to ignore all the reading and maths that were involved on the card!
I was deliberately not opening any interesting links on Facebook this morning, and avoiding work for fear of potentially learning something new about wildlife corridors or anything else work related!
At noon we had a doctor’s appointment….On the drive there, Kai played a battle game on his iPod. He was earning money in battle to spend on new weapons and armour…still….that’s not ‘real’ maths, is it??
At the doctors, we waited for a half-an-hour, and there was more game playing (hooray for the iPod!)…when we went in, we discussed Kai’s recent allergy reactions, as he has chosen to go get allergy tested to find out what he reacted to.
The doctor looked in his ears, up his nose, and down his throat, and listened to his chest. He talked about allergies, asthma and eczema and how they are related, and also drew us a picture of the inner ear and told us what happens when you get an infection in there. So….the doctors was a set-back, I admit it, but we marched bravely on to meet friends at the beach….
We chose the beach because we go there a lot. Nothing new to learn there, right?? Seen it all before….
Of course, we failed at the beach too….there was drawing, playing, rock and shell collecting….Kai’s best find was this rock with holes in it.
We looked it up (clearly we’ve given up by now!) and it’s a limestone rock, and the holes are made by marine worms (possibly horseshoe worms ) that secrete acid to make the holes and live in the rock! Cool!!
On the way home, we got stuck in school traffic, and discussed more about allergies – Kai’s nervous about the allergy test, so I asked him to ask his friend Summer what it’s like, as she’s already had some allergy tests. He asked what she was allergic too. I said dairy (amongst other things), and then we went through listing all the foods that are classed as dairy, what’s in them that makes you allergic, and what alternatives you could eat instead….this discussion was rounded up by Kai saying he’d be very sad if he couldn’t eat ice cream!
So, big fail by 4pm….and things only got worse when we got home…Kai played with his soldiers, lining them up, creating barricades and enemy lines….
……and while I was out at the gym, he’s apparently been reading a book from the library about WWII fighter pilots, and is now watching Horrible Histories! AGHH!! Disaster!! And it’s only 8.30pm, so probably at least another hour or so of learning left!!
We’re already googling Egyptian recipes for International Food Night (yes, we’ve resurrected it…monthly only though, so we don’t get fed up!).
One final photo…this was what it looked like at the beach today – how could anyone fail to learn anything on an amazing, beautiful day like this! (or any other day, obviously – I just like this picture!).
So, another monumental fail for Learn Nothing Day! This is our third…it doesn’t get any easier! Ha ha!! If you blogged about Learn Nothing Day, leave a link in the comments (I could do a link-up, but don’t know how, and really shouldn’t learn something new right now!)…
Love it! :)