Month: December 2019

Hina and I have started traveling around the world virtually. We visit restaurants of different nationalities.

Recently we visited France and Russia.

At a French restaurant, Hina tried a croissant and yogurt, which is a typical French breakfast according to some post on the internet.

While we were relaxing, Hina read a book about famous paintings. And a group of French people looked at her with a surprise looking, saying “wonderful!” Some paintings are by French artists.

After we visit a restaurant, we color a book of countries.

We also put stickers on the world map.

We had fried cheese at a Russian restaurant.

Through this activity, both of us became more interested in food, cultures, and societies in the world.

Hina did some research about export and import.

We would like to explore the world more together.

I have taken photos of Hina’s artworks. Thanks to a smartphone, we won’t miss the moment as long as we are with our children, which is a great side of unschooling!

To make it easier to see the changes, I picked up Hina’s drawings of me from February 2019 to December 2019.

I love them all. Hina draws in more details now. Until May, she focused on a feature of my looks. Maybe it’s my curly hair.

She learned how to draw without a teacher. And now she says she wants to improve more and she wants an art teacher.

She started to draw together with an artist once in a while. It inspires her to draw more.

I’m excited about her future artwork.

Hina currently speaks English as her first language. English is considered as one of the basic skills in globalization. Knowing English is a privilege that Hina has.

However, if we look into the society more deeply, it’s not always the case. We cannot expect everyone to speak some English. And Hina needs to know it through her experience.

So I let her go shopping and pay by herself in a place where basically nobody speaks English.

In Hanoi, the cashier spoke to Hina in Vietnamese, and Hina guessed what she meant from her actions. Hina got the change successfully, too.

Next time was in the countrysides of Cambodia. I asked Hina to buy a can of cooking gas and to receive the charge, too. Hina said ok but she said she needed to look at the google map although the shop was close. She wanted to know exactly where she could buy it. But the shops there all look like this.

And it makes it harder for foreigners to find what they want. We need to ask them if they have it without words.

Hina came back after around 10 minutes, saying that she couldn’t find a gas shop. There is no gas shop but she needed to ask people without words.

Our challenge continues….

Hina and I visited a Ba Vi national park in Vietnam with our unschooling friends for nature activities.

Hina was so happy to see beautiful colors of nature. It was so interesting to see how moss and lichen live as well.

There was an athletic park, and Hina was scared to fall for the first time. But she made it and became more confident about crossing ropes and hiking.

An experience of getting out of fear made Hina confident about what she can do by herself. Hina got more independent after that.

I started gardening on our balcony about 3 months ago. First, I thought Hina can learn about nature from it. But it was more than that.

We can learn about raising children as well. I’d like to share my learnings from gardening.

This is a tomato plant. This plant grows slow compared to other tomatoes.

Other ones are tall enough to have fruits. Can you see tall plants? They are tomatoes. And I planted the seeds at the same time.

The shortest tomato went through hardship such as being eaten by birds, and it looked like it was about to die. But I kept watering it, thinking that it might have strength to recover by itself. Regardless of whether it would die or not, I thought it was not me who decides to finish it.

Then it started to have more leaves.

Children do what they love and they can hear their internal voices better than adults. But sometimes, adults think that this child is not good at this or they are not talented enough to do what they love. But children can find it by themselves, and it’s them to decide whether they want to pursue it.

Maybe we, adults are too much in a hurry to see “the results”, believing that they can predict a future better than children.

Hina and I have been taking care of earthworms for more than two month. They are silent and I was afraid that they were gone. But we found them growing and reproducing!

Their cocoon!

There are so many baby earthworms! They can live for 8 years. It’s amazing. Hina placed some of them in a transparent container, so that she can see them moving.

We also took care of our plants with new vermicompost. Hina was mixing the soil with her pet mouse.

We plan to plant many kinds of plants on our balcony. Our bitter melon now has fruits.