Unschooling Diary

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.

When Hina takes a walk or do the exercise, she becomes interested in various things. Then we make a stop and talk about it.

She found a cotton glove in the tree, and she thought it looked like a fox.

When we did the exercise, she found the clouds and many shapes from them.

She was also curious about the statue of the King Sihanouk and asked when it was built and how tall it is.

Nobody knows why she came up with these questions. But we, adults usually don’t come up with those questions. I’m curious about Hina’s curiosity.

Hina and I recently love watching cooking programs on Netflix. They open our minds toward cooking and inspire us to try cooking more.

Usually, we watch it on a bed before we go to sleep at around 8pm. We can watch about 2 episodes. We have a fun talk about cooking while watching.

Hina said she would like to be in the cooking competition. I said she can if she tries cooking almost every day. By the time she becomes the age, she would be qualified because she has the passion and has the time to pursue it. It’s a gift of unschooling.

Hina received an order of drawing from a client. The client says her drawing gives a healing.

Hina tried several artworks.

When artwork didn’t come out as she expected, she cried with frustration. This kind of feeling is important. When she just draws for herself, she enjoys drawing. But when she has a goal, she has expectations as a result.

I think it’s a step to know about professionalism.

Currently, Hina speaks English as her first language, but her native is not English. It’s Japanese. She has not spoken Japanese for a few years since her environment doesn’t require Japanese.

It can be an issue for parents whose first language is not English and they didn’t grow up with speaking English.

Our first decision was kind of “wait and see.” And these days, we started to meet more Japanese residents here, and my daughter seemed like she wanted to say something but she couldn’t.

So I saw her slight motivations to know more Japanese. I started speaking Japanese sometimes, and I add English translation. Hina imitates what I say partly.

We believe that she can learn language anytime she like. So we waited for a sign that shows she has the interest.

Being a multilingual is amazing, but forcing children to learn many languages without their needs can miss other opportunities that they could have explored if they didn’t “study” languages.

We don’t take a lecture style but more of a play style.

And we don’t have a goal of how much Japanese she should know. She will know.

Hina has been into cooking these days. When we cook from a recipe, we need to calculate ingredients to adjust our servings. And it’s mathematics. We studied about ratio.

I asked Hina to explain how she understands it in her own words.

These are the cookies we made.

Hina also learned divisions through making jelly.

She got confused in some place but it’s good to know what she struggles about. We can take time and learn at our own pace.

Life and teach us even mathematics!

For some unschooled children, following instructions is not always necessary since they don’t have teachers and they can try things the way they like.

Hina is one of them. Hina has time to explore things by the way she likes.

However, there are some things that work better with specific ways. I found that cooking is also one of the things.

After Hina started cooking, she knew that there should be a better way to make the dishes she made.

This morning, her pancakes were not as good as before. And we discussed why.

Although she loves to fine her own ways, cooking has tips to make food delicious. It’s like science. I believe that being able to make delicious food is a life skill.

Although the taste was not as good as Hina expected, she learned the reasons. And she also learned that cooking instructions are the secrets of delicious food. The cooking instructions have a reason to be there.

Hina started to cook when she stayed at her friend’s house in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Since then, she loves to cook fried eggs. For her to be able to cook easily, we got a new small pan for Hina.

It’s a 20cm pan. She now makes pancakes for breakfast while we are traveling. She is in charge of breakfast. I found her more interested in eating.

When we traveled to a remote area of Cambodia, our friends there were so happy to learn how to cook pancakes since it’s new to them.

The children were very happy too and they are more engaged with cooking.

Cooking can make people happy. What we need to bring is just a small pan so that children can cook easily.