Unschooling Emma

Unschooling Voices #12 is up. Thanks, Kim.

Everyone in our house has the occasional tendency to start talking out loud midway through a conversation/train of thought going on in their head. Emma is no exception. There are times when she shows how astute she is.

Earlier this week Emma and I were in the office: her at one computer and I at the other. She asked me if we had any money left from selling the green house. I did explain that although we had spent most of it, we didn’t have to pay the bills for the green house anymore. She said nothing in the 5 minutes before or after that. Nor did she give any sign that she heard my explanation. But I’m sure she did. Prior to the sale of the green house she was aware we were running under a tight budget. For the last couple weeks the belt has been loosened a notch or two. Since last weekend we were planning on a shopping trip to Fredericton for this weekend. It may take a few months for her to realize that still having the green house was why we had to run on a tight budget, but I’m sure she will eventually.

Last night while sitting at opposite computers from the last story Emma asked, “Doesn’t war makes them bigger?” with a hint of don’t be silly. Again this came out in the middle of a good spell of silence. I looked over at her screen. She was watching the Schoolhouse Rock DVD. I had to watch the video for about a minute (the volume was low enough I couldn’t catch all the audio) before I figured out what this particular episode was about. It was explaining DEFICIT using a household budget to illustrate spending exceeding income. If we were a household that watched the nightly news, news channels, read the daily papers, etc. then I probably would have expected something like this from her. The truth is that we DON’T buy newspapers, watch news channels or the evening news. I’m still thinking through where she might have garnered the information for this conclusion. Out of the mouths of babes.