The unschooling diaries: week thirty-five

It’s awesome how things can begin to escalate when you go with the flow.

This particular run of exploration began during our ‘goodbye summer’ barbecue at the pool, when the lifeguards decided to entertain Arthur by fixing him up a tube to drive his cars down.

He LOVED it, and it wasn’t long before we’d rigged something similar up at home: Leigh took him to a hardware store to search for inspiration, and both the process and the prize were well worth the trip.

For a few days Arthur would wake me with the request to get his ‘super slide’ up and running in the garden, and it kept him entertained of hours.

And then…

One morning, when I was trying to tempt Arthur away from the iPad, I thought I’d get out the marbles. I bought them a while ago with a view to doing some painting, but suddenly in this exciting new world of ramps and trajectories they seemed just the thing.

He was instantly rapt, and it wasn’t long before he’d found a tube to introduce into the equation…

From there it was a tiny leap across to our very first marble run.

Arthur was intrigued, but soon wanted his marbles to go further and faster… Enter the super slide.

We spent pretty much a whole afternoon experimenting with various blocks and tunnels and ramps. So cool.

The exploration is as you might expect ongoing, and in the meantime the marble run has found a vital new role as home to Arthur’s lego star wars robots – they were loving it in there today!

It’s a fascinating process, this opening up and letting go.

So often still I think I know the best activity to do to spark Arthur’s imagination, but it turns out that the very best ideas come from the kid himself. I’m so glad I get to come along for the ride.