The things that go unnoticed

I often blog about the things that are evidently educational and could be used to demonstrate socially valued learning, but what goes on behind the scenes? There must be lots and lots of things that the kids learn that I'm completely unaware of. Here are a few that I hadn't considered.

• fire lighting
• social skills
• vocabulary
• physics (without the mathematical equations)
• dexterity
• self appreciation / esteem
• music appreciation
• interpersonal skills

And surely plenty more. It's easy to measure learning in areas such as literacy, numeracy, science, history ... and all the other areas that are taught in schools, but not so easy to quantify the rest until we are faced by adults that have learnt to be human by simply living!

I love natural learning *happy sigh*

Naturally Learning

Spikee has been playing our new game word pool. We got it at vinnies for $3. The aim of the game is to collect all the letters in your word. Older players can play with up to seven words but we just use one. The photo above is of him after winning a game, you can see his word was "cat". He is also getting really good at playing Guess Who.

Stylish has been spending lots of time with her new friend, and we are starting rag rugging classes next Wednesday at the local design centre. She's also been taking an interest in the portrayal of women in video clips so we've been discussing that a lot. I'm so pleased to see her absorbing (albeit painfully slowly) some feminist critique of her "culture".

Angus is now sitting up and very nearly crawling. He can move from one spot to another but he's not quite sure how. He's at that really gorgeous smilie interactive age and he's piling on the booby fat in preparation for more organised movement.