Lifelong Learning

I got an ipod for my birthday this year. Though I had scoffed at the idea a bit and had insisted it was just too small and I felt afraid that I would lose it, my ipod has become my constant companion. (Especially since we can't circumvent the anti-theft device on the radio in our van ... that's another story though) I have loved listening to my favorite music as well as discovering new music via my children. Much of my favorite music now was recommended by my children.

But the best thing about my ipod is listening to podcasts. I've spent weeks listening to Mars Hill teaching from last year (an entire year in the book of Philippians!). This American Life is alway interesting and recently, I discovered a wonderful unschooling podcast, Humans Being. Host Sara Parent has given me just the booster shot of encouragement that I needed recently as my doubts grew large. I highly recommend her podcast and now I see that she is also working on a magazine. Wonderful!

One of my favorite episodes of Humans Being is from a year ago, Unschooling Yourself, when Sara talked about the concept of lifelong learning and modeling this for our chlidren. This is a guiding princple in our lives and we constantly refer to the things we have really only learned as adults, out of school. Each day brings new opportunities. Today was a great example.

Chris has been hanging drywall and doors in our masterbedroom, has plans to knock out another wall, shrink our too-big bathroom and create an artist studio for me. Prior to a couple of months ago, Chris had never done any of this. But thanks to books, google, youtube videos and hiring someone for one day, he has learned to do it himself. And speaking of that art studio. That's for me, for my mixed media art that I have started creating in the last five years, utilizing online classes and lots of play and experimenting.

Chris is an avid birder and genealogist as well. My interest in cooking has been reignited recently after watching Julie and Julia and I started a book club to inspire me to read fiction again because most of the time, I am reading books about feminism and theology. We believe that one of the best things we can do is to model an active, interesting life for our children. They don't think in terms of one being too old to learn anything because we don't.

What about you? What are you learning lately?