Sudoku

This is what my 11 yo did last night in bed before he went to sleep.



My husband loves Sudokus.  He does them to relax.  I, personally, find them very frustrating.  I tend to go more with stuff like Scrabble and crossword puzzles, but he likes numbers.  He graduated to Ken-Kens and then Kakuros.

Becky learned to form numbers by sitting on her daddy's lap and filling in the squares with him.  Now he plays his games on his ipad.  Often on a Sunday afternoon, you'll find him on the sofa with one or two children working on a Sudoku or Kakuro together.

So it is only natural that my son would think Sudoku was a great thing to do before bed.  By the way, I just happened to pull this book off shelf  the other day, after about a year of residence there; the book was partially filled in quite a while ago and then shelved and now it is recirculating.

Here's an article talking about how great Sudokus are for your brain.

Touchstones

This is a program that we used last year in a very informal co-op with some other unschoolish families.  I kind of miss it this year.  It was fun getting together regularly with liked minded moms and I appreciated the positive experience my teens were having.

This program's goal is to teach and guide students into learning how to think via Socratic discussions.  I led the youngest group.  I did use the program from October through December but I grew uncomfortable with it after a while.  It was too open ended.  Young kids are in a formation period and need clear, safe answers.  They don't do well with ambiguity, I don't think.  I thought the program was trying to rush kids into analytical thinking before they were developmentally ready for it.  It seemed a real strain and the kids weren't having that much fun.  The only lesson they liked was a picture study.  That got them going, but otherwise it felt artificial.  So after Christmas we changed our meeting to a little art club.

The middle school aged kids and the high schoolers continued, though.  I wasn't involved in the middle school group because I didn't have any kids that fell in that age group.  They did seem to have trouble getting those kids going.  It could be that just some of the kids were shy and there was one particular student who was very outspoken and emotional so that became a little strained too.  So perhaps it was just the chemistry of that particular mix of kids.  But again, I think it might be that the kids were just not developmentally ready for it.

The most successful group was the high schoolers, and frankly, I think this is because Socratic methodology and analytical thinking are completely what a teenager's mind is all about!  Asking questions and wrestling with possible answers!  The ages ranged from 14 to 18.  These teens had enough experience behind them and enough information to draw on so that they didn't feel threatened by others countering their views. And their minds actively sought to distinguish and define ideas.  The little tidbit of thought or the ethical issue presented engaged them and got them excited and really thinking.  It was often exhilarating!

The best thing though was what I saw my teens doing after the meeting.  They'd bring up the discussion later with the family at the dinner table.  I'd see them reading Wikipedia on Francis Bacon or thumbing through an old copy of the Dialogues of Plato leftover from my college days.

Now other people might have different experiences with this program.  You might find the elementary and middle school levels are great.  But I really liked it at the high school level for several reasons:

1.  It was a fun time hanging out with other teens!

2.  It honed the students' ability to discuss provocative issues politely.

3.  It enhanced critical thinking.

4.  It didn't require lots of homework from the teens.  They simply came in, read an excerpt or article and then  were asked questions to get them thinking.  The atmosphere was relaxed and encouraging.

5.  It whetted their appetites to learn more on their own.

This last reason really resonated with my unschooling heart.  I was glad we weren't doing some on line class where the kids would have to slog through a course on Aristotle or read volumes of dense language they weren't really into.  To me that's what college is for!  LOL!  I can see that really burdening and turning off a teen.  Not all, of course; some kids are very academically oriented and thrive on that approach.  But mine wouldn't.  Instead the program, in a very enjoyable way, got my kids interested in philosophical and ethical issues and made them want to search out more knowledge on their own.

I liked that.

TVTropes

This is a newly discovered website my 15 year old is fascinated with.  It might be a bit adult so I don't recommend it for anyone under 15.  The site does warn you if you are stumbling into an area there that might be 'less than family friendly.' So you might want to check it out before your teens do.  My kids are very self-censoring, so I don't worry so much about that kind of stuff (though I do keep an eye out for any problems).  But in spite of the above caveat, the site is a very cool trove of information and analysis on every kind of story that exists!   I mean everything from classic literature to graphic novels to comic books to TV sitcoms.  If the world is telling a story in some way, shape or form it has gotten included in TVTropes.

What it basically teaches is literary analysis and critical thinking.  It's hard for me to even describe it accurately.  A trope in this sense of the word is a theme or device used in a story.  Contributors from all over the world have identified tropes and then have developed lists of the various stories that use that trope.  So under one particular trope, you'll find everything from Homer to Archie comics! It's really fascinating and fun!