What makes for a nourishing learning environment? What should we have in our homes and how should we organize our homes so that children will learn, will flourish, just by virtue of the environment we have created for them? What does an unschooling household look like?

A focus I’ve had for my own kids (and myself, actually) has to do with "connectedness", or an "ability-to-see-the-connections" type of thing that some people have described as a possible kind of smart which unschoolers might have more often than other kinds of homeschoolers. I don’t know if it’s a kind of smart, but I think it is something to cultivate. When we see patterns, connections, contexts, relationships, we are much more likely to remember whatever we might have learned.

Here are some of my ideas; feel free to send in your own!

Creatures: Chickens, sheep, cats, dogs, worms, frogs, ducks, goats, fish, parrots, canaries. Watch how they hatch or are birthed or reproduce, watch how they grow, produce offspring, lay eggs. Watch what they give to the earth (fertilizer, tilth) and enjoy what they give to us (eggs, meat, wool, song) and what they control or render less harmful to the earth (mice, bugs, weeds). Understand that there is a beautiful plan at work in all this, all by itself, which requires neither human control nor regulation nor monitoring to function quite well. Watch the wild things, too: how the sparrows and the geese fly away and return to the very same places, how living things die and are consumed, or how they return to the earth, and in time, all is normal and nothing is wasted. Nurture sick animals, watch how they care for themselves and their young, learn to trust the wisdom of physical bodies. See that doctoring is much more than treating diseases; it is appreciating and understanding that which makes for health.

Vegetables and flowers and fruit: For eating, for livestock, for beauty, for the health of the soil. Carefully tended garden spaces and wild uncontrolled spaces for watching what grows and flourishes all by itself without help, for understanding how soil and weather and seasons interact, for tending to what is growing, then watching it die, decay, return to enrich the soil. Halves of potatoes on toothpicks in glasses on the windowsill, mung beans sprouting in the cupboard, avocado seeds in paper cups, ivy stems rooting in water, mushrooms and fungus near old dead wood: all of these teach about life and growth.

Appreciate entire cycles: The planting of the seeds, the emerging of the plants, the harvesting, the cooking, the eating. Buy or grow whole grains and seeds, grind them into flour, make the flour into bread. Have beehives, watch the bees visit the fireweed or blackberries or clover, harvest the honey, eat it on your bread. Buy honey still in the comb and study the comb. Bring in abandoned bees’ nests. Take them apart and study them.

See a theme, a common thread: Take hold of what Annie Dillard calls "my life for yours," a theme in all nature, amongst all living things. I take this from you, I give this back to you, you lay your life down for my sake, at some point I lay down my life and once again become part of what nourishes that which eventually gives you life.

Make: Paper from fibers and threads and vacuum cleaner dust, dried leaves and petals crushed with a mortar and pestle. Spin yarn by hand from wool. Extract dyes from onion skins and beets and color your yarn and weave it or knit it or crochet it. Make furniture from driftwood and willow branches and baskets from big hunks of curvy bark and leather thongs. Make drums from skins and cedar wood and flutes from bamboo. Grow gourds and dry them and make birdhouses and spoons and big and small bowls. Make music, play piano, play drums, play pans, play flutes, play spoons. Blow through grasses. Whistle. Listen.

Build: Earth caves and snow caves, rock walls, trellises, tipis, tents, paths, flower beds. Forage for berries in the high country where no one planted, no one watered, God gave the increase. Make jelly and jam and pies. Let berries ferment; have vinegar or wine to gladden the heart when winter comes.

Use herbs: For healing, for fragrance, for cooking, to pile in big wooden bowls, to simmer in crock pots. Cover an orange in whole brown cloves. Stir your cider with a cinnamon stick. Know what the weeds mean and why they grow where they grow. Know what weeds treat what maladies. Understand what illnesses might be common by seeing what weeds grow profusely.

See: That one doesn’t always need to go out and buy the materials for some project. Maybe what is needed is right in your hand. Curtains can be hung on a curvy willow branch as well as a curtain rod. Shelves and birdhouses and bird feeders can be made from all kinds of materials on hand — sticks, odd pieces of wood, pine cones. Beautiful pictures can come from crayons, paint, dye, egg shells, dried beans, seashells, fibers, weeds, pictures cut out of magazines, pencil, pen, yarns, threads, flowers, all or none together. Clothes can be fashioned from new fabric or old garments taken apart and made into something new. Light can come from fires, candle, gas lamps or electric lightbulbs and heat as well. One does not always need batteries or electricity. Food can be refrigerated, but it can also be canned or dried or otherwise preserved or left in the ground to be dug up and harvested when it’s time. Ice cream can be made from snow. Bread is just oil and flour and yeast. Soup is just vegetables cooked together.

Assemble computers. Take them apart. Switch the parts around. Fool with this and that. Make web pages. Make art. Make music. Keep records. Read news. E-mail. Post. Talk to folks.

Have babies at home. Watch as the belly swells with life, prepare for the birth, let the baby come in its own time, safely, quietly. Breastfeed the baby. Plant the placenta and above it, a tree. This is not mysterious or strange. It is my life for yours.

Run: Jump, do pull-ups, do cartwheels, play baseball, hide, seek, roll. Jump in the hay, in the leaves, in the puddles. Slog through the mud. Make scarecrows. Make snowmen. Dance, stretch, contort, flip. Astound all observers with splits, backbends. Touch your tongue to the end of your nose. Clasp your hands behind your back. Touch your feet behind your neck.

Record: Find a spot. Watch the seasons. Draw the grasses, the leaves, the beetles. Note the weather, the clouds, the temperature. What birds are singing? Which way is the wind blowing? When did the sun rise this morning, and when will it set at the end of the day? Is there dew this morning? Frost? Are there fireflies? Frogs chirping? Crickets? Are you cold? Where is the moon tonight? Is it full, is it half? Where is Saturn, Jupiter, Venus? Where is the Milky Way?

Write: Letters, poems, songs, limericks, stories, essays, lists, notes. Use pencils, chalk charcoal, paint, pens with very fine tips, pens with very fat tips. Use paper, chalkboards, sacks, stationery, readerboards, envelopes, labels, stickers, stones, fabric.

Pray, Worship, Praise. Talk about God when you rise up and when you lay down, when you are in your house and when you are on the way. Exult over the heavens, storms and seasons, winds and rains, sunsets, sunrises, rushing rivers, desert places. Find the sparkling rocks where there seems to be nothing beautiful. Delight in God's secret hiding places. Stand in awe of His spectacular craftsmanship. Overflow with joy for the gift of being alive.

So much of education is a matter of having eyes to see. When something has been witnessed, seen, observed, touched, firsthand, then there is a solid foundation for every kind of exploration and creativity and production. Provide a safe place for exploration or seek out the wild places, get books or go to libraries or see movies. Watch as children begin to find answers. Ask as many questions as you answer. Wonder aloud. Be at peace when you do not know. Learn where to find what you need. Remember, remind, tell stories, tell jokes. Let each person make her own history, her own records, her own journals.

I believe that we are mostly educationally impoverished because we have not seen, we do not see, connections. We think "education" is "mysterious". We have the idea that stuff materializes out of nowhere and is lost and goes away and someone brainy somewhere thinks up formulas and paradigms by which we may understand all this mysterious vanishing and appearing incomprehensible stuff, when really, the brainy someone just observed connections and cycles and began to ponder and study, record and write about them. Maybe we don’t respect all of life because we have failed to perceive that nothing is wasted, that all of it serves a purpose, however insignificant it may seem at first glance, that it is all valuable and to be respected, and that we need all of it and we are needed as well, because we, too, are part of one whole creation. We rarely seek to better understand that which we do not fully respect and value. Instead of understanding creation and our part in it, we invent "subjects" or "things" to be "done" in books and classes and at certain times, mountains to be conquered, products to be purchased in little, disconnected increments, goods to be quantified and measured and evaluated and ultimately consumed.

So those are my ideas for creating a learning environment. It’s also nice to have pencils, pens, dictionaries and encyclopedias. Textbooks even have their place. J But the truth is, most of us have what we need. We just need eyes to see it.