I’m continuing my miniseries, In Celebration of Unschooling, sharing the draft of an as yet unpublished book I wrote a few years ago. The book looks at unschooling through the lens of parenting.
This week, we’re diving into Chapter 5: Cultivating Creativity.
In this chapter, I dive into the widely accepted Geneplore model of creativity, a combination of “generate” and “explore.” The generative stage is the brainstorming of ideas, and the exploratory stage is the evaluation and implementation of those ideas.
Those terms—generate and explore—align well with the ways we describe unschooling, don’t they? I share my thoughts around how unschooling beautifully nurtures both stages. I also talk about the benefits of free time and the cost of judgment and shame—and what they both have to do with creativity.
And as we wrap up these three chapters on curiosity, learning, and creativity, I am again reminded how intimately they all weave together! Nurturing our children’s curiosity is how they experience the deep satisfaction and joy inherent in learning. It’s how they discover that learning often combines both engaging with the topic and contemplating the experience, leading to a deeper understanding of the connections that weave between things. And that wealth of knowledge, experiences, and connections in turn directly feed creativity.
THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE
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