A day-in-the-life of unschooling a three-year-old human whirlwind.

Today has been one of those days when Jenna just seems to be inspired. From where, I have no idea, but she is just full of ideas. In fact I’m quite glad she’s asleep now because we’re worn out from all the things she has thought of for us to do. ;) So here it is;

8am – She spreads the jam on our toast and pours the cereal and milk.

8.10am – She decides that we should do some cutting and sticking. She has mastered tracing her hand and is making a tree from handprints. I help her write a thankfulness prayer on each.

8.30am – We have been looking at a chart and talking about leaf shapes. She is trying to guess what kind of trees are in our garden so we take the chart outside. She wants to make a thankyou card for friends so we come back in again to do that.

9am – The paper colours remind her of fire so she wants to make a cardboard fire. We experiment and build something that pleases her a lot. Then we draw fires with chalk and crayon and pencil. She decides which medium she prefers – chalk.

9.30 am – She is busy with the rest of the gold card and I ask her what she’s doing – making a harvest crown with paper leaves stuck on it. She asks if I can find some jewels, which I can’t but promise to try to buy some another time.

10am – We have a long and involved talk about farming methods as we are looking for more chickens and she doesn’t know what “battery” means in any other context than what we put in the camera to make it work.

10.30am – We are harvesting tomatoes and courgettes in the garden and she decides to collect some leaves for pictures. We slow roast the vegetables for pasta sauce and talk about what to cook for harvest bring and share.

11am – She is dressed up as a butterfly and draws insects. She brings the bug net and wants me to catch her in it.

1pm – After lunch we make our sauce in the blender. She watches CITV and makes brick towers “like Pocoyo”.

1.20pm – We make jewellery and she strings all her wooden beads (a birthday present) and then wears her new necklace with the butterfly costume.

1.30pm – She asks for more beads so we talk about making some. I promise to buy pasta tubes next time we shop so that she can string some of them to make more jewellery. We also try to drill the avocado stone from lunch but it splits.

1.50pm – Jenna makes playdoh ice-cream and playdoh cookies while Morgan has a massage. After a while she comes and wants to massage Lily too so she copies me.

2pm – We have to have a pretend birthday party and “eat” the playdoh food.

2.30pm – She helps me pour her a drink and then helps me tidy up before she has a nap.

2.40pm – She is chased up to bed and stomps about on the landing for a few minutes before I call up to her and tell her that if she just lies down for a rest she can come down soon.

4.20pm – Jenna bounces downstairs saying she had a nice sleep and feeds her doll some “soup”.

4.30pm – She seems to be telling Lily about the leaves in her poster. She asks if she can paint a fire to keep herself warm.

5pm – In the bath after painting she invents a new tree called a Spaghetti tree with red leaves. She teaches Morgan how to blow into the bath flutes.

5.20pm – Jenna plays at flying in her towel. I show her a parachute made from a nappy and she plays with it for a while.

5.35pm – She is back in Butterfly mode and is flying/dancing.

5.45pm – She measures the pasta for tea. Daddy gets home!