i’m determined to have our unschooling take us through as many of the columbus metro parks as possible this summer. we added blacklick woods to our list of faves this week. last week was pretty light on unschooling adventures. friends were in town so our lessons for that week were mostly about “hey when you’re besties fly in from the westies you drop everything and spend time with them” which i happen to believe is very good subject material.

so, monday brought us a really beautiful, perfect day for being out and about in the woods. our very first “lesson” was talking about how to read the map and determining our path. blacklick had a perfect length loop hike and a great nature center. darla decided we should visit the nature center before and after our hike. the center had all sorts of information on wildlife native to the woods & insect inspection stations. you can see we spent some time at the touchable objects station where D examined fossils, rock samples, horns and feathers.

the entirety of the hike took us about 25 mins. it would have been shorter but we stopped to make friends along the way, checked out fungi, frogs in the bogs, and even got to see a hawk on the hunt from extremely close up.

our visit ended by spending some time at the observation window which lines the entire back of the center. furry, feathery animals of all kinds come right up to the windows and eat undisturbed by the human folk. d got a real kick out of a momma racoon with her 3 kits and sang the pompoko theme song to them. personally, i favored the numerous chipmunks.

you know, this whole unschooling summer has felt kinda like girl scout camp to me. and that’s a pretty good feeling. i loved girl scout camp! i feel such a calling to this way of bringing up my daughter. i’m looking forward to seeing where else this path where take us.

thanks for checking out this unschooling outing of ours. good luck in your educational endeavors.