Lisa Jonick, Albuquerque

Hello everyone,

I am Lisa Jonick. My husband Michael and I have two boys, Alistair age 10, and Emmett age 7. We fully embraced Radical Unschooling after attending the last ALL Symposium in 2012. Before then we were not using curriculum, and didn't have a lot of arbitrary rules, but I had a lot of fears and hang ups about tv and video games, media in general. After attending the conference, and meeting other families and grown unschoolers, I completely changed my opinion.

By lifting all the arbitrary rules and limits around "screen time" our home has become so much more peaceful and relaxed, and my children's learning environment has become infinitely richer.

I look forward to meeting everyone. I live here in Albuquerque so please feel free to ask me anything you want to know about our beautiful city—things to do, places to eat etc.

Note from Sandra:
Lisa will probably attend alone, and will be my lovely assistant in traffic direction within the hotel, and to help people get to the tram and back when the time comes. I appreciate her willingness to help us all!

Doodling

This is a piece of art by Holly, my daughter, who won't be with us in December. It was a doodle. It was sized down for use in Just Add Light and Stir and is a link to the post in which it appeared, in 2010.


Not everyone doodles, but for those who do, we'll try to make it easy for you to do that during the symposium! It's also fine for you to be on the computer or iPad or playing a game (quietly).

Maybe you could be practicing rangoli patterns or knotwork, and we will have plain paper and coloring pages galore, so bring coloring materials with you.

I will have a printer right in the room, so favorite art can be copied or scanned, and coloring pages can be duplicated. Some of the rangoli patterns could be copied to become other people's coloring pages. :-)

If you haven't thought much about doodling, there is new research on how it helps some people think, and there is "Zentangle," a meditative form of doodling, You could google "doodles"! (While you're in there, maybe look up "google doodles.")

Adam Daniel, recently...

"Agent Brains and Agent Ninja"

Julie sent this photo of Adam (and probably his friend Huxley).

---

Julie sent an e-mail:

Subject: "Adam next to a bush or possibly his friend Huxley"

Kind of matches the other one...

Julie

The Gattis family from Roswell

Hello! I am Amanda, my husband is Grahm and our kiddos are Gavin (7), Aleka (5) and Geirson (1). We live in Roswell NM.

Grahm works at Leprino Foods, his schedule is crazy but when he has time off he enjoys playing golf and watching sports.

I have been exploring metal stamping and Amigurumi.

Gavin is very into yu-gi-oh, Kaijudo, pokemon, Harry Potter and Destiny.

Aleka loves cooking, painting, play dough and collects cans to feed animals at our local humane society.

Geirson loves all things water! We just went on a boat ride to look at Christmas lights and all Geirson did was stare at the water. :)

Electronics

I've added power strips and chargers to the checklist (a tab at the blog, or if you're reading on e-mail: Checklist).

Please consider marking your chargers with a return address label or your name in Sharpie or something. I've had one left at teo different gatherings, and I never found their owners.

Put on your checklist to make a checklist of what you brought so you can get it all home again, perhaps. :-)

MICROPHONE STAND:
Does anyone who's driving own a mic stand with a boom that we could use? Please e-mail me soon if you do have one. Thanks. Sandra@SandraDodd.com

The Koehl family from California

Sandra note: Brian Koehl, Evan and Elise have decided to hang back in California, but Jaclyn is coming!

I'm Jaclyn and I'm very pleased to share a little about our family. Brian is my husband and our two children are Evan and Elise. We live in Santee, California, a suburb east of San Diego. Brian and I both grew up in Indiana but we met in San Diego in 2006. Brian is an Embedded Systems Engineer at a job he's had since 2001. I was able to leave my career (technology related stuff in the healthcare industry) when the kids were born in 2009 so that I could stay home with them.

I told the kids I was going to write a little about their likes and interests they asked me to write down these lists, exactly:

Evan (5) likes: Mario Kart, Minecraft, board games, Lego, trampolines, sword battles, swimming, Chipotle (the restaurant), pizza, The Lego Movie, Minecraft videos, green, dark blue, black, and Pokemon.

Elise (5) likes: Swimming, Minecraft, Lego, coloring, crafts, festivals, Frozen, The Lego Movie, Pokemon, pink, purple, and chicken nuggets.

Brian and I both enjoy pursuing the kids interests with them, and additionally we both love to read and enjoy the outdoors. I also like to walk, do yoga, swim, and garden.

The photo of all of us is from recent camping trip to the Agua Caliente hot spring in the Anza Borrego Desert.


The carved pumpkin has a Minecraft creeper face, and we are trying our best to look like creepers too. They kids say that creepers are sad because they don't really want to bomb people or things but don't have a choice.


Evan and Elise both wanted to be creepers for Halloween. They wanted to look like their costumes to look like their stuffed creepers except Elise wanted her costume to be pink, because pink creepers are more about hugging than exploding.

Keene Family, Pueblo of Acoma

Hi! We are the Keene Family. I'm Amanda and my husband is Jackie. We live on the Pueblo of Acoma, which is one hour west of Albuquerque. We have seven children but only four of them have been home-schooled since the beginning.

This is our first year of unschooling which seems to be a much better fit for our family than traditional homeschooling. Our four children who are unschooled and will be at the symposium are Myen (15), Raven (13), Haskaya (7) & Brooklynn (5). They are looking forward to meeting some other kids that are unschooled. Some of their interests include animals, drawing, film making, video games (especially Minecraft lately), legos and Pokemon.

Looking forward to meeting everyone!