Children are natural empiricists, arriving in this world programmed to learn about it through experiment and observation. So what happens when, instead of having their empiricist passion quashed because it's too messy, too dangerous, too loud, too delicate or too wasteful, that passion is not only encouraged but joined by someone who shares the same passion? A whole lot of learning and fun, that's what—coupled with an amazing zest for life and an ingenious view of the world and all its possibilities!

My kids have always been interested in experimenting, and I’ve found some of their most intense learning to arise from some of the least obvious activities. Opening myself to the possibility, encouraging and participating and being willing to clean up messes happily has nurtured my three empiricists in countless adventures.

One of the first obvious lessons of this sort I encountered was a couple years back when I was firmly planted in an unschooling lifestyle but not quite so open to opportunity as I've become. Some homeschoolers up the street were cleaning house and offered a bunch of their old Discovery toys. One was a math game of some sort, which I’d written off as too schooly only to have my kids pounce on it and open it first.

Rather than asking how to play the game, however, they began to create their own fun, playing with the pieces this way and that, until they eventually abandoned the game altogether and turned, instead, to the pristine styrofoam packaging—a neat, thin rectangle that apparently made a lovely sound when thwacked upon the table.

The styrofoam rectangle clearly was not built to withstand such abuse, as it soon broke into multiple slabs. These, however, did not provide nearly such a satisfying pitch when whacked on the table—these smaller slabs were much more suited to whacking heads. Again, rather than stepping into a perfectly happy group of children because they were to loud or too messy or too rough from my perspective, I hovered on the sidelines, ready to step in if needed but following their lead.

Soon, styrofoam slabs were no more, giving way to the individual beads of which they were formed. Little white balls flew through the air, as my children joyfully squealed, "It's snowing!" We began talking about how snow forms and how Hollywood creates snow for movies using this same kind of styrofoam bead. I’d recently watched the interviews from the extended Fellowship of the Rings, in which one of the actors complained about the little balls getting everywhere during the shooting of the mountain pass scene. This tidbit of information particularly intrigued Emily, who’s quite interested in film and production.

As we began sweeping those little white beads into the dustpan, we noticed them sticking to everything but the dustpan. This observation led to more fun experimenting and discussions about static electricity and electrical charges, which generated some interesting conversation with their dad, a research scientist, when he arrived home from work. He was able to answer why all this happened, talking about little bits called electrons and explaining how exchanging electrons builds up static charge and demonstrating with the balloon on the hair trick.

Having a dad who can answer these kinds of questions can be really cool, leading to learning for all of us, myself included. More important than being an expert, however, is the passion he shows for his particular subject and the excitement he’s able to convey.

I’ve noticed my kids get excited about something in large part because their dad gets so excited about it. I’ve also noticed how my own genuine interest and curiosity and questions can defuse dad from launching into lesson mode and infuse the situation with a passion for learning and exploration. Sharing our passion, excitement and inquisitiveness with our children is part of what allows unschooling to flourish.

My husband’s passion for science has led to all kinds of interesting discussions from electron exchanges to black holes to genetics. He’s always an amazing source of information, speculation and inspiration because he loves what he does. One conversation with him creates a building block for later conversations and “remember when’s.”

He’s also able occasionally to procure cool things from work like the time he brought home some dry ice. Anyone who’s ever seen dry ice bubble and mist knows how cool it is. What you may not know, however, is how much cooler it is when you add just a little dash of dishwashing liquid. Woo-hoo! Step back and watch it frenetically foam and froth! Try this one at home.

Then, there was the time he pulled out his green laser pointer that he uses for conference talks. We’d been playing with the prism after watching the Magic School Bus episode on rainbows. Once he got home from work, Jim was able to demonstrate the idea of breaking light into its constituent parts with the green light and a regular flashlight. With the laser pointer, green light in, green light out. Whereas the white flashlight refracted into a rainbow through the prism—white light in, rainbow out.

The laser pointer proved fun for all kinds of future discoveries—angles off reflective surfaces and star finding to name just a couple. Sitting around a campfire at night, constellations become easy to spot with a laser pointer that seems to reach all the way into outer space. Besides the obvious conversations about constellations and their mythological references, we’ve found ourselves in the midst of discussions about atmospheres and whether laser pointers could really blind pilots, which in turn led to a discussion about fire bombing during WWII and blacking out windows like we saw in the 1900s House series and again in Narnia.

Science is mythology, is history, is literature—connecting the dots, learning and living joyfully.

The more time we spend together as a family, the more learning connections we make and the stronger our connection to each other. Learning, for us, so often happens during those moments of relaxing and talking as a family, having genuine conversations, asking genuine questions and following genuine curiosity.

Not long ago, while having a beer and some finger food, Jim began to balance his beer can on the concave lip around the base, playing with the liquid level necessary to create the proper center of gravity to do so. Within minutes, the kids ran to the recycle bin for their own cans, and they were soon all playing around, experimenting and observing.

Jim strategically punched a whole in the side of his can in order to allow liquid to flow out as the can balanced, soliciting guesses all around as to what we suspected might happen—would it tip forward or backward or stay balanced? The kids had a blast testing out different levels of liquid and observing the results.

More recently, Jim built a cleverly rigged electrical circuit, run off a 9 volt battery, which he’d read about in the fabulous magazine, Make, geared towards empiricists and handcrafters of all ages. The circuit was connected to the back of a piece of cardboard and had several different colored leads with paperclips attached to either end, enabling the paperclips to complete the circuit. The whole shebang was rigged up like a quiz show, with questions along one side, answers along the other, and the paperclips mixed and matched along the back side. The trick was to touch the lead wire from the battery to the right answer, complete the circuit and make a small LED light up.

The kids thought this Make project was incredibly cool and had fun playing with it for a bit and making up their own questions and answers, but the real learning came from following our own curiosity. The kids began to ask questions about how it all worked, and pretty soon, we were all touching our tongues to the 9volt battery (not necessarily recommending this, mind you) and learning firsthand what it feels like to complete a circuit.

Asking questions, pursuing knowledge, experimenting, observing, reformulating questions, reworking experiments—empiricists at heart. I’ve watched my kids take a garden hose into a tree and transform it from jungle vines into a swing and finally into a rudimentary pulley system to raise and lower themselves. Given a nurturing atmosphere, encouragement, freedom, partnership, kids do incredible things. At so many little points along the way, an adult could have stopped learning from happening because their experiments were too messy or wasteful or any number of other adult-type reasons. But, when instead of stepping in and becoming roadblocks to our children’s learning, we learn ourselves to share their passion and excitement and to connect with them, amazing things happen.

No one needs to be a research scientist or an expert for unschooling to flourish. Instead, we need to be passionately curious and questioning and daring ourselves, willing to get dirty and play with our children, to invite them into conversation, to give them freedom to explore, without any kind of learning agenda or teachable moments built in, just following the flow of life and wonder and imagination.

Danielle Conger lives and learns with her three children, Emily, Julia and Sam, and her husband, Jim, in Northwestern Maryland where they enjoy their homesteading adventures together. She stays busy playing, gardening, laughing, loving and writing and can be found online at the AlwaysUnschooled e-list or here, editing Connections.