As willing as my children are to sit and watch cats do all sorts of crazy back flips and flush the toilet, Youtube is full of interesting educational resources if you know where to look.  For instance my son adores marbles.  Really.  He has a huge collection that is constantly under foot, in corners, in my vases, cupboards, every conceivable spot has at least one marble if you look hard enough.  One day he asked me how they made them, which led to several hours browsing Youtube watching videos about marble making, glass making, leading to how they make everything under the sun. If you remember the old Mr. Rogers/Mr. McFeely how they make that videos you know what I mean.

The problem with that is that you have to be careful–not every one of those how they make it movies on Youtube is child friendly–in fact, many have language I prefer not to share with my children.  We usually preview them on my computer where I make a queue of suitable movies for the kids to watch on the Wii.  The other trick we have found is to go to this site. The Erskines have done a wonderful job putting together a slew of educational Youtube videos.  My kids will sit and watch videos on their site for hours, learning all sorts of interesting thigns–and then, usually, they go out and try the experiments themselves and elaborate on them (like they did with Eepy Bird’s Mentos and coke experiments.)

*The Erskines also run Home School Radio Shows which has free downloadable mp3′s of old radio shows each week, plus lots of little interesting tidbits to go with it.  My oldest adores old radio shows and loves getting the latest from this site.

The above video is long but well worth the watch.  I recommend taking it in small chunks because it is full of very interesting information.  My husband described it as running through an art museum trying to see everything.

What does a video by an anthropologist about media literacy have to do with unschooling?

Mike Wesch is a college professor trying to adapt college education to our new media and talks about how the changes in media have changed the way students learn to a group of college professors (a lot of whom have little experience with modern media.)  The first half is very pertinent to where we are as unschooling parents.  The latter part is an interesting experiment but less relavent.

In this video he very clearly outlines the traditional expectations of  education and systematically proves that, in our modern age, each of these suppositions in false.