Unschool Adventures Club

🎙️ Interview somebody over ninety years old about their life and opinions about topics of current interest.
🎙️ Interview someone under seven in the same fashion.
⛪ Attend someone else’s place of worship. Make comparisons to your own.
🗑️ Follow the trash from your home, step by step, from its origin to its final resting place.
💧 Track your water supply to its source; diagram its route.
⚡ Follow your electricity to its source.
🌌 Sleep out-of-doors under the stars all by yourself for two consecutive nights.
👨‍🍳 Apprentice yourself for one day to one of your parents.
👨‍🍳 Apprentice yourself for one day to a neighbor or family friend.
🏢 Visit five prosperous businesses in your area. Observe them externally for a day, then attempt to be given an internal tour. Take notes.
🌲 Spend a full day all by yourself in a wild place.
🍽️ Kill and clean a small animal. Cook and eat it.
🎣 Catch and clean/cook a fish. Eat it the same hour.
🤐 Remain silent, unspeaking, for a full day.
📰 Pick a daily newspaper. Read every single word. Underline as you read.
🛒 At your supermarket, select twenty packaged food items at random. Calculate how many miles they traveled from point-of-origin to reach you.
📺 Watch three TV shows for which you have no interest. Take notes.
🤝 Analyze the components of friendship. Write three hundred words on the subject. Read your essay aloud into an audio recorder. Listen to yourself; figure out how to improve your performance.
📚 Volunteer to tutor reading or math in an elementary school.
🍪 Sell a home-made dessert (e.g. cookies, fudge) on the street. Create advertising signs for your table.
🚶‍♂️ Walk ten full miles to a place you have never been.
🚴‍♂️ Bicycle fifty miles, at least, to a new place.
❤️ Struggle to repair a damaged relationship.
🏗️ Build something from the beginning – a wall, a box, a simple shelter, a birdhouse.
🚗 Change the motor oil in the family car; also the fan belt and windshield wipers.
🎨 Share your art, writing, or other creative work online. Do so in a vulnerable fashion, risking embarrassment.
🗣️ Have a long conversation with someone who does not share your language. Use any tools you wish.
📑 Craft both a traditional résumé and a failure résumé.
🌐 Create a simple personal website for yourself, self-hosted with a custom domain.
🗳️ Attend a political gathering for a cause you want to better understand. Talk to people; take notes.
🎨 Paint an original mural on a suitable wall.
🕺 Join a weekly partner dance class (e.g. salsa, swing, tango, ballroom) and participate for at least a month. Go to at least one social dance and ask a stranger to dance.
👛 Design a better wallet for yourself or someone you know. Create it from inexpensive materials. Use it for a week.
💡 Build a 25-cent advice booth from free materials. Find a prominent public place to set up shop for a day. Dole out advice to strangers. (Alternatively: a complaint booth.)
📘 Choose a topic in which you possess relative expertise. Research and write a short guidebook on that subject. Publish it in Kindle format on Amazon, where someone can actually buy it.
💰 Start a microbusiness, either online or in-person. Conduct a need-finding survey, write a 1-page business plan, launch it, make sales. Earn $100.
💡 Create a crowdfunding campaign for a creative project or important cause. Before launching, craft a plan for meeting your goal, and get feedback on it from three people.
💪 Financially commit to an important goal/task that you’ve been putting off. Recruit a referee to determine your success. If you fail, have the referee send your money to a charity that is antithetical to your values.
🎙️ Listen to at least 2 hours of content from The Moth Radio Hour. Tell your own story, Moth-style, and record it.
🏠 Complete a home improvement project.
🚀 Build a device capable of launching a small object at least 30 meters.
🏢 Find a company that you might love working for and connect with an employee. Ask this person “What’s the best way to get hired at this company?”
🏡 Convince your family to host an international traveler through the website Couchsurfing. Create a profile, accept requests, and choose one that everyone agrees upon. Act as the primary host for this visitor, ensuring they have a good time.
🍔 Eat a meal at a 24-hour restaurant from 2-4am. Bring a friend. Pay attention to what’s going on around you. Take notes.
🗺️ Create a themed map for your local area (e.g., a dog owner’s map). Print copies and distribute to relevant organizations.
👗 Consider how you present yourself to the world (dress, appearance, personality) and attempt a complete makeover for a day.
🧵 Teach a simple physical skill (e.g. knot-tying, frying an egg) to others with simulated restricted vision (blindfold), hearing (soundproof earmuffs), or mobility (wheelchair/crutches).
🏛 Take a controversial subject that you have a clear opinion on, research the opposing side, and attempt to discredit your original beliefs with serious arguments.
🎓 Spend the day at a local 4-year college/university. Talk to at least five students and three professors. Sit in on class. Use the library. Speak with an admissions officer.
🔥 Start a fire which you’ll use to cook lunch. No lighter, matches, or flint allowed.
📧 Compose and send two real-world emails: a request for a letter of recommendation, and a request to interview an interesting stranger.
💰 Trade a paperclip to a stranger for something of greater value, and then trade that for something of even greater value, and so on. Document each trade.
📰 Write a strong, well-researched, and potentially controversial editorial about a topic of local interest. Submit it multiple newspapers.
🌄 Identify one big question you have in your life. The next morning before dawn, find a quiet place in nature and sit there for 8 hours in contemplation. Bring only food and water; no electronics or reading/writing materials.
🥾 Identify a local mountain and the best ways to climb it. Do so.
📚 Choose an academic topic that intimidates you (e.g. calculus) and dedicate an entire day to learning/understanding it.
✈️ Create a detailed plan for a month-long international trip for your family. Take into account points of interest, transportation, health and security plans, language, and cultural considerations. Create a full budget. Present this to your family as a slideshow.
🏃‍♀️ Design an intensive obstacle course for friends or siblings. The course can include physical challenges, mental challenges, and emotional challenges, but must find a balance between pushing the limit and still remaining emotionally and physically safe.
🍝 Cook a complete meal and serve it to your family.
👶 Care for an infant for an extended period of time.
💼 Apply to work in a paid service job; do so for at least a month.
💬 Begin a health habit that challenges you; stick with it for a month.
🤷 Spend time in a group where you stick out.
🌳 Diagram your family lineage.
🏥 Spend time with someone who is dying.
📜 Write a personal credo.
🗳️ Participate in the democratic process, whether at the local, county, state, or national level.
😳 Give feedback to an authority figure.
🤝 Address an injustice in your community.
🚶‍♀️ Walk across your entire town or city, border-to-border.
📝 Hand-write a letter of thanks/gratitude to someone who made a difference in your life.
🗨️ Challenge yourself to not use any negative language for a full day, including both vocalized and internalized language.
🌟 Perform 10 acts of radical kindness, five of which are anonymous and five of which you take credit for. Explore your feelings around the difference between taking ownership for good deeds and remaining anonymous.
🏙️ Envision your own version of a civic utopia: a radical redesign an existing city. What does this look like on the level of civic life, economics, education, environment, and relations to the outside world? Present your ideas to family or friends as if they are the city council.
🎨 Create an art project and install it secretly in a public place. Film your process.
🏢 Search for apartments/houses/rooms for rent in your local area, as if you were seriously going to move out soon. Arrange tours and attend open houses. Go by yourself if possible, using only public transport. (An adult chaperone might be needed for legitimacy.) Explore both high-end and low-end options.
🗳️ Interview one of your governmental representatives (local/county/province/state). Find out how the political process works at their level.
👗 Using a modest, fixed amount of money, compile an entirely new outfit at a thrift store. Optimize for hipness.
🚶‍♂️ Have a parent drop you off somewhere far away. Return on your own via walking and public transport. Bring a friend if needed.
🪑 Obtain an unwanted piece of furniture for free or cheap. Repair or reupholster it.
🎵 Perform music, magic, circus arts, or another talent on the streets. Earn $10 from strangers.