Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life. Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner. Unschooling will often look different with each family. This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy. I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family. Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more. Thank you for taking time to read my blog!
Why did I choose unschooling to educate my children?
Before I get started with this long explanation, I just want to say that I have complete respect for public and private schools, licensed teachers and parents who choose to send their children to school. I do not think homeschooling is superior to public school or private school. I feel like they all have positive and negative aspects to them like anything else in life. Homeschooling just works best for my personality, my husband's personality and for our family as a whole, but I completely respect others with different views and do expect the same respect in return. I am always open to questions if you have them about anything we do because it is a little different from the norm even though homeschooling is growing and may be more mainstream within a few years.
So this is my journey and what led me to this crazy path called unschooling. First of all, when I think back to my childhood, I really do not remember much about school. I remember riding on the bus for 2 hours and being in a classroom for 6-8 hours, but what happened during that time, just seems like a fog to me. What I do remember about my own childhood is playing outside, riding horses, playing with the new spring kittens every year on our farm, starting my kitten business to make extra money, playing in the woods and pretending I was going on great adventures, playing with friends, pretending crayons were people, playing house with my dolls, playing Barbie dolls, making my own clothes, going shopping with my Mom, riding my bike, roller skating, ice skating, singing, performing, being in plays, reading, writing, listening to stories, watching family movies and shows with my family, playing games with my family, traveling around the US with my parents, participating in 4-H, having imaginary friends, searching for 4 leaf clovers, playing by the creek, listening to music, playing the piano, drawing pictures of people, photography, creating mazes, making up plays and songs. My memories of the classroom mainly involve just sitting in a chair, or on the floor and daydreaming and thinking about what I would do when I got home. As I got in the upper grades, I was lucky to have a very passionate music teacher who chose me to participate in many choirs and encouraged me to sing solos. I also seemed to like doing algebra for some reason even though it has no application in life that I have discovered. Aside from this, my memories of school are not very prevalent. I have even felt angry at times as if a big part of my childhood was taken from me by being forced to participate in something I really had no desire to do. Perhaps if the school days would have been shorter, it would have been better, but it just seemed like my experiences in school took up most of my time, but very little of my attention or memories. Very few people homeschooled when I was growing up and at the time, I probably would have been pretty isolated because of this, but today it is very different and my guess is if my parents would have raised me in today's society, knowing their personalities and views on parenting, I'm pretty sure I also would have been homeschooled.
The first homeschooler I met was in college. She had been homeschooled up to high school and she just seemed so smart, mature and had such good social skills. It just seemed like she was so much more prepared for the real world than I felt like I was after 13 years in the required public school. I also did not feel like my public school education prepared me for college. The guidance counselor did not even encourage me to attend college because I never did well on standardized test because I would just make designs with the dots. So when I started college, I had no idea what direction I wanted to go in with my education. Luckily, along with school, I was also involved in 4-H and I would take a personality project every year, which I loved and that triggered my interest in psychology and it has been a lifelong career for me. Psychology was offered in high school, but it was taught by a coach and I'm unsure if he even knew what psychology was. He thought it meant the same thing as being psychic and would have us to psychic experiments with each other. So that was not very helpful with my career choice, although I like to think I have psychic powers sometimes. ;)
As time progressed, I had finished college and got my master's degree, started my career and started to think about having children of my own. However, I was very hesitant about doing this because I did not want to have to deal with sending them to school. After working in the social service field for a few years, I started to be a little less trusting of others, the system, would hear about school shootings every couple months, and really did not want to put my children in a possibly hostile environment at such a young age. One of my co-workers homeschooled her children and I would ask her questions a lot and she explained many of the challenges and perks of being a homeschooler. I thought it sounded like something I would consider, but I did not know if I had the confidence to follow through with it. I started having children and researching homeschooling when my son was about 4 years old. I found the state requirements of homeschooling and was able to get connected with some local homeschooling groups. This is when I started to really learn about the homeschooling process. In our state, children are not required to have a formal education until they are 7 years old. However, most people are not aware of this. All that is required of homeschoolers is keeping attendance records for 180 days after their child turns 7 years old or when they pull them out of public school. We don't have to report anything, but simply keep a record in case anyone asks about it. There were several resources and grade requirements listed on our state site, but these were all optional. In our state, parents have complete educational freedom with their children. I never knew this until I started to look into it. I then started learning about all of the opportunities for homeschoolers in my community. Kindergarten came around and we were sold. Homeschooling was the path we chose.
At this point, I did not know many homeschoolers, so I just picked up random workbooks I would find and had my son sit down for a couple hours a day and work on these books I had for him. He would be resistant a lot and did not seem to like them. I met a few other homeschoolers, but my son just was not clicking with them and his interactions actually made his motivation to learn worse. Plus, we did not have a lot of family support for our decision. I was getting discouraged and then we decided to do a vacation to Florida and I got in touch with a college friend who I had not seen for probably 15 years. She studied education in college and became a teacher, but then sort of went into a different direction because teaching was not a good job match for her. She had homeschooled her children for a few years and introduced me to the concept of unschooling. I had seen this term, but had no idea what it meant. After that I started looking into unschooling and attended a park day after returning home and talked to some other homeschoolers about it and they referred me to some books. I read them, but was not completely convinced this was the direction I wanted to go. Then I came across the book 'Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything' on Amazon and it really made me think. I then came up with a plan and decided to unschool and we have been doing this ever since and my son is now starting 2nd grade. There are no longer power struggles or resistant. He's excited about learning and loves doing it. I started my own homeschool group and my son now has a lot of friends that he has met through our group, ballet and going to the library. I could not be happier with our decision.
Yes, homeschooling and unschooling are not for everyone. However, it is a perfect match for me and my family and I am so glad we discovered it. Feel free to follow my blog if you to have interest in learning more about how we use the unschooling philosophy in our lives by unschooling our way.
We are an unschooling family of 5 with a 7 year old son, 5 year old daughter and 2 year old baby boy and we wanted to share our experiences with others who may be interested in unschooling, are unschooling, or have the desire to learn about unschooling. We have been unschooling for 2 years and have discovered that it is a wonderful experience. I have discovered through this experience that once you become an unschooler, there is no turning back. Enjoy!
Friday, August 30, 2013
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Oh no! Eggs everywhere! Another Day in the Life of an Unschooler
Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life. Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner. Unschooling will often look different with each family. This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy. I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family. Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more. Thank you for taking time to read my blog!
Today I am going to describe a typical school day for us. My 7 year old son got up bright and early today, went outside with his Spiderman Easter basket and collected one egg. He then put it in the egg carton in the refrigerator and wrote it on his chart and told us all about what he did. I was proud of him and how responsible he was and did not think to go check the chicken coop. He likes to close the door to the nesting box when he gets the eggs to be sure the chickens won't escape. After he got the egg, he was so excited, I guess he forgot to open the door again, so the chickens could not get to their nesting box. Therefore, there were 3 eggs under the nesting box and this is something we were not prepared for. We have no way to get to them unless we climb into the chicken coop. My husband was able to get one with a broom and the other two by reaching in through the side of the chicken wire, but this isn't going to work, so we need to brainstorm about a more efficient system for this type of issue. The chickens have created 2 beds under the nesting box, which is really against our rules, but chickens seem to make their own rules. There always seems to be a learning experience involved with everything lately. I'm not sure what the solution for this issue is quite yet, but August 23rd is when a chicken laid our first egg from Project Chick and we got 4 eggs today. Yay!
About a week ago, I think my son felt a little left out because so many of his friends were going back to school and we were seeing a lot of first day of school pictures and he has never had this experience, so we had a talk. I asked him what it was that he feels he may be missing out on by not going to school. He said that he wants to be able to ride a bus without a seatbelt and he wants to write more. I can't do anything about the bus right now, but I told my son he could write whenever and whatever he wants, but he still did not seem happy. I discussed this with my husband and he said that he had some ideas, so I just encouraged him to go for it. Since my son asked for writing assignments, my husband gave him a writing assignment today to write out his numbers 1-10 in English and in Indonesian. My husband has been learning Indonesian with my son on a weekly basis through SEAsite on NIU's website. My son expressed an interest in learning Indonesian when he learned that this is where Orangutans' natural habitat is and that they are endangered due to their habitat being destroyed. We learned together that there is an Orangutan Rescue Center in Indonesia, so my son decided that he wanted to learn the language so it would help with communication when he went there to help rescue the Orangutans. So this was his assignment for today. Later on, I asked my son if he still wants to go to public school and he said no. So I think we are all happy with the decision now.
Once he finished his assignment, the children did some free play for a while and then my 7 year old son and 4 year old daughter started playing a game of Clue, and then we went for a bike ride and went to our neighborhood park. My son is so fast now. We removed the training wheels a few weeks ago and ever since then, he has just taken off and I can barely keep up with him as I'm dragging a bike trailer behind me with the younger two bobbing along. My son did have a slight wipe out towards the end of our outing at the park, so he laid low for a while once we got back from our bike ride.
Once we got home from the bike ride, my 4 year old daughter started getting into creative mode and she had some pieces of paper and wanted to make a paper airplane. I never can remember how to do this, so I looked it up on Google and found a great description for making paper airplanes and we made The Stealth and The Dart. That must not have satisfied her creative spirit, so she told me it was time to paint. I took our art easel out on our back patio and dumped out their favorite colors on a plate, which was basically all of the colors, and my famous painters created their masterpieces. My daughter has always seemed to have a natural talent for painting where she will do very colorful, elaborate paintings with interesting designs. Well, today was her little 2 year old brother's first time to paint, so most of the colors were mixed to create this brownish purple color. She didn't have quite as many colors to work with as usual because of this. They both created the most amazing paintings and they will look lovely on our art wall in our art and music room where I have framed the kids paintings and hung them on our white wall. It creates a very colorful wall for us. The kids name their paintings and I write their names and ages with the title on a tag on the painting. After paint time, bath time was necessary, so that was our day of unschooling coming to a nice clean ending.
We boiled up 4 eggs today. Eggs seem to be a big part of our diet now. They are so good when they are fresh. Although, I can see a future blog possibly being revamp chicken coop?
Today I am going to describe a typical school day for us. My 7 year old son got up bright and early today, went outside with his Spiderman Easter basket and collected one egg. He then put it in the egg carton in the refrigerator and wrote it on his chart and told us all about what he did. I was proud of him and how responsible he was and did not think to go check the chicken coop. He likes to close the door to the nesting box when he gets the eggs to be sure the chickens won't escape. After he got the egg, he was so excited, I guess he forgot to open the door again, so the chickens could not get to their nesting box. Therefore, there were 3 eggs under the nesting box and this is something we were not prepared for. We have no way to get to them unless we climb into the chicken coop. My husband was able to get one with a broom and the other two by reaching in through the side of the chicken wire, but this isn't going to work, so we need to brainstorm about a more efficient system for this type of issue. The chickens have created 2 beds under the nesting box, which is really against our rules, but chickens seem to make their own rules. There always seems to be a learning experience involved with everything lately. I'm not sure what the solution for this issue is quite yet, but August 23rd is when a chicken laid our first egg from Project Chick and we got 4 eggs today. Yay!
About a week ago, I think my son felt a little left out because so many of his friends were going back to school and we were seeing a lot of first day of school pictures and he has never had this experience, so we had a talk. I asked him what it was that he feels he may be missing out on by not going to school. He said that he wants to be able to ride a bus without a seatbelt and he wants to write more. I can't do anything about the bus right now, but I told my son he could write whenever and whatever he wants, but he still did not seem happy. I discussed this with my husband and he said that he had some ideas, so I just encouraged him to go for it. Since my son asked for writing assignments, my husband gave him a writing assignment today to write out his numbers 1-10 in English and in Indonesian. My husband has been learning Indonesian with my son on a weekly basis through SEAsite on NIU's website. My son expressed an interest in learning Indonesian when he learned that this is where Orangutans' natural habitat is and that they are endangered due to their habitat being destroyed. We learned together that there is an Orangutan Rescue Center in Indonesia, so my son decided that he wanted to learn the language so it would help with communication when he went there to help rescue the Orangutans. So this was his assignment for today. Later on, I asked my son if he still wants to go to public school and he said no. So I think we are all happy with the decision now.
Once he finished his assignment, the children did some free play for a while and then my 7 year old son and 4 year old daughter started playing a game of Clue, and then we went for a bike ride and went to our neighborhood park. My son is so fast now. We removed the training wheels a few weeks ago and ever since then, he has just taken off and I can barely keep up with him as I'm dragging a bike trailer behind me with the younger two bobbing along. My son did have a slight wipe out towards the end of our outing at the park, so he laid low for a while once we got back from our bike ride.
Once we got home from the bike ride, my 4 year old daughter started getting into creative mode and she had some pieces of paper and wanted to make a paper airplane. I never can remember how to do this, so I looked it up on Google and found a great description for making paper airplanes and we made The Stealth and The Dart. That must not have satisfied her creative spirit, so she told me it was time to paint. I took our art easel out on our back patio and dumped out their favorite colors on a plate, which was basically all of the colors, and my famous painters created their masterpieces. My daughter has always seemed to have a natural talent for painting where she will do very colorful, elaborate paintings with interesting designs. Well, today was her little 2 year old brother's first time to paint, so most of the colors were mixed to create this brownish purple color. She didn't have quite as many colors to work with as usual because of this. They both created the most amazing paintings and they will look lovely on our art wall in our art and music room where I have framed the kids paintings and hung them on our white wall. It creates a very colorful wall for us. The kids name their paintings and I write their names and ages with the title on a tag on the painting. After paint time, bath time was necessary, so that was our day of unschooling coming to a nice clean ending.
We boiled up 4 eggs today. Eggs seem to be a big part of our diet now. They are so good when they are fresh. Although, I can see a future blog possibly being revamp chicken coop?
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Homeschoolingism or Homeschoolingaphobia?
Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life. Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner. Unschooling will often look different with each family. This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy. I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family. Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more. Thank you for taking time to read my blog!
Definition of homeschoolingism: Being judgmental and prejudice against homeschoolers because of ignorance and closed thinking.
There was some confusion about the term. Perhaps homeschoolingaphobia would make more sense? Feel free to share your opinion. :)
The biggest challenge about making the decision to homeschool and especially unschooling is the prejudice, negative, judgmental reactions of certain people. I decided to call it homeschoolingism. There is racism, sexism, homophobia, among others that I may not be thinking of and the newest prejudice is homeschoolingism. This is a term I just made up. Maybe it'll catch on. :)
We are homeschooling pioneers in both of our families. I come from a family of many public school teachers and no one has homeschooled in mine or my husband's family. Then we came along and challenged everyone's boxed views of the world and the traditional educational path. This has been both challenging, interesting, empowering, and at times, quite annoying. We are not only thinking outside of the box, we just eliminated the box through this process.
We are closer to my husband's family than my own since I was the youngest in a very large family and my parents have passed away. One particular family member on my husband's side has not been accepting of homeschooling and is definitely not supportive of unschooling. This has been very challenging and unfortunately it has put distance between the children and this person. I have explained it and recommended books, but nothing seems to work. I figure this person will eventually come around, but until then, there is just a big distance there that I'm not comfortable with, but I guess that is just how things work out sometimes. I also had to set a strong boundary with another one of my husband's relatives because of a negative reaction to homeschooling/unschooling. I never thought that something as positive as unschooling would create a void between either of our families, but unfortunately it does.
I recently shared one of my blogs with my family group on Facebook with a very positive attitude about sharing our life with them and had extremely negative reactions related to unschooling by mainly 2 family members. At first, I thought it was interesting and was so excited to share my new outlook I had discovered regarding educating children and I was happy to respect their differences and share what I have learned and was even considering sharing the discussion on my blog. However, too much drama got unleashed and derogatory statements about homeschooling were made that I would then defend. It ended up being this long attacking thread towards me and the word 'unschooling' rather than the actual approach, which they did not understand. Up to this point, I only had positive feedback from people in my family. I did have questions from time to time and teachers concerned about their importance, but never something negative like this, so this reaction was very unexpected. Hopefully this discussion will help them open their minds and relieve the prejudices and judgments they have formed somehow. I was also able to set some new boundaries that I was unaware needed to be set until this moment. So I'm glad I shared the blog with them, the reaction was different than I was expecting. It also made me realize that I need to include a brief description of unschooling on each blog to avoid confusion. So even though it seemed negative, it was a positive experience because I was able to gain insight about some family views and able to be more descriptive on my blog. It became a good learning experience for me and I hope it did the same for my family members who needed to be educated further on the subject.
So this is the main homeschoolingism I have experienced so far. As my children grow older, it may become more frequent, but I am ready for it. Being alienated from our families somewhat has helped me expand my social network. This has been the most positive social experience of my life so far aside from maybe college. My confidence increases as time moves on and I grow stronger as a person because of it. It is very empowering. I can't wait to continue meeting other parents and children and educating them on unschooling if they aren't already aware of it. This is an extremely positive approach to education and I am so glad I discovered it. So I will fight against homeschoolingism until the end. :)
Definition of homeschoolingism: Being judgmental and prejudice against homeschoolers because of ignorance and closed thinking.
There was some confusion about the term. Perhaps homeschoolingaphobia would make more sense? Feel free to share your opinion. :)
The biggest challenge about making the decision to homeschool and especially unschooling is the prejudice, negative, judgmental reactions of certain people. I decided to call it homeschoolingism. There is racism, sexism, homophobia, among others that I may not be thinking of and the newest prejudice is homeschoolingism. This is a term I just made up. Maybe it'll catch on. :)
We are homeschooling pioneers in both of our families. I come from a family of many public school teachers and no one has homeschooled in mine or my husband's family. Then we came along and challenged everyone's boxed views of the world and the traditional educational path. This has been both challenging, interesting, empowering, and at times, quite annoying. We are not only thinking outside of the box, we just eliminated the box through this process.
We are closer to my husband's family than my own since I was the youngest in a very large family and my parents have passed away. One particular family member on my husband's side has not been accepting of homeschooling and is definitely not supportive of unschooling. This has been very challenging and unfortunately it has put distance between the children and this person. I have explained it and recommended books, but nothing seems to work. I figure this person will eventually come around, but until then, there is just a big distance there that I'm not comfortable with, but I guess that is just how things work out sometimes. I also had to set a strong boundary with another one of my husband's relatives because of a negative reaction to homeschooling/unschooling. I never thought that something as positive as unschooling would create a void between either of our families, but unfortunately it does.
I recently shared one of my blogs with my family group on Facebook with a very positive attitude about sharing our life with them and had extremely negative reactions related to unschooling by mainly 2 family members. At first, I thought it was interesting and was so excited to share my new outlook I had discovered regarding educating children and I was happy to respect their differences and share what I have learned and was even considering sharing the discussion on my blog. However, too much drama got unleashed and derogatory statements about homeschooling were made that I would then defend. It ended up being this long attacking thread towards me and the word 'unschooling' rather than the actual approach, which they did not understand. Up to this point, I only had positive feedback from people in my family. I did have questions from time to time and teachers concerned about their importance, but never something negative like this, so this reaction was very unexpected. Hopefully this discussion will help them open their minds and relieve the prejudices and judgments they have formed somehow. I was also able to set some new boundaries that I was unaware needed to be set until this moment. So I'm glad I shared the blog with them, the reaction was different than I was expecting. It also made me realize that I need to include a brief description of unschooling on each blog to avoid confusion. So even though it seemed negative, it was a positive experience because I was able to gain insight about some family views and able to be more descriptive on my blog. It became a good learning experience for me and I hope it did the same for my family members who needed to be educated further on the subject.
So this is the main homeschoolingism I have experienced so far. As my children grow older, it may become more frequent, but I am ready for it. Being alienated from our families somewhat has helped me expand my social network. This has been the most positive social experience of my life so far aside from maybe college. My confidence increases as time moves on and I grow stronger as a person because of it. It is very empowering. I can't wait to continue meeting other parents and children and educating them on unschooling if they aren't already aware of it. This is an extremely positive approach to education and I am so glad I discovered it. So I will fight against homeschoolingism until the end. :)
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
A Day in the Life of an Unschooler
Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life. Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner. Unschooling will often look different with each family. This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy. I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family. Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more. Thank you for taking time to read my blog!
Some people have requested that I share more specifics about what unschooling looks like on a typical day, so this blog is about what today looked like in our unschooling family and will hopefully give those who are new to this concept a better idea of what we do. Since unschoolers learn every day of their life, some days will often look very similar to the last and will be somewhat on a routine while other days look very different. There is no start day and ending day for school work and there is no start time or ending time either. Life is learning. So to someone observing and expecting to see a traditional school day or structure, they often will not see this in an unschooling family. This is also the case in our family. Unless we have something on our schedule, I allow the children to sleep as late as their bodies need to sleep in the morning. I let their natural clock be their cue rather than having a forced wake up time. They often will stay up a little later than most children so they can spend time with their father who also plays a huge part with the homeschooling process with his interest in research, languages and natural ability to teach, so in the mornings, they often sleep in as late as 10 or 11 if they choose. It really seems to help keep their immune systems strong, so I'm glad we have chosen to do this.
Today was a field trip day, so my husband stayed home from work with the younger children while I took my oldest son to Safety Village. I had to wake my oldest son up today since it was a special field trip day. Safety Village is a cute little fake village with traffic lights, roads, little houses, little restaurants and a little train. Police officers and firefighters educate elementary children on pedestrian and fire safety with hands on experiences. We did pedestrian safety last year and my son learned so much that we decided to try to fire safety this year. It was quite exciting.
It all started with a talk from a fireman about fire safety. Then they did actual demonstrations where two kids were chosen to climb out of the window of a regular sized two story home. Unfortunately, my son was not a chosen one and was a little disappointed, but there was more fun to follow. We then went up into the house and all of the children were given the opportunity to climb out the window onto a roof. That was followed by other exercises where they were taught how to jump out a window if there's a fire and they had the opportunity to make a 911 call and my son did a great job at giving his name, address and phone number. He has always been such a responsible child and learned this when he was only about 4 years old. I have a lot of confidence in my son for emergency situations. I am so lucky to have such a sweet, responsible little boy. Then the exciting part involved leaving the room to safety in the dark. We had to make our way down the dark stairs into a fake smoke filled room and crawl out the door. That was a great grand finale. My son loved this experience. I also got to have some great one on one time with my son. It's important to me to have one on one time with my children as much as possible so that they can feel important and I was glad this gave me the opportunity to do this with my sweet son. This field trip will be an annual trip for a few years so that all of my children can experience it. My son was given a few nice workbooks to take home with him too that can help him with learning about fire safety and help him with spelling and reading. It was a great morning.
Before leaving for Safety Village and after we arrived home, my son checked the chicken coop for eggs, but no eggs. We have been getting about 3 or 4 eggs a day since the chickens started laying. Feel free to read the Project Chick blog for more details about this. My husband helped my son create a calendar chart to keep chicken data where they measure how many eggs they lay, the day/month/year and the outdoor temperature. This will be a longitudinal study with empirical research where he will use math and science skills. My son left with his Dad to pick up a comic book as a reward for doing such a good job with his reading and when I went out to give the chickens some water, I noticed one of them was up in the nesting box. I wonder what she might be doing? :)
Reading seems like it has been a challenge for my son, but a lot of the problem was that I was inexperienced and comparing him with other children I knew who were early readers and this was not fair to him. Once I gained some sense, I have been working with him about once a week with the book 'Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons' and this has really helped him with his reading. He surprised me one day and read a 2nd grade chapter book. I was so proud of him. Because of this, his father agreed to take him to the comic book store and pick out a book. Many unschoolers do not do any structured activities, but I personally feel that children should read at their age/grade level just in case something happens and they would need to attend public school. So this is the one structured activity that I do encourage.
My son got a Hulk and Captain America comic book and came home and found an egg. I think today may have been a good day for my sweet boy. He then documented his findings on his chart with his Dad. He is such a little scientist. :)
The younger two did a lot of free play today. They went outside and played together for a while and watched 'Dora' and 'Winnie the Pooh'. I do very little structure with them at this time. My daughter is working on writing her name and learning letters and numbers, but we are doing this at her own pace. She also memorizes books and makes up stories a lot. However, today she did free play with her little brother so they could work on their close bond.
This is an example of a day of an unschooler who is unschooled our way. I will include more days as we go if you find this helpful. Thank you for reading my blog!
Some people have requested that I share more specifics about what unschooling looks like on a typical day, so this blog is about what today looked like in our unschooling family and will hopefully give those who are new to this concept a better idea of what we do. Since unschoolers learn every day of their life, some days will often look very similar to the last and will be somewhat on a routine while other days look very different. There is no start day and ending day for school work and there is no start time or ending time either. Life is learning. So to someone observing and expecting to see a traditional school day or structure, they often will not see this in an unschooling family. This is also the case in our family. Unless we have something on our schedule, I allow the children to sleep as late as their bodies need to sleep in the morning. I let their natural clock be their cue rather than having a forced wake up time. They often will stay up a little later than most children so they can spend time with their father who also plays a huge part with the homeschooling process with his interest in research, languages and natural ability to teach, so in the mornings, they often sleep in as late as 10 or 11 if they choose. It really seems to help keep their immune systems strong, so I'm glad we have chosen to do this.
Today was a field trip day, so my husband stayed home from work with the younger children while I took my oldest son to Safety Village. I had to wake my oldest son up today since it was a special field trip day. Safety Village is a cute little fake village with traffic lights, roads, little houses, little restaurants and a little train. Police officers and firefighters educate elementary children on pedestrian and fire safety with hands on experiences. We did pedestrian safety last year and my son learned so much that we decided to try to fire safety this year. It was quite exciting.
It all started with a talk from a fireman about fire safety. Then they did actual demonstrations where two kids were chosen to climb out of the window of a regular sized two story home. Unfortunately, my son was not a chosen one and was a little disappointed, but there was more fun to follow. We then went up into the house and all of the children were given the opportunity to climb out the window onto a roof. That was followed by other exercises where they were taught how to jump out a window if there's a fire and they had the opportunity to make a 911 call and my son did a great job at giving his name, address and phone number. He has always been such a responsible child and learned this when he was only about 4 years old. I have a lot of confidence in my son for emergency situations. I am so lucky to have such a sweet, responsible little boy. Then the exciting part involved leaving the room to safety in the dark. We had to make our way down the dark stairs into a fake smoke filled room and crawl out the door. That was a great grand finale. My son loved this experience. I also got to have some great one on one time with my son. It's important to me to have one on one time with my children as much as possible so that they can feel important and I was glad this gave me the opportunity to do this with my sweet son. This field trip will be an annual trip for a few years so that all of my children can experience it. My son was given a few nice workbooks to take home with him too that can help him with learning about fire safety and help him with spelling and reading. It was a great morning.
Before leaving for Safety Village and after we arrived home, my son checked the chicken coop for eggs, but no eggs. We have been getting about 3 or 4 eggs a day since the chickens started laying. Feel free to read the Project Chick blog for more details about this. My husband helped my son create a calendar chart to keep chicken data where they measure how many eggs they lay, the day/month/year and the outdoor temperature. This will be a longitudinal study with empirical research where he will use math and science skills. My son left with his Dad to pick up a comic book as a reward for doing such a good job with his reading and when I went out to give the chickens some water, I noticed one of them was up in the nesting box. I wonder what she might be doing? :)
Reading seems like it has been a challenge for my son, but a lot of the problem was that I was inexperienced and comparing him with other children I knew who were early readers and this was not fair to him. Once I gained some sense, I have been working with him about once a week with the book 'Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons' and this has really helped him with his reading. He surprised me one day and read a 2nd grade chapter book. I was so proud of him. Because of this, his father agreed to take him to the comic book store and pick out a book. Many unschoolers do not do any structured activities, but I personally feel that children should read at their age/grade level just in case something happens and they would need to attend public school. So this is the one structured activity that I do encourage.
My son got a Hulk and Captain America comic book and came home and found an egg. I think today may have been a good day for my sweet boy. He then documented his findings on his chart with his Dad. He is such a little scientist. :)
The younger two did a lot of free play today. They went outside and played together for a while and watched 'Dora' and 'Winnie the Pooh'. I do very little structure with them at this time. My daughter is working on writing her name and learning letters and numbers, but we are doing this at her own pace. She also memorizes books and makes up stories a lot. However, today she did free play with her little brother so they could work on their close bond.
This is an example of a day of an unschooler who is unschooled our way. I will include more days as we go if you find this helpful. Thank you for reading my blog!
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Project Messy House
Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life. Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner. Unschooling will often look different with each family. This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy. I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family. Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more. Thank you for taking time to read my blog!
One of the biggest challenges of unschooling three children and allowing them to fully explore their interests is that our house usually looks like a tornado touched down or there was a working blender with the top off. I'm sure I'm not alone in this struggle. So today I'm going to write about my plan to win the battle with the messy house. So simply by having a plan, it would be me 1, messy house 0, right? Ok, here we go...
1. I will do dishes daily. We recently stopped using the dishwasher and I use vinegar and water to wash our dishes and surprisingly, they are cleaner by doing this. It also seems like we are healthier. It does take a while longer, but instead of waiting for the dishwasher to run, I just wash, dry and put them away and the kitchen is all sparkly clean rather than having another job of unloading the dishwasher. I just have vinegar and water in a spray bottle and use it to clean everything. Sometimes I add a little lemon juice. Then throughout the day, we just use the same dishes and clean them off after each meal along with wiping off the table and counters. I often will just clear the table and clean the dishes in the morning in the evening so we can have family time rather than spending all my time cleaning dishes. I think family time is more important than cleaning, but that's just me. Then after everyone goes to bed, I think yoga is more important than cleaning. Others may feel differently. One thing I have learned is baby boy loves helping with dishes. So he is currently in training. I do slack off with the dishes at times and the above description is how it would be in a perfect world, however, dishes are never catastrophic. They are manageable even if I skipped a day.
2. I throw a load of laundry in the washer and dryer each night and then we fold them in the morning. I cycle the laundry where we do clothes, diapers and soiled undies, towels and sheets, diapers and soiled undies, clothes. Can you tell I'm potty training? Anyway, this is easy to maintain. I will occasionally get a bit lazy and skip a couple days, but never anything that takes over my life to the point where I want to blow the house up. My oldest son does a great job at sorting laundry. I often will give him whatever change I have in my purse for helping out and he likes to count his money to see if he has enough saved up yet for a pet Macaw. He also enjoys helping with laundry, so he is in training. I usually use soap nuts for laundry, but occasionally will purchase some organic laundry soap if we get a bad batch of nuts or if the kitten decides to knock them on the floor and play with them, not that this would ever happen. ;)
3. I take out the trash in the bathrooms and kitchen Monday and Friday and that seems to do the job. I also take out recycling. There's a tall kitchen can in the kitchen for recycling and I keep the trash cans small so I can't slack off and have an overly stinky kitchen. The trash is easy and rarely an issue.
4. We will have Thursdays free this fall, so Thursday will be my designated cleaning day. The plan is to vacuum, dust, and clean the bathrooms and laundry room. This is where my dedication to the messy house war will be challenged. This is the area where the toys will mock me as I try to shove a vacuum across the floor and living in the woods, there will be new spider webs in every corner. I don't know where they come from. This is a challenge before all challenges to run a vacuum across the floor when there are dolls and cars everywhere you look and my daughter will just change clothes when she feels it is meant to happen and wherever she is at the time, is where the clothes seem to stay. This is where I have to be a mean mom and sometimes that just seems like way too much work when I'd prefer to just cuddle with the cuties. So at this point, the house thinks it may defeat me, but I have a backup plan. Whatever doesn't get done on Thursdays, my husband will help me do on Sundays. So it will get done and I will be victorious, right? The kids love taking the vinegar bottle and rag and wipe down the walls and windows, so this will be their job on Thursdays. Plus, my oldest son loves to vacuum, but will at times suck up things that aren't dirt, so that can be a problem. He's in training.
5. Once a month, I will dedicate a day to cleaning behind the frig and stove and washing windows and organizing closets and fun things like this. It will more than likely be the 1st Wednesday of the month. This is an important step of project messy house and I have not kept up with, but would like to start. The house will be so happy.
So this is my plan. Do you think I can do it? Some of these things I do fairly regularly and some of them scare me, but I'm pretty confident that I can win this battle of the messy house. I WILL BE VICTORIOUS!
One of the biggest challenges of unschooling three children and allowing them to fully explore their interests is that our house usually looks like a tornado touched down or there was a working blender with the top off. I'm sure I'm not alone in this struggle. So today I'm going to write about my plan to win the battle with the messy house. So simply by having a plan, it would be me 1, messy house 0, right? Ok, here we go...
1. I will do dishes daily. We recently stopped using the dishwasher and I use vinegar and water to wash our dishes and surprisingly, they are cleaner by doing this. It also seems like we are healthier. It does take a while longer, but instead of waiting for the dishwasher to run, I just wash, dry and put them away and the kitchen is all sparkly clean rather than having another job of unloading the dishwasher. I just have vinegar and water in a spray bottle and use it to clean everything. Sometimes I add a little lemon juice. Then throughout the day, we just use the same dishes and clean them off after each meal along with wiping off the table and counters. I often will just clear the table and clean the dishes in the morning in the evening so we can have family time rather than spending all my time cleaning dishes. I think family time is more important than cleaning, but that's just me. Then after everyone goes to bed, I think yoga is more important than cleaning. Others may feel differently. One thing I have learned is baby boy loves helping with dishes. So he is currently in training. I do slack off with the dishes at times and the above description is how it would be in a perfect world, however, dishes are never catastrophic. They are manageable even if I skipped a day.
2. I throw a load of laundry in the washer and dryer each night and then we fold them in the morning. I cycle the laundry where we do clothes, diapers and soiled undies, towels and sheets, diapers and soiled undies, clothes. Can you tell I'm potty training? Anyway, this is easy to maintain. I will occasionally get a bit lazy and skip a couple days, but never anything that takes over my life to the point where I want to blow the house up. My oldest son does a great job at sorting laundry. I often will give him whatever change I have in my purse for helping out and he likes to count his money to see if he has enough saved up yet for a pet Macaw. He also enjoys helping with laundry, so he is in training. I usually use soap nuts for laundry, but occasionally will purchase some organic laundry soap if we get a bad batch of nuts or if the kitten decides to knock them on the floor and play with them, not that this would ever happen. ;)
3. I take out the trash in the bathrooms and kitchen Monday and Friday and that seems to do the job. I also take out recycling. There's a tall kitchen can in the kitchen for recycling and I keep the trash cans small so I can't slack off and have an overly stinky kitchen. The trash is easy and rarely an issue.
4. We will have Thursdays free this fall, so Thursday will be my designated cleaning day. The plan is to vacuum, dust, and clean the bathrooms and laundry room. This is where my dedication to the messy house war will be challenged. This is the area where the toys will mock me as I try to shove a vacuum across the floor and living in the woods, there will be new spider webs in every corner. I don't know where they come from. This is a challenge before all challenges to run a vacuum across the floor when there are dolls and cars everywhere you look and my daughter will just change clothes when she feels it is meant to happen and wherever she is at the time, is where the clothes seem to stay. This is where I have to be a mean mom and sometimes that just seems like way too much work when I'd prefer to just cuddle with the cuties. So at this point, the house thinks it may defeat me, but I have a backup plan. Whatever doesn't get done on Thursdays, my husband will help me do on Sundays. So it will get done and I will be victorious, right? The kids love taking the vinegar bottle and rag and wipe down the walls and windows, so this will be their job on Thursdays. Plus, my oldest son loves to vacuum, but will at times suck up things that aren't dirt, so that can be a problem. He's in training.
5. Once a month, I will dedicate a day to cleaning behind the frig and stove and washing windows and organizing closets and fun things like this. It will more than likely be the 1st Wednesday of the month. This is an important step of project messy house and I have not kept up with, but would like to start. The house will be so happy.
So this is my plan. Do you think I can do it? Some of these things I do fairly regularly and some of them scare me, but I'm pretty confident that I can win this battle of the messy house. I WILL BE VICTORIOUS!
What about socialization?
Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life. Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner. Unschooling will often look different with each family. This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy. I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family. Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more. Thank you for taking time to read my blog!
What about socialization? What about socialization? What about socialization?
Whenever I mention that we are homeschooling to a new person, this is the first thing they say. When we were first considering homeschooling, this is also the first thing I was concerned about. In reality, unsocialized homeschoolers is actually a myth. When I was reading the book, "Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything" by Laura Grace Weldon, she sited multiple studies about how social skills were compared between homeschool children and children who attended schools and the results were that homeschool children scored significantly higher in regard to social skills. The reason is because in a classroom setting, children are mainly influenced by same age peers. The ratio of same aged peers versus adults is usually 30 to 1, so these are the influential individuals who are teaching school children how to behave. A same age child does not have the life experience or skills to have healthy social skills on their own or with same age peers. In a homeschool environment, children learn their social skills from their parents, other homeschool children, and other people in the community during a majority of their time. So apparently this plays a part in why homeschooled children often score higher in relationship to social skills. I was really interested by these findings because in my mind, I always thought it would be opposite. Now that we have been homeschooling for 3 years, I have a little more insight about this.
It does seem like going to school does have it's perks though. One thing I have noticed is that school children often have more confidence about being away from their parents for extended periods of time than my own children do. They may be more flexible with others giving them instructions. These are just based on what I have observed. School children sort of have their own thing away from their family, so it may give them a better sense of being independent at a younger age. It's exciting for little children to go off to school for the first time and some times it makes me sad that we did not allow our children to have this experience, but then I start thinking about all of the benefits of homeschooling and this feeling goes away.
Here are some ways that we have helped our children with socialization:
1. We do weekly park days. We meet up with some other homeschool families at the park and the kids play with other children who are playing there too. My kids seem to be good at including others in those situations. Park days usually last anywhere from 2-4 hours. Sometimes there may be an extra park day throughout the week also if a different group is interested in meeting up. I think free play is so important for young children to learn how to socialize with others and this is something that they really would not experience if I sent them to school. I think we may start doing 2 park days a week starting in September because not everyone can go on Mondays, so the more the better. The kids love park days. We also do occasional play dates so the children can have more one on one time with their friends.
2. The kids love going to extra classes aside from what we do at home. We have a hands on Science Museum that offers science classes monthly. My son likes having the opportunity to go to the class alone. They do experiments and have a class, so the children go from one to the other and this seems to give him a sense of independence as he goes to his science class. He also enjoys going to a forestry class where the teacher takes them through a wooded area and explains the trees, animals and plants. This class occurs during 3 seasons, so the children are able to see how the forest changes as the seasons change. My son really enjoys hiking through the woods with his class and learning about nature also. There are many other classes for homeschool children in the community, but these are the only ones we have participated in so far.
3. We usually go on field trips at least once a month throughout the school year. These vary from learning about fire safety and pedestrian safety at a local fire station or a local safety village, learning how chocolate is made, going on a tour of a candy factory, visiting a farm, going to a TV or radio station, the list goes on and on. There are several local and international homeschool Facebook groups that I have joined and this is how I generally learn about the different field trips available in our community and nearby.
4. We go to the library once a week and have several families who we see regularly when we do this.
My daughter goes to a story time geared towards preschoolers and my older son often will go to the story time with her since baby boy is not overly thrilled about it. Since my daughter is not old enough to do the classes with her brother, this gives her something that she can do on her own and make her own friends. We often stay at the library for a couple hours while I talk to other moms and the children quietly play with other children and look at books together.
5. My son is in Cub Scouts and goes to Cub Scout meetings several times a month. This includes play time with other little boys his age. Some are homeschooled and others attend a private school. He also is able to learn new things that are taught by other parents and the den leader and he always actively participates in these activities. We also have plans of starting 4-H this year where they will meet with a club at least once a month during winter and spring. This particular club will consist of other homeschool families, but 4-H is a wonderful program for learning and I'm sure they will meet a wide variety of friends through this experience.
6. I start the kids in special interest classes when they are 4. My daughter will be starting ballet this year and my son actually decided to do ballet for 3 years. He also played T-Ball and this year has plans to try soccer. I try to keep it to one activity at a time so it does not get too overwhelming. My son had the opportunity to participate in The Nutcracker twice.
So these are just some activities we do to help the children with the dreaded 'socialization' concern. I suppose there may be some families that just sit around their house all day, but from my experience and the experience of people I know, homeschooling has been the most social activity I have done so far in my life. So unsocialized homeschoolers is definitely a MYTH.
What about socialization? What about socialization? What about socialization?
Whenever I mention that we are homeschooling to a new person, this is the first thing they say. When we were first considering homeschooling, this is also the first thing I was concerned about. In reality, unsocialized homeschoolers is actually a myth. When I was reading the book, "Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything" by Laura Grace Weldon, she sited multiple studies about how social skills were compared between homeschool children and children who attended schools and the results were that homeschool children scored significantly higher in regard to social skills. The reason is because in a classroom setting, children are mainly influenced by same age peers. The ratio of same aged peers versus adults is usually 30 to 1, so these are the influential individuals who are teaching school children how to behave. A same age child does not have the life experience or skills to have healthy social skills on their own or with same age peers. In a homeschool environment, children learn their social skills from their parents, other homeschool children, and other people in the community during a majority of their time. So apparently this plays a part in why homeschooled children often score higher in relationship to social skills. I was really interested by these findings because in my mind, I always thought it would be opposite. Now that we have been homeschooling for 3 years, I have a little more insight about this.
It does seem like going to school does have it's perks though. One thing I have noticed is that school children often have more confidence about being away from their parents for extended periods of time than my own children do. They may be more flexible with others giving them instructions. These are just based on what I have observed. School children sort of have their own thing away from their family, so it may give them a better sense of being independent at a younger age. It's exciting for little children to go off to school for the first time and some times it makes me sad that we did not allow our children to have this experience, but then I start thinking about all of the benefits of homeschooling and this feeling goes away.
Here are some ways that we have helped our children with socialization:
1. We do weekly park days. We meet up with some other homeschool families at the park and the kids play with other children who are playing there too. My kids seem to be good at including others in those situations. Park days usually last anywhere from 2-4 hours. Sometimes there may be an extra park day throughout the week also if a different group is interested in meeting up. I think free play is so important for young children to learn how to socialize with others and this is something that they really would not experience if I sent them to school. I think we may start doing 2 park days a week starting in September because not everyone can go on Mondays, so the more the better. The kids love park days. We also do occasional play dates so the children can have more one on one time with their friends.
2. The kids love going to extra classes aside from what we do at home. We have a hands on Science Museum that offers science classes monthly. My son likes having the opportunity to go to the class alone. They do experiments and have a class, so the children go from one to the other and this seems to give him a sense of independence as he goes to his science class. He also enjoys going to a forestry class where the teacher takes them through a wooded area and explains the trees, animals and plants. This class occurs during 3 seasons, so the children are able to see how the forest changes as the seasons change. My son really enjoys hiking through the woods with his class and learning about nature also. There are many other classes for homeschool children in the community, but these are the only ones we have participated in so far.
3. We usually go on field trips at least once a month throughout the school year. These vary from learning about fire safety and pedestrian safety at a local fire station or a local safety village, learning how chocolate is made, going on a tour of a candy factory, visiting a farm, going to a TV or radio station, the list goes on and on. There are several local and international homeschool Facebook groups that I have joined and this is how I generally learn about the different field trips available in our community and nearby.
4. We go to the library once a week and have several families who we see regularly when we do this.
My daughter goes to a story time geared towards preschoolers and my older son often will go to the story time with her since baby boy is not overly thrilled about it. Since my daughter is not old enough to do the classes with her brother, this gives her something that she can do on her own and make her own friends. We often stay at the library for a couple hours while I talk to other moms and the children quietly play with other children and look at books together.
5. My son is in Cub Scouts and goes to Cub Scout meetings several times a month. This includes play time with other little boys his age. Some are homeschooled and others attend a private school. He also is able to learn new things that are taught by other parents and the den leader and he always actively participates in these activities. We also have plans of starting 4-H this year where they will meet with a club at least once a month during winter and spring. This particular club will consist of other homeschool families, but 4-H is a wonderful program for learning and I'm sure they will meet a wide variety of friends through this experience.
6. I start the kids in special interest classes when they are 4. My daughter will be starting ballet this year and my son actually decided to do ballet for 3 years. He also played T-Ball and this year has plans to try soccer. I try to keep it to one activity at a time so it does not get too overwhelming. My son had the opportunity to participate in The Nutcracker twice.
So these are just some activities we do to help the children with the dreaded 'socialization' concern. I suppose there may be some families that just sit around their house all day, but from my experience and the experience of people I know, homeschooling has been the most social activity I have done so far in my life. So unsocialized homeschoolers is definitely a MYTH.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
What I love about unschooling
Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life. Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner. Unschooling will often look different with each family. This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy. I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family. Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more. Thank you for taking time to read my blog!
There are so many things that I love about unschooling and I'm going to touch on a few of these today.
1. I love the freedom of it. We are able to live as we see fit and we do not have to follow strict guidelines with the way we plan our life. Nor do we have to follow anyone else's schedule. We choose the outside activities that our children want to participate and extra classes. We are also able to travel whenever we want. I am so thankful for these freedoms.
2. I love how our children's individuality can be cherished. My oldest son is my scientist. He loves doing his own science experiments daily and this usually occurs in the kitchen. So far nothing has blown up. He is also a great nature guide. Yesterday we hiked trails and he was our guide. He knows every super hero that ever existed and is already a wonderful protector with his younger brother and sister. My daughter is a girly girl. She loves dancing around like a ballerina and creating her own songs and stories. She loves princesses and pretending she is in love. She loves playing with her dolls and dressing them. I kept her old baby clothes so that her dolls have a very extravagant wardrobe. She also loves pretending that she can read and she make up her own version of many of her stories and will memorize most of her books. Baby boy is into cars. He started pretending his baby toys were cars when he was 6 months old and started to sit. We realized this and just started giving him matchbox cars as a baby and he would sit and play with them for hours and make an interesting motor sound while doing it. As he became older, not only does he play with his little cars, but he likes going outside and riding around on the little cars we have that he can push with his feet. We have also discovered him taking items apart and trying to put them back together. So he is my mechanic. We try to incorporate these personality traits and interests with our day to day life to help motivate and inspire our children to learn.
3. I love how our children have the opportunity to get to know each other well and how they can rely on each other. I see so many siblings who just fight all of the time because their lives are so separate. They spend most of their day away from each other, so it's difficult for them to get along well when they're together. While with homeschooling or unschooling, the siblings are almost always with each other. They are one another's first best friend. Even though my children are all very unique, their differences are respected and they spend so much of their day playing with each other and bonding. There have been days where my oldest son and daughter will spend the entire day playing princesses, Star Wars, Super Heroes, playing house, or whatever seems interesting at the time. They can often entertain each other for hours and learn from each other. I have even found my son reading to my daughter and teaching her letters and numbers. They do often include baby boy in their play too, but when they play together, it gives me one on one time with their baby brother. Baby boy is very influenced by having an older sister and spends much of his time reading and watching videos about Dora, Strawberry Shortcake and Hello Kitty. He loves these girly shows. It's a nice balance for his strong car interest.
.4. I love having everyday as a school day. Children learn daily if they are given the freedom of doing so. Learning does not fit into a box. Every second of every day can be a learning experience for them. Even if they are sitting around and not doing anything, they are still thinking about things while doing this. Learning is fun when it is not forced. When my son tells me about something he knows or learns something new, he talks about it with so much enthusiasm. I love seeing this. It reminds me that I made the right decision to homeschool them.
These are just a few example of things I love about unschooling. There are days I question myself and wonder if I'm doing the right thing, but then something wonderful will happen to clarify that my decision was the best one for my family.
There are so many things that I love about unschooling and I'm going to touch on a few of these today.
1. I love the freedom of it. We are able to live as we see fit and we do not have to follow strict guidelines with the way we plan our life. Nor do we have to follow anyone else's schedule. We choose the outside activities that our children want to participate and extra classes. We are also able to travel whenever we want. I am so thankful for these freedoms.
2. I love how our children's individuality can be cherished. My oldest son is my scientist. He loves doing his own science experiments daily and this usually occurs in the kitchen. So far nothing has blown up. He is also a great nature guide. Yesterday we hiked trails and he was our guide. He knows every super hero that ever existed and is already a wonderful protector with his younger brother and sister. My daughter is a girly girl. She loves dancing around like a ballerina and creating her own songs and stories. She loves princesses and pretending she is in love. She loves playing with her dolls and dressing them. I kept her old baby clothes so that her dolls have a very extravagant wardrobe. She also loves pretending that she can read and she make up her own version of many of her stories and will memorize most of her books. Baby boy is into cars. He started pretending his baby toys were cars when he was 6 months old and started to sit. We realized this and just started giving him matchbox cars as a baby and he would sit and play with them for hours and make an interesting motor sound while doing it. As he became older, not only does he play with his little cars, but he likes going outside and riding around on the little cars we have that he can push with his feet. We have also discovered him taking items apart and trying to put them back together. So he is my mechanic. We try to incorporate these personality traits and interests with our day to day life to help motivate and inspire our children to learn.
3. I love how our children have the opportunity to get to know each other well and how they can rely on each other. I see so many siblings who just fight all of the time because their lives are so separate. They spend most of their day away from each other, so it's difficult for them to get along well when they're together. While with homeschooling or unschooling, the siblings are almost always with each other. They are one another's first best friend. Even though my children are all very unique, their differences are respected and they spend so much of their day playing with each other and bonding. There have been days where my oldest son and daughter will spend the entire day playing princesses, Star Wars, Super Heroes, playing house, or whatever seems interesting at the time. They can often entertain each other for hours and learn from each other. I have even found my son reading to my daughter and teaching her letters and numbers. They do often include baby boy in their play too, but when they play together, it gives me one on one time with their baby brother. Baby boy is very influenced by having an older sister and spends much of his time reading and watching videos about Dora, Strawberry Shortcake and Hello Kitty. He loves these girly shows. It's a nice balance for his strong car interest.
.4. I love having everyday as a school day. Children learn daily if they are given the freedom of doing so. Learning does not fit into a box. Every second of every day can be a learning experience for them. Even if they are sitting around and not doing anything, they are still thinking about things while doing this. Learning is fun when it is not forced. When my son tells me about something he knows or learns something new, he talks about it with so much enthusiasm. I love seeing this. It reminds me that I made the right decision to homeschool them.
These are just a few example of things I love about unschooling. There are days I question myself and wonder if I'm doing the right thing, but then something wonderful will happen to clarify that my decision was the best one for my family.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Project Chick
Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life. Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner. Unschooling will often look different with each family. This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy. I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family. Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more. Thank you for taking time to read my blog!
It all began on April fools day. There was 1 incubator and 6 eggs, the future was unknown. A couple days later, there was a pip pip pip and then an egg cracked open. The first chick got her egg stuck on her head and flailed around knocking all the other eggs around as if they were bowling pins and Bowling Ball was born. Then pip pip pip, Chicken Nugget was born. Then we had to go to bed. The next morning there were a couple more chicks and then finally there were 5 chicks and 1 egg. That final egg was unfortunately just an egg, so we had one dud.
I placed the cute little chicks in a tote in our playroom expecting them to stay these cute little chicks for a couple weeks, but they were big and goonie looking before we knew it. They started growing feathers by day 3 and started smelling super bad after a couple weeks, so they found their next temporary home in a cage in our garage.
They were 6 weeks old before we realized that we had 5 Leghorn hens. We were so excited that we were not going to have to get rid of any of our chickens. We knew that we would not be able to keep a rooster with the crowing and not laying any eggs issue, so we were very happy to have 5 hens.
My husband decided to attack the chicken coop project and it seemed to be at a standstill until an episode of Bob the Builder came on the public television station and amazingly the project for the day was a chicken coop. I excitedly got my husband to show him and we now have a Bob the Builder inspired chicken coop. He was very Macgyver like with his approach and tied it together with old dog chains and used a metal pan from a dog cage for the roof and boards for the box that my son decided to paint green. He was helping his Dad build this fine home. We then put chicken wire around a fenced area and used a child safety gate as our door. The MacGyver/Bob the Builder/hillbillyish chicken coop was then complete and ready for the girls.
Since my husband built the chicken coop, my job was to catch the chickens. I imagined myself chasing after the girls while they cackled and dodged me as I tried to grab them running down our ravine and then falling on my head into a patch of poison ivy, but luckily it went much smoother than this. I had the kids get on one side of the cage while I sat by the door and they scared the girls into my arms. I then carried them out to their new home. It only took a few minutes and the girls were so happy in their new home.
Over the next couple months, the kids enjoyed going out and helping feed the chickens and we would go out and chat with them with chicken language. I actually found myself outside chatting with the chickens for a half hour one day and was amazed how quickly the time flew by and how much I enjoyed their company. The girls' personalities were really starting to shine and I was starting to realize that they were really quite enjoyable pets and I was wondering why I didn't have pet chickens years ago.
Now I am going to get to why I decided to write this blog today. Today was a very special day. There was a very monumental event that did in fact occur. Today is the day we have been waiting for, the day we have prepared for since we received the 6 eggs on April fools day. Today is the day we imagined as Bowling Ball slammed her egg into all of her sisters' little egg homes to make the hatching event so exciting. Today is the day I imagined when I saw our cute little fuzzy chicks and when I learned that our adolescent looking chickens were all hens. Today is a very important day in history. On this day, August 23, 2013, one of our girls laid her first egg.
It all began on April fools day. There was 1 incubator and 6 eggs, the future was unknown. A couple days later, there was a pip pip pip and then an egg cracked open. The first chick got her egg stuck on her head and flailed around knocking all the other eggs around as if they were bowling pins and Bowling Ball was born. Then pip pip pip, Chicken Nugget was born. Then we had to go to bed. The next morning there were a couple more chicks and then finally there were 5 chicks and 1 egg. That final egg was unfortunately just an egg, so we had one dud.
I placed the cute little chicks in a tote in our playroom expecting them to stay these cute little chicks for a couple weeks, but they were big and goonie looking before we knew it. They started growing feathers by day 3 and started smelling super bad after a couple weeks, so they found their next temporary home in a cage in our garage.
They were 6 weeks old before we realized that we had 5 Leghorn hens. We were so excited that we were not going to have to get rid of any of our chickens. We knew that we would not be able to keep a rooster with the crowing and not laying any eggs issue, so we were very happy to have 5 hens.
My husband decided to attack the chicken coop project and it seemed to be at a standstill until an episode of Bob the Builder came on the public television station and amazingly the project for the day was a chicken coop. I excitedly got my husband to show him and we now have a Bob the Builder inspired chicken coop. He was very Macgyver like with his approach and tied it together with old dog chains and used a metal pan from a dog cage for the roof and boards for the box that my son decided to paint green. He was helping his Dad build this fine home. We then put chicken wire around a fenced area and used a child safety gate as our door. The MacGyver/Bob the Builder/hillbillyish chicken coop was then complete and ready for the girls.
Since my husband built the chicken coop, my job was to catch the chickens. I imagined myself chasing after the girls while they cackled and dodged me as I tried to grab them running down our ravine and then falling on my head into a patch of poison ivy, but luckily it went much smoother than this. I had the kids get on one side of the cage while I sat by the door and they scared the girls into my arms. I then carried them out to their new home. It only took a few minutes and the girls were so happy in their new home.
Over the next couple months, the kids enjoyed going out and helping feed the chickens and we would go out and chat with them with chicken language. I actually found myself outside chatting with the chickens for a half hour one day and was amazed how quickly the time flew by and how much I enjoyed their company. The girls' personalities were really starting to shine and I was starting to realize that they were really quite enjoyable pets and I was wondering why I didn't have pet chickens years ago.
Now I am going to get to why I decided to write this blog today. Today was a very special day. There was a very monumental event that did in fact occur. Today is the day we have been waiting for, the day we have prepared for since we received the 6 eggs on April fools day. Today is the day we imagined as Bowling Ball slammed her egg into all of her sisters' little egg homes to make the hatching event so exciting. Today is the day I imagined when I saw our cute little fuzzy chicks and when I learned that our adolescent looking chickens were all hens. Today is a very important day in history. On this day, August 23, 2013, one of our girls laid her first egg.
1 incubator, 6 eggs
Bowling Ball
Cute Little Chicks
Goonie Girls
Stinky Girls
The Bob the Builder inspired coop
The Chatty Girls
The Big Chicken
The 1st egg
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Unschooling Our Way
Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life. Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner. Unschooling will often look different with each family. This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy. I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family. Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more. Thank you for taking time to read my blog!
We are unschoolers and some people expressed an interest in me starting an unschooling blog. I have 3 children who are 7, 4 and 2 and I thought it may be helpful for other unschoolers or people who may be interested in unschooling their children. What I have discovered is that unschooling does look different for each family. I thought it may be helpful to describe what it looks like in my family.
My oldest son is 7 years old and would have been starting 2nd grade this year if I would have sent him to a traditional school. We decided to homeschool when he was 4 years old and I just could not find a preschool I was comfortable sending him to, then kindergarten time rolled around and my husband and I just decided not to send him to kindergarten either. It was a difficult decision because no one on either side of our families had homeschooled their children and we knew very little about it, but one thing we did know is that we did not want to send our children to school. We made this decision because 1) We felt it would be better for our children to spend a majority of their childhood with their parents rather than teachers that may or may not like their jobs; 2) Most teachers I know have quit their jobs because of the politics; and 3) I've been hearing about way too many school shootings and 2 have happened at schools where I knew children who attended the schools. Based on these 3 issues, we decided to homeschool.
I started using a schooling at home approach with My son and it was not working well. He would be resistant and I would feel frustrated and I was almost ready to give up about halfway through kindergarten and since we had very little support at that time, I felt very defeated. Then I was introduced to the concept of unschooling. I read some simple books about it and thought it may be something we would try. Then I came across the book, "Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything" and I knew exactly what we were going to do. We were going to unschool our children.
Unschooling is interest led learning. So children choose what they want to learn. My son's interest are often triggered by field trips, movies, books, puzzles, whatever is part of his life. He became interested in mummies from watching Scooby Doo, we went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum and they have a huge exhibit on Egypt that includes mummies and they did an actual demonstration on how to prepare a mummy. My son was only 5, but he sat and watched the entire demonstration for 45 minutes and fully participated. After that, he wanted to learn everything about mummies for the rest of kindergarten and this is exactly what he did. Everyday we went to the library, we could come home with about 4 books about mummies. He wanted to look up mummies on the Internet. He would listen to information about mummies from my husband's anthropology books from grad school and look at the pictures. During the process, he also learned a lot about Egypt, Africa, South America and Chile. He also learned about pyramids and the grieving process of different cultures. It was an amazing process. Then 1st grade, he became interested in Great Apes. He was intrigued by the Orangutans at the zoo and learned that they were from Borneo and Sumatra and we got books about them and learned that they were endangered because of loggers destroying their habitat. He wanted to help save the Orangutans, do he decided to learn Indonesian so he could speak the native language of the area, so my husband found a site where he went to grad school and started learning Indonesian with him once a week. He has also learned about all the great apes. He is very interested in Asia and Africa now because this is where the great apes live in the wild.
This is just an example of how unschooling works. It is truly amazing. I'm going to share weekly or daily adventures in unschooling on this blog. Feel free to follow it if you are interested. Thank you for taking time to read about our adventures in unschooling. :)
We are unschoolers and some people expressed an interest in me starting an unschooling blog. I have 3 children who are 7, 4 and 2 and I thought it may be helpful for other unschoolers or people who may be interested in unschooling their children. What I have discovered is that unschooling does look different for each family. I thought it may be helpful to describe what it looks like in my family.
My oldest son is 7 years old and would have been starting 2nd grade this year if I would have sent him to a traditional school. We decided to homeschool when he was 4 years old and I just could not find a preschool I was comfortable sending him to, then kindergarten time rolled around and my husband and I just decided not to send him to kindergarten either. It was a difficult decision because no one on either side of our families had homeschooled their children and we knew very little about it, but one thing we did know is that we did not want to send our children to school. We made this decision because 1) We felt it would be better for our children to spend a majority of their childhood with their parents rather than teachers that may or may not like their jobs; 2) Most teachers I know have quit their jobs because of the politics; and 3) I've been hearing about way too many school shootings and 2 have happened at schools where I knew children who attended the schools. Based on these 3 issues, we decided to homeschool.
I started using a schooling at home approach with My son and it was not working well. He would be resistant and I would feel frustrated and I was almost ready to give up about halfway through kindergarten and since we had very little support at that time, I felt very defeated. Then I was introduced to the concept of unschooling. I read some simple books about it and thought it may be something we would try. Then I came across the book, "Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything" and I knew exactly what we were going to do. We were going to unschool our children.
Unschooling is interest led learning. So children choose what they want to learn. My son's interest are often triggered by field trips, movies, books, puzzles, whatever is part of his life. He became interested in mummies from watching Scooby Doo, we went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum and they have a huge exhibit on Egypt that includes mummies and they did an actual demonstration on how to prepare a mummy. My son was only 5, but he sat and watched the entire demonstration for 45 minutes and fully participated. After that, he wanted to learn everything about mummies for the rest of kindergarten and this is exactly what he did. Everyday we went to the library, we could come home with about 4 books about mummies. He wanted to look up mummies on the Internet. He would listen to information about mummies from my husband's anthropology books from grad school and look at the pictures. During the process, he also learned a lot about Egypt, Africa, South America and Chile. He also learned about pyramids and the grieving process of different cultures. It was an amazing process. Then 1st grade, he became interested in Great Apes. He was intrigued by the Orangutans at the zoo and learned that they were from Borneo and Sumatra and we got books about them and learned that they were endangered because of loggers destroying their habitat. He wanted to help save the Orangutans, do he decided to learn Indonesian so he could speak the native language of the area, so my husband found a site where he went to grad school and started learning Indonesian with him once a week. He has also learned about all the great apes. He is very interested in Asia and Africa now because this is where the great apes live in the wild.
This is just an example of how unschooling works. It is truly amazing. I'm going to share weekly or daily adventures in unschooling on this blog. Feel free to follow it if you are interested. Thank you for taking time to read about our adventures in unschooling. :)
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