Wednesday 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!

My 7 year old son has been requesting that we set up a science center this week, so we put something together.  I found him a cheap microscope that is appropriate for a seven year old to play around with and my son really enjoys just mixing things together to see what will happen.  So we set up an old end table that has been just taking up space and it no longer in use as an end table and we put a little chair up to it and we have a science center.  Today my son decided to mix baking soda, lemon, lime, sugar and water to try to make soda pop and the result was something nasty tasting, but at least he tried.  Perhaps he will come up with something more useful next time.

One thing I love about unschooling is the spontaneity of it.  Life is generally best when there is some spontaneity and everything does not follow a rigid schedule.  Rigid schedules are for robots, spontaneity is for human beings.  Sunday I learned that there is a recorder class that meets weekly at a downtown church.  Monday, my seven year old son was a proud member of a recorder class.  This is something that required no planning and I actually did not know a recorder class existed until Sunday and I never thought a seven year old could be part of it until Monday.  So Monday consisted of a play day at the park, recorder class and soccer for my son.  He was so excited.  The recorder class actually gave him homework for the first time also and my son was so motivated, he completed his homework that night even though he does not have another class until next week.  I love seeing this type of enthusiasm coming from a child.  The reason I brought this up for the Wednesday blog is because after his somewhat unsuccessful science experiment, he practiced playing his recorder for about an hour.  He only knows 3 notes, but he practices them everyday.  I never would have been aware of this passion within him if I had not noticed that there was a recorder class that existed in our community through a Facebook comment and was spontaneous enough to include it in our already busy day.

After his recorder practice and lunch, another homeschool family decided to come over to pick up some eggs.  Our hens are currently producing six eggs a day, so one of the girls is popping out two of them.  I am quite impressed by these resourceful pets.  There are details about this project under the 'Project Chick' blog entry.  Since we are averaging about three dozen eggs a week at this point in our lives, I am happy to share the wealth with some of the nice people we know.  Along with sharing eggs, this also lead to a play date.  My son played with the six year old boy of the family, the eight year old girl played with the chickens and the 12 year old girl entertained my younger two children.  The 12 year old girl was inspired by the chickens and decided to draw some lovely chicken pictures to share with my younger two children and she let my four year old daughter keep one of them.  She felt so honored.  The play date went on for a couple hours and definitely seemed like a success.  Everyone seemed very happy about the experience.

My husband plays guitar at a Farmer's Market once a month and the older two children like to go help him set up for this.  I figure it's a good experience for them to witness how a professional musician can help provide for the family with his art and by helping with this, they are able to witness the magic of this.  They also like to visit the goats on the farm and eat homemade Amish sugar cookies.  Either way, it seems like a positive to me.  So my older two children went with their father to the farmer's market where he plays his guitar.

My two year old decided that it was art time after they left and decided to express himself through painting. He chose his colors and knows the names of the main colors already.  He seemed to have something in mind and created his masterpiece.  I then took him over to the Farmer's Market with the others, we stayed for a while, stopped and had some dinner afterward and when we arrived home, my four year old daughter said, "Look!  He painted a chicken!"  You know, after taking another look at it, I think she is right.  ;)  Apparently he also was inspired by the chickens today.

For some reason my seven year old son is very interested in wrestling now, so the night ended with a three way wrestling match between the children with a lot of laughter and excitement between them.  I love unschooling.  There is nothing negative about it.  It could very easily become the education of the future if enough families catch on and as a result, we will be blessed with a well educated, peaceful, polite, and healthy socialized society based on respect, helpfulness, bravery and open mindedness.  I am so glad my family discovered this lifestyle.

Tuesday 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!

Tuesdays are usually library days and in the morning, we have a lot of free time. I checked on my seven year old son while he was happily playing in his room with his super hero guys and perfectly content counting backwards from 100.   He also collects eggs in the morning from our Project chick and records them on his research chart.  He keeps a tally throughout the day.  We got five eggs today from our five hens. 

After we had a laid back lunch, My seven year old son really wanted to go for a bike ride, so we took off on our journey as he rides independently and I pull the younger two in a bike trailer behind me.  While we circled around on the hilly road in our neighborhood, a huge owl whispered by as it flew over our heads like something from a Harry Potter movie.  I was sort of wondering why an owl was flying by in the afternoon since they are nocturnal, but it was such a beautiful, magical, and peaceful site that we never would have experienced if my son was not so enthusiastic about bike riding, so I did not worry about why we saw this, but was just in awe by the actual experience.  After a nice bike ride, the children wanted to go to the park and walk on trails in the woods.  My seven year old son is always the trail guide because I am terrible with directions.  He will look for clues to be sure that we are headed the right direction.  Sometimes I wonder if I learn more from him than he learns from me.  As we walked through the woods, a duck flew by and into one of the trees.  I have learned recently that wood ducks live in trees, hence the name.  I guess I never really thought about this until we moved into the wilderness four years ago and I saw a bunch of ducks in our trees.  Being in nature is so wonderful and relaxing and empowering.  I am so glad my children can spend a large part of their time embracing something so beautiful rather than being trapped inside a building for most of the day.  It is a magical experience for all of us.  I watched my youngest two children smell every flower they could find and the two year old threw himself into the shrubs to completely immerse himself into this natural experience and by the end of our hike, he was completely covered in burs.  We picked at least 50 of them off of his shirt afterward and we were trying to get ready to spend some time at the library before my daughter's ballet class started, so it slowed us down a bit, but was worth it.  Somehow we lost track of time while in the woods and instead of being gone for an hour, it was closer to three hours as we enjoyed this beautiful fall weather on this lovely carefree day.

We collected library books and videos to return to the library so that they could be replaced by new ones.   On the way to the library, my son worked hard on reading his comic book on his own.  He chose a new level 2 book at the library that is for kindergarten through 2nd grade readers and he worked on this at the library and as we drove to his sister's ballet class.  Reading has never been his strong point.  He is more of a science/math kid, but I have been encouraging him to work on his reading because it is so important.

My daughter was just precious in her ballet class.  We were able to watch her through the window as she followed the instructions and performed her ballet moves as she watched herself in the large mirror wall.  Seeing her happily learning from someone else's instruction is such a neat experience.

The final project was project movie.  My son tried to create a movie with his sister using her doll house, but was having some difficulty with the filming because his vision was that the dolls would be acting without seeing his sister and he in the movie, but he could not get the camera set up properly to get this effect.  So he created a new  adventure movie with a scientist (my son) and acrobat (my daughter) battling an orangutan bad guy aka my son's favorite stuffed animal.  My husband and I were included with this one as he filmed and I operated the bad guy.  I thought this film was a great way to finish their school day.  I love unschooling.  My son has been showing so much interest in film lately, that he may find a video recorder and acting lessons in his near future.  Followed by an intense and loud spontaneous child lead game of red light/green light, our unschooling day came to a very happy, enthusiastic end as our little students found their way into their beds for the night.  Happy Tuesday!

Special Unschooling Moments

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!

This is just a list of special unschooling experiences that I love from this week!

1. My 7 year old son and his 4 year old sister spent a lot of time playing together in my daughter's room while I had some one on one time with baby boy. I didn't bother them and just let them play because it seemed like they were really enjoying their time together and just acted like they wanted to play alone. Finally, I went back to check on them and I found my son sitting next to his sister and teaching her how to read a Bob book. Priceless!

2. My 2 year old said he wanted to paint, so I got the easel all set up and he picked his paints and had his little paint brush like a big boy out on our back patio and I swear he painted  a colorful Winnie the Pooh. After my daughter saw it, she said, "look mom, he painted Winnie the Pooh!".  It works for me. 

3. I just did a spontaneous astronomy lesson with the kiddos. We went out to go star gazing. I was lying on the blanket while the kids circled me. I became the sun and they were Earth, Mercury and Venus. I'm so thankful my son doesn't have to get up every morning to catch his 6:30 a.m. bus so that we can do wonderful things like this at night. Unschooling is awesome!

4. I came home from walking my dog and my 7 year old son was waiting for me to video tape him.  He had created a game show and was interviewing his orangutan with 15 questions ending with an astronomy question about how many stars are in the sky.  I thought it was quite clever.  He said that he wanted me to share it with everyone I know.  Adorable!

These are the moments that motivate me to do unschooling with the children.  Paying close attention to the children and what passions they have is priceless.  Watching their face as they learn in their unique ways and seeing them gain understanding of this crazy world we live in with their own unique, positive perspective is one of the best experiences I could imagine having with my children.  I'm glad we have chosen this path and so are they.

Unschooling is Not a Box

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!

I was discussing the term unschooling with my husband today and we have discovered that when we tell people we are unschooling, some will automatically place us into a box, including other unschoolers.  However, unschooling is a very free, open, interesting way to learn.  We do not just sit around and let our children play video games everyday, nor do we allow them to act like spoiled brats.  We set parental boundaries with them to help them learn how to live in this world of ours.  We do not own any video games.  I was on an unschooling Facebook group and if I ever would suggest anything that required any type of parental influence on our children in any way, we suddenly were not unschoolers, so they seemed prejudice against us because we were not unschooling as they do; therefore, this is not an approach we are using.  Then on the other end of the spectrum, a group of public school teachers, such as a few people from my family are offended that we are unschooling because they think that our children are not learning because they are not sitting in a classroom or following a preset curriculum.  So a concept that is so freeing and positive still is placed in a box.

As human beings, I think we are programmed to be boxed thinkers even if we are trying to do something that is freeing.  We are taught to generalize and not be independent thinkers.  We are taught to follow the crowd per se, so anyone who approaches a concept differently than we do, we may start to judge, when in reality, this is ridiculous.  The world does not fit inside a box and neither does unschooling.  Unschooling is child lead, interest based learning and this can be anything.  If a child says they want to learn algebra or geometry, the parent will get them a book so they can learn this.  If I child wants to learn to read, a parent will get a book or curriculum to help them learn this.  If a child loves art, the parent will supply them with art supplies, look up techniques or sign their child up for an art class.  In our case, if a child wants to learn about Orangutans or great apes, we will visit zoos, look up documentaries and find books and articles about Orangutans and great apes.  The 2,  4 or 7 year old child cannot do this type of research on their own, so this is where the parents come in.  They are the ones to research and find resources so the child can learn what they want to learn.  If a child says they want to go to college to become a counselor, teacher, doctor, scientist, computer scientist, mechanic, engineer, architect, etc., the parent will help them learn about all the requirements they need to meet to get into college to study what they are interested in  learning to create a career for their adult lives.  This is unschooling.

 It is not permissive parenting, which can be neglectful.  It is living life and learning from the environment.  It is thoroughly researching all interests and trying new things.  My son was in ballet and in the Nutcracker twice, he played T-ball, and now is exploring soccer.  He is not going to be good at everything he tries, but if he is interested in trying anything, I will do my best to find a way for him to do it.  This is what life is about.  This is how extracurricular activities work and learning in general.  You never know anything until you try and unschooling is an open approach to allow children to try and explore anything they want at their fullest potential.  For example, my two year old son showed signs that he wanted to paint yesterday, so I set up the easel outside, let him pick out some paints and let him go for it, so he spent time painting what looked sort of like colorful Winnie the Pooh.  He was inspired to do this, so by paying attention to his goal, I was able to follow his inspiration and allow him to lead me to how he wanted to learn.

There is no box with unschooling, so this is what causes confusion.  It is difficult to think about something without a box around it.  I am hoping we will be able to use this approach through college, but there may be a point where we switch to a different approach or even send our children to school for a while if they choose to do this.  However, I am very excited that we have the opportunity to do this with them now and hopefully we will be able to continue with this throughout their childhood.  We are living outside of the box, but we are still living as members of our society by following rules and doing what we need to do to contribute.  This is unschooling.  Learning is everywhere.

Unschooling versus Structured Learning

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 have been unschooling our children for 1 1/2 years.  We started when my oldest son was halfway through kindergarten.  Prior to learning about the unschooling concept, I was using more of a school at home approach with my child that I refer to as forced learning now; even though at the time, I thought I was doing something beneficial for my child.  I would pick up books and workbooks that indicated that they were appropriate for my child's age/grade level such as Kumon, Brain Quest, Everything your Kindergartener Needs to Know among a few others.  I was set.  I sat down with my little boy daily for a couple hours and worked through these books.  I would create a little spelling test for him each week with about five simple words and I felt like we were on the right track.  Then we decided to socialize and I thought it would be good for him to be around other kids his age, so I invited a couple other homeschooling families over to my home with kindergarten age children who I met through one of the homeschooling groups I joined.  The one child was very resistant to his mother and after two hours of playing with this child, my son seemed to pick up these traits and no longer wanted to do his school work.  He also did not want to have anyone over again.  No matter what I tried, he was resistant.  It was so frustrating.  He could write his name at this point and his letters and numbers, but it did not seem like he was progressing with much else and he was halfway through kindergarten.  It felt like a chore neither of us wanted to do when I sat down and did schoolwork with him.  I was frustrated and had very little patience and he was not learning.  I was about ready to give up on homeschooling at that point and just send him to the public school down the road. Then I discovered unschooling and started introducing this concept with our learning.  I kept things somewhat structured once a week as we transitioned towards a child lead approach. 

My daughter on the other hand started with unschooling and she does not know any other way.  She initiates her learning and actually started writing her name on her own at a younger age than my son did.  She also practices writing throughout the day and is always focused on learning and being creative.  I got her a journal to write and draw whatever she wants and she loves it.  She initiates art projects and writing projects and counting while with my son, I pushed him to do all of these things and it did not seem like he learned as quickly as my daughter is learning.  She is asking about how to sound out words already at the age of four and my son was pushed to do this with workbooks and structured approaches and still seems to struggle with it the age of seven and is not motivated to read.  He will do it, but not with enthusiasm and magic in his eyes like she does.  He still needs some direction and I do not feel like this would be the case if I would have started with the unschooling approach after witnessing my daughter's learning motivation.  So I will stick with this approach and continue to encourage the children to explore their world at their own rate and learn at their own rate.  I will step back and be a role model and guide for them. 

I suppose unschooling would not work for everyone, it does require a lot of trust in the children while stepping back and allowing them to learn at their own pace.  Some parents may find this challenging and cannot trust their children because they never learned to trust themselves.  Our society and the way I learned is not trusting.  When I was growing up, we were expected to go to a building daily for 6 to 8 hours and riding a bus for 2 hours from the age of 5-18 where we spent a majority of our time following a set curriculum of what someone decided was the ideal way and topics to learn.  We were given tests and expected to memorize information to regurgitate on paper that would usually be forgotten after the testing was over.  We were then judged and graded based on our answers that we only provided because this is what was expected of us.  Homeschooling was extremely rare and most people probably did not even know it existed at that time.  This is how I was taught when I was growing up.  I was often distracted and daydreaming as I was taught things that I had little to no interest in learning about.  In my opinion, learning in this manner is counterproductive and an irresponsible way of using this limited time we have on this earth; when in contrast, we can be spending our time learning freely and opening our mind to new things that we have passion and profound interests towards.  Therefore, unschooling as a way of life makes more sense to me.  It may not work for everyone, but it is definitely a good fit for our family and we unschool our way.

If any of you also have been able to compare the results of unschooling with a more structured approach, please share your experiences.  I am interested in hearing about them.

Project Big Boy Bed

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!

Unschooling is more than an educational approach, it is a lifestyle.  Once your thought process grasps the concept of unschooling, it's not too late, you too can be unschooled.  I started learning about the unschooling philosophy and applying it to my daily life. I'm very open to learning new things and I am no longer afraid to open my mind to things that I would have shied away from in the past because of fear of the unknown.  Therefore, I am more willing to explore new territories and learn from my everyday life rather than boxed learning as I did in the past.  My children are so lucky because they are being exposed to this philosophy at a very young age, so they will not know anything different and will only know how to learn everyday of their life, not just while they are in a classroom to memorize things for a test.  Predetermined tests do not exist in our home.  Real life will test you enough, so artificial tests are not necessary. 

My husband has also really adopted this philosophy and today our school day involves building a bed for baby boy.  My oldest son and daughter are helping with this project and I am sure baby boy will help to a degree also even though he does not quite understand the purpose of it, and prefers to watch Dora nonstop.  My husband started building planter boxes when we first moved into our home 4 years ago and since then has built my daughter's platform bed with drawers and my oldest son's loft bed, a chicken coop, and today is the day to build a big boy bed for baby boy under the loft.  My children love to help and learn through this process, so the subject covered today will be math.  There will be a lot of measuring, creating angles, creating shapes, and figuring out how a bunch of boards will turn into a bed for baby boy.  I'm sure it will be an interesting unschooling day for my son and daughter.

On my end, I am currently in the process of finding recipes to use up eggs.  The origin of this dilemma is described in Project Chick blog, http://unschooling03.blogspot.com/2013/08/project-chick.html.  So I am going to be figuring out which ingredients we will need for our egg food science experiments this week.  My oldest son is our egg gatherer and seems to be collecting five eggs a day at this point, so it appears that all five of our chicken girls are laying eggs.  My daughter helped me find the ingredients and now we are ready for some great science projects this week including angel food cake, vanilla pudding, and egg drop soup.   We will also do a repeat of broccoli cheese egg casserole because it was great.  http://lazycook5hens.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-lazy-cook-with-5-hens.html

So project big boy bed is coming to an end  along with a great applicable math lesson and the big boy bed is complete with a great car bedspread, but I'm wondering if I should have gotten a Dora one instead.  hmmmmmm

Time for mom

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!

Many homeschooling families have one full time income while one parent works and one spends most or all of their day with the children.  Having this strong bond with our children is priceless, but it is also important to not lose ourselves in this process.  Having alone time to focus on personal needs and taking time away from time to time can be helpful.  Not only do parents in homeschooling families need to provide care for their children, teach them and love them , but also for themselves and this can often be overlooked if one is too overwhelmed with their responsibilities with the children.  I feel like I have found a pretty good balance where I am able to find time for myself despite being around my children 24/7 most weeks.  I have included some examples that help me find 'me' time.  These are examples that work with my life style and we are all different, so if you feel like you need more self-care, you need to find what works best for you.  My 'me' time is the following:

1. I do daily yoga.  There are of course times I slack off and do not do my routines, but for the most part, it is daily and sometimes twice a day if I get really ambitious.  Yoga is a great way to calm the mind, body and spirit.  It helps keep my brain activated, clears my thought process along with keeping my body strong and toned.  It also is a great way to relieve stress, increase energy and eliminate pain in my body.  I have several yoga time videos with Marlon Braccia that I picked up on Amazon for about $1.  Each routine is about 20 to 30 min. and the children know not to bother me during yoga time.  I also picked up some kid yoga videos that the children will do sometimes while I do mine.  This is great mom time.  I may join a yoga class in the near future also, but I have not taken this step yet.  The videos seem to do the trick.

2. I walk my dog.  We live in a nature preserve and it's very peaceful going for a walk.  I got a puppy a few months ago that I knew would need daily walks.  I usually walk her after dinner when my husband is with the children.  Whenever I do my daily walk, I pay close attention to nature and often see different animals living in nature such as deer, owls, ground hogs, turkey vultures, interesting butterflies, frogs, snakes, and one night we saw a skunk and hurried the other direction when this occurred.  The walks usually take 30-45 minutes and it is a nice break from my responsibilities in my home.  Exercise and nature are great for relaxation.

3. I keep a daily journal.  One thing that is helpful is keeping a daily journal to help manage my life the best way possible.  I usually do this in the evenings after the children are in bed or sometimes I will even take a break mid day and write in my journal.  The children often will play independently while I do this and understand that I need space sometimes. 

4. I work part-time.  I think it's important to have something just for me and keeping my career is something very important to me.  I worked hard in college and life to reach my career goals.  This is part of me and I now have my own business where I work part-time around my husband's work schedule.  It also gives us some extra money to go towards providing for our family and it gives me the opportunity to use my mind that I worked so hard to develop. 

5. I take a daily warm bath.  Bathing unfortunately can be overlooked if you get to overwhelmed with your responsibilities as a mother, teacher, housekeeper and wife, but this is something I cannot live without.  I need this time for myself at night.  It helps me relax and sleep so I can prepare for the next day and be a good influence on my children during my waking hours.

6. I usually do grocery shopping alone.  My husband is home on the weekends and this is when I get the food and other necessities for our home.  I usually do this alone or maybe take one child along for some good one on one time with the kids.  Either way, it is peaceful and a break from my day to day life of unschooling 3 children.

These are just some examples of what I do to keep myself from becoming too overwhelmed by my responsibilities of being a mother, teacher and caretaker of my 3 children 24/7.  Without these small things that I do for myself, I do not feel like I would be as effective with them and if I ever fail to do these things, I can notice a difference with how I handle  the day to day stressors in my life.  Everyone is different, so you need to find what works best for you. It is an important aspect of the unschooling process though.  There is no way for me to educate my children if I do not care for myself.  I am also setting a good example for them so that they also will learn to care for themselves now and as they grow into adulthood. 

Friday: 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!

Today is a simple description of what unschooling looks like in our house on a Friday.  This is simply an educational blog for others who may be interesting in learning about unschooling and how it works for us.  The day began with setting some parenting boundaries.  My 7 year old son seemed to learn disrespect and talking back from someone, so my husband and I are making sure it is very clear that this behavior will not be accepted.  My husband and I both dealt with the behavior issue together.  Communicating and standing together as parents is a very important consistency for children.  So even though we are unschooling and allow the children to choose their educational path, we still use parenting skills with our children, so it is not a free for all where they can act disrespectful without limits.  However, in relation to education, they choose their educational path and speed.

Once my son decided to act like a respectful child again, he followed through with his regular science study routine of collecting eggs from our chicken coop, there are more details about this under the Project Chick blog, and recording the data on his chart that his Dad created for him.  He is interested in nature and animals, so I sign him up for a nature class near our home where he chose to attend called Urban Forestry Class.  He went to his Class where a licensed teacher takes a group of children into a wooded area and they have a 50 minute class about nature.  This class gives him some independence and a chance to have a different teacher besides his father and I and he is given the opportunity to socialize with other children.  Today he made an owl out of a pine cone and seeds he found in the woods.  As we were waiting for my son to do his class, my daughter and I decided it was a Kodak moment and took some self portraits with my little camera.  We had some great girl time while the baby explored the van since we were waiting in the van while he did his class.

After his class, my 7 year old son worked on a foreign language assignment his father gave him when my son requested that he is given more writing assignments.  I was thinking that I would just allow him to write what he wanted to write, but my husband decided to create these assignments, so I figured we would just go with it and see where it takes us.   He writes down the numbers from 1 to 13 and then spells them out in English and Indonesian.  My son chose to learn Indonesian because he is interested in Orangutans and their original Habitat is Indonesia, so he decided that he wanted to learn this language.  My husband and son started these classes a couple months ago through www.seasite.niu.edu.  They are learning the language together.

Today when I was talking to my son after his behavior issues, he said that he would like to read better, so we are going to work on reading skills today after he finishes his foreign language assignment.  I use 'Teach Your Child to Read 100 Easy Lessons' to help with reading skills.  My son also plays around with the Starfall program where he can practice more independently.  He can read beginning books with confidence and recently started reading 2nd grade level books with some help.  Today we will work on 100 Easy Lessons and I will have him choose 3 books to read.  My son did fine with 100 Easy Lessons and completed lesson 48.  We picked 3 books to read, but it seemed like he was having trouble with focus today, so we decided to take a break halfway through book three to avoid frustration. 

My 4 year old daughter is so enthusiastic and motivated to learn.  She will be doing unschooling from the beginning while with my oldest son, we did something more structured initially because I did not fully understand unschooling yet when he was preschool age and kindergarten.  So I will be able to compare the effects of unschooling and a more structured approach because of this.  Today my daughter excitedly created a Play dough bunny and turtle and then wanted to take a bath and pretend she's a mermaid while she practiced swimming in the tub.  We have been reading a Peter Pan book at night and we just read about Mermaid Lagoon.  My guess is that this may have inspired her.  She happily will count and sing her ABCs and initiates creative and educational projects because this is all she knows.  My son will often initiate creative and educational projects also, but not as often or with as much enthusiasm and confidence as my daughter does.  Even though we have been unschooling for over a year, it seems like he's still getting used to the change. It may take a little more time before he is completely committed to the unschooling approach while it's the only approach my daughter and baby boy will know.

So this was a typical day for us.  There are often challenges and positive aspects to each day.  I'm glad we have chosen this path for our children.  Even though it can be frustrating at times, but then some very loving interactions will occur that remind me that it is all worth while.  I love my children and I'm glad I have the opportunity to spend this extra time with them that many parents do not have.  I always hear that 'their childhood goes quickly, enjoy it while you can', so this is what we are doing.  Homeschooling and using the unschooling approach seems like the best way to use this time to me.  We have plans on doing more traveling in the future and this is something I also look forward to doing with our children as they mature.  I am very excited about this journey we have mapped out with this approach called unschooling.

Homeschooling or Communityschooling?

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 was a stay at home day, but these are often rare with homeschooling.  This is hard to grasp for those who do not homeschool, but those who do will completely understand what I'm talking about.  I try to stay home two days a week, but that often does not happen.  Mondays, we have park days, but next week, Mondays will also include swim lessons for the older two children and soccer for my son.  Tuesdays are library days and once a month, my son will have a science class on Tuesdays and my daughter will be starting  ballet on Tuesdays starting next week.  Wednesday is usually a stay at home day, however, some families from our homeschool group are not able to go to park day on Monday, so they wanted to add an extra park day on Wednesdays.  This will probably start in a couple weeks.  Thursday is stay at home and clean the house day which I established in the Project Messy House blog.  However, my son will also have Cub Scouts on Thursdays, so it may not work out quite as planned.  Fridays are field trip and zoo days and my son will have his nature class once a month.  There are also occasional field trips that others will schedule that we will join from time to time.  This seems to happen about once a month.  Plus, we need to fit in knitting and crocheting somewhere with their grandmother.  So do we truly homeschool or would a better description be communityschooling?

Even though we are rarely home for our 'homeschooling', today we were home.  Unschooling at home is just learning from our home environment and following whatever inspires us to live and learn.  My 7 year old son is always inspired by collecting chicken eggs.  Today I also told him to feed the girls while he was doing this and for some reason, he opened their side door to their coop.  Luckily I went out and checked shortly afterward or some of our girls could have escaped as their door was swinging in the breeze.  That would have been some chaos in my day that I really did not need.  My 7 year old son collected 4 eggs today and noticed that it was one less than yesterday when he checked his data.  Aside from the chicken care, it was a beautiful day, so the children spent a lot of time outside playing.  I love looking out and watching my 7 year old son and his 4 year old sister happily swinging together.  My 7 year old son spent some time just gazing out into the woods and I could tell he was deep in thought.

As the day progressed, he spent a lot of time working on a 100 piece puzzle he got over labor day.  I figure this is a good problem solving activity for him to do and he was also counting how many puzzle pieces he had left, so he was using mathematical skills without even realizing it.  My daughter decided they were going to play with Play Doh, so they spent almost an hour being creative with Play Doh together. My son alternated between the puzzle and Play Doh for a period of time. The little 2 year old guy just played with his cars during this time.

We then decided to have reading time.  We collected a big pile of library books yesterday on library day and we sat and read all of them together.  My 7 year old son has never really enjoyed reading, so he mainly listened.  I encouraged him to try to read the book on his own, but he did not have interest in doing this.  My daughter is very different.  Whenever I read her a book, she has to read it.  She puts her own spin on it at this point since she is only four years old and does not technically know how to read yet, but with her enthusiasm, I could see her taking off with reading fairly soon since she enjoys it so much.

Then my son decided that he wanted to play around with the Starfall program which is a kindergarten/1st grade free reading and math site.  My son would be going into 2nd grade if he were in school, but he would be young for his grade.  We say he is in 2nd grade, but he still seems to be at 1st grade level with some things, such as reading and I do not see anything wrong with this.  One of the perks of unschooling is that children can learn at their own rate, so if one child is advanced, they can move through things more quickly while if one is a little slower or average, they can take their time.  My daughter also likes the Starfall Program.  The program is in between their age/grade levels since my daughter is preschool age and my son is 2nd grade age level, but they enjoy doing this together.  I noticed that my son was doing very well with the math at this point.  They usually play around with this program for about 2 hours.  My plan is to get my son his own computer next year and find as many educational internet sites as I can and put them under his favorites, so he can pick and choose what he wants to do.  I figure this will be a good way to encourage him to learn at his own rate and it gives him a sense of independence also as he is learning.  It will also prepare him for on-line college courses that he may take in the future.  I recently learned that there are community colleges available that offer on-line courses that will transfer to major universities that children can take as early as they want if they are able to keep up with the work load.  I figure I may start looking into this when my son is junior high age, around 12.  If he could get some prerequisite classes out of the way before starting college, that would be very beneficial for him. 

So this was our stay at home homeschool day.  These days are rare, but they are nice and relaxing and it gives the children a wonderful opportunity to be creative and learn at their own pace with very little pressure.  This is the most comfortable way to learn in my opinion. 

Interests, Interests, Interests

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 thing I really like about unschooling is that it is based around a child's interests and how they are affected by their natural environment.  We are new to this process, have three children, but only have one child who is school age at this point, so I guess we would still be considered unschooling newbies.  I latched onto this philosophy about a year and a half ago, but in reality, I am still in the planning phase depending on how it is perceived.  Unschooling is a learning process both for the children and the parents.  My oldest son is 7 years old and my daughter is 4 years old, while baby boy is 2 years old.  So I have mainly been focused on my 7 year old son and his interests and what would best fit his needs within the last year or so while the younger 2 mainly would do free play to help with self discovery.  However, now that my daughter is getting a little older and I am starting to get ideas about what may benefit her also, I had what feels like an epiphany.  More experienced unschoolers may be thinking, "duh, you didn't know this?" but anyway, it's new to me.  It just hit me that by the children having different interests, they will influence one another to help them be very well rounded since they are all so different.  This was my great idea.  :)

Up to this point, I have focused on my son's interests.  He is a scientist/super hero type kid.  This is what speaks to him.  He loves anything related to science.  He finds this subject completely fascinating along with rules and making sure everyone is following them.  He is also a nature kid and loves animals and trees.  So our schooling last year was very focused on these interests and we are continuing this approach this year as well.  Project chick is mainly his project.  He cares for the chickens, collects their eggs and records their data.  We have regular science and nature classes once a month where he has the opportunity to learn details about biology, chemistry, electricity, robots, astronomy, animals, animal habitats, the changing seasons, different types of trees and wild plants, nature, among many other exciting subjects related to science and nature.  He also has a lot of interests in nutrition and finances along with animals from all over the world.  So our main focus has been zoos, science museums, and nature walks.  These are the things that motivate him and make him love learning, so this is what we do.

My daughter is very different, she is the artist, musician, fashion designer, singer, performer, dancer, story teller who always has a need to unleash her creative spirit.  Even though these are the interests that motivate her to learn, she is also very interested in her brother's knowledge.  I caught her explaining the difference between an ape and a monkey to some little three year old girls she met at the zoo.  The only reason she has so much knowledge about this subject is because of her brother.  Until about a year ago, I had no idea what the difference was between the two and would go around calling an orangutan a monkey like an ignorant fool when in reality, this would be very similar to calling a human an ape.  Apes are very intelligent creatures who have problem solving skills comparable to humans while monkeys do not have this ability, so it would be like insulting an ape by calling him or her a monkey. 

My daughter learns from her brother and will be participating in science and nature classes with him once she is 5 years old.  She learns as he learns.  However, what truly motivates her to learn aside from her brother is anything related to creativity and the arts.  Her paintings are awesome, full of colors and imagination, she creates outfits that are so interesting and can put clothing pieces together and make it look adorable when others may not have even considered it.  She dances around for hours with so much passion in her face as she truly becomes this ballerina.  Whenever I read her a story, she also reads it.  She has memorized all of her books, but often, she feels it is more interesting to create her own story and will do so often.  Her extra activities will more than likely include the arts and creating.  We have already arranged for my mother-n-law to teach her and I knitting and crochet since she seems to like tying things in knots, this seemed like a creative outlet for this strange little habit she has.  Then I asked my son if he would also like to learn and he was very enthusiastic about it.  I guess this is when the epiphany hit.  He will learn just as much from her and her differences as she learns from him as she matures and this will create such an amazingly interesting learning environment for both of them.  I could see many visits to the art museum and watching plays and musicals as she begins to mature and my guess is she may be participating in many of these events.  Art and creativity are her passions and her passions will therefore influence her brothers as they discover them with her.  Her brothers may even choose to participate in some of these activities, which will make them more eclectic individuals with a variety of talents and abilities that they may not have developed without the influence of the interests of their sister.  I cannot wait to see this learning process unfold.  I am sure it will be truly amazing and something that many parents may miss out on if they are not thinking about education in this manner.

Then there is my little baby boy, Mr. Car man.  He not only became very interested and soothed by Winnie the Pooh, but through his sister, his interest for Dora has taken over his thought process.  My daughter really enjoys Dora as do many four year old girls.  However, my 2 year old boy is obsessed with Dora.  I could actually see him mastering Spanish before English at the rate of his current Dora obsession.  He is very influenced by his older sister and adores his older brother.  Their bond grows deeper with each passing day because they spend so much time together.  They will be the main support team for each other and will always be the ones they can turn to when they need help at their current rate of bonding.  They do have fights from time to time like any siblings, but they have been taught that any disagreement is followed by a hug and "I'm sorry, I love you".  To me, it is important that they develop these strong bonds now because it will help them relate to others as they mature into adulthood.  This will lead to a sense of confidence, belonging and support that many other families may not have with the separateness in our present day society.  With my 2 year old son, he will have the influence of his older brother and sister with the science, nature, super heroes, animals, ballerinas, art, music, and story telling, and he will add his interests in cars and mechanical skill into the mix.  I could see a future of going to car museums, perhaps rebuilding an antique car with him and anything related to mechanics or making something work.  These interests will then filter to his older brother and sister as they also will experience these things related to their little brother's strong interests.

Through the unschooling process, diversity within a family can be celebrated as we all expand our knowledge and interests by learning from one another.  I suppose it is all a big experiment in the long run just like anything else, but the reason I chose this route is because I honestly did not feel like traditional schooling adequately prepared me for the real world.  Unschooling is the real world.  There is no preparing necessary because these children are already living it.  They are not hiding in a box, the box is gone.  The world is their classroom and if that doesn't prepare them for it, I don't know what would.  I had an epiphany today.  Unschooling will definitely be beneficial in the children's abilities and intellect.  Once I took my first step down this road of discovery and this mind opening, liberating experience for my family as a whole, there is no returning to the old thought process.  The diverse interests within these walls will be celebrated and explored to their fullest by everyone involved.

Sunday 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!

Unschoolers do school daily.  We do not take weekends off since children learn from their environment daily.  We still make sure that our environment is perfect for learning even on Sundays.  Many people will spend time in church on a Sunday morning and perhaps this is what Sundays consist of for many unschoolers, but we are secular and do not practice an organized religion even though we are very spiritual people who are open to a variety of religions and belief systems and do not like to limit ourselves to a singular belief system, so our Sundays look very similar to another school day in our unschooling home.  I'm going to do a brief description of how this Sunday looks in our unschooling family where we unschool our way. 

Our main learning experience recently is eggs.  Please refer to the Project Chick blog for more details about this interesting and humorous project.  Well, our chickens have really started producing their eggs now, so we had 5 eggs today.  We have never had to deal with having too much of something in relation to food, so I have been thinking about how we can use up these eggs in the best way and through this process, it will be a family plan.  At this point, my daughter refuses to eat eggs, so being sneaky with our egg consumption will be key with this.  As time progresses we may be much more natural and old school with how we prepare our foods.  It not only will be a learning experience for our children, but also for us.  We will learn together.  Through this process, I have learned so much and I feel like I too am being unschooled where I am learning things that I did not seem to be taught in a more traditional school setting.  My oldest son has agreed to assist me with coming up with ideas of how to use the eggs, so we shall see where this goes.

Today also became a great math day.  My oldest  two children decided to do a quick store run with me to pick up some butter so I can make cookies to use up some of the eggs and while we were there, they both wanted something special of course.  My daughter picked a beautiful Hello Kitty ruler while my son chose a little creepy skeleton.  So when we got home, we measured everything we could think to measure and my daughter is learning about inches and how things are measured.  We now know that our fingers range from 2 inches to 3 1/4 inches and we know the length of our feet, arms, shoes, ect.  The children really seemed to enjoy doing this and my daughter seems to understand how we can measure in terms of inches already and she is only 4 years old.  She also did a lot of counting through this process.  Her number recognition is not overly precise at this point, but she can really count high for a 4 year old as can my 7 year old son.  I usually start counting by painting our nails and counting to 200 waiting for it to dry, so my daughter can pretty much count to 200 at the age of 4.  My son is starting to add single and triple digit numbers.  Most people view math as something that has to be covered through worksheets and boring repetition, but in an unschooling family, math is everywhere.  It just becomes something natural that happens in our everyday life, so the kids do not even think about it as school.  My son also would mark days off on a calendar and always knows what time it is.  He usually knows the date better than I do since he has his little system of marking days off of his calendar.  He as been doing this since he was 5 years old.  Money is also a great way to do math.  My son will often count his money at least once a week and also is starting to have the desire to buy things with his own money.  This is an excellent way to learn natural math because dealing with money is part of our everyday life.  The more he is included with this process, the more he will learn.

After measuring everything in the house, the children chose to watch some of the educational children's shows on public television.  Our television watching is usually pretty limited because I try to encourage the children to be creative instead of spending their time in front of the TV and we do not have video games in our home.  Both video games and television have addictive qualities, but in moderation, they can often be educational.  They usually learn about astronomy, spelling, reading, getting along with other, science, among many other things from the children's shows on public television.  We will often have DVDs and VHS tapes that I find on sale or at garage sales that are educational in nature.  Occasionally, they will watch documentaries or children's shows and they all seem to have educational components to them that seem appropriate for toddlers, preschoolers and the lower elementary grade level up to maybe 5th grade.  My oldest son has a lot of interests in animals, geography, and cultures, so whenever I come across anything related to these subjects, I usually bring it home for him.  I also pick up most of our books at garage sales.  I usually try to find things that are age/grade related or interest related.  It seems to work well for building up our book and video libraries.

My daughter and I made cookies together to use up some of the eggs after she watched some of the children's shows.  I explained how measurements work and how 2 half cups make a whole cup and she was fascinated.  She may be my little math girl.  She happily helped me measure everything out, stir the dough and of course eat the cookies.  It was some great girl time.

My husband is a musician and I'm a singer, so music also plays a big part in the daily lives of our children.  This week, my husband played his guitar at a Farmer's Market and the children were able to see how music can apply through our daily lives and helping provide for the family since he is a paid musician.  Today, my husband practiced with another musician.  This becomes background music for the children, but also helps them have music in their lives daily.  They see how music will play a part in the life of my husband and I and through this process, they will often learn how to include it in their own lives.  It not only encourages creativity, reduces stress and increases motivation, but it can also play part in understanding math.

In our environments, everything is educational depending on how it is perceived and once one starts to think in this manner, life becomes more fulfilling, inspirational, exciting, empowering, and educational.  We do not learn inside a box.  We learn from being alive and each day can be a wonderful new learning experience if you allow it to occur.  This is what unschooling is.  Learning is life and life is learning.