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.