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.