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.