College at 7: 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!

Of course my 7 year old is not attending college, that is absurd, but after yesterday, I started thinking about how this educational approach is a lot like college and it seems like it would better prepare a child for a college education than traditional schools.  My husband and I are both college educated with bachelor and master's degrees in our fields of study, but we both attended traditional public school for k-12th grade.  I finished college early and had a career for several years before having children while my husband did a lot of interesting adventures during his college years by traveling abroad, acquiring advanced writing and research skills and learning several languages.  After having these experiences and thinking about our public education from k-12th grades, we both were able to acknowledge that our 'required' education that we received as children and teenagers really did not prepare us for college or the real world very well.  What it did do is it kept up with a tradition of following an educational path that had become the norm in our culture and may be beneficial for some, but neither my husband or I felt like it was overly beneficial for us. My husband and I both spent a lot of time daydreaming as we sat in our classrooms, especially during the elementary years and had little interests in much that was covered.  I would have preferred to have spent my childhood and teenage years being inspired by subjects that peeked my interests and would have been able to explore them freely during a majority of my time rather than having large blocks of wasted time. So by having college experience and not feeling like my education prepared me for this experience or for life, unschooling seemed very appealing for educating my own children because I found the college experience much more inspiring, especially grad school, and I do not see any reason why my children should have to wait to be inspired by their education until they are 17 or 18 when they can do it as early as infancy.

Unlike traditional public school, unschooling is an interests based approach to education and I am going to discuss how this applies to our day to day life.  Yesterday was a crazy busy day, but it made me think in a positive manner about our approach even though I did feel super busy.  Our day basically began at 1 p.m.  I took my children over to Science Central, which is a local hands on science museum that offers homeschool classes.  My oldest son loves  science.  This is one of his interests, so he thrives in these science classes.  He is so interested in the subject that he will often initiate science experiments at home and when he really lights up like he's excited about something, it usually involves something related to science.  So if he were college age and attended a university, most of his time would be spent in science classes since this is what inspires him to learn.  Well, he does not have to wait until college for this and instead is spending a majority of time focusing on this at the age of 7.  Today the focus was biology.  At the demonstration at Science Central, they explored the human body and the digestive system.  My son said that he was chosen to find the large intestines.  He said that they cut open a teddy bear and pointed out all of the different organs that included in the digestive system.  For their lab, they dissected a squid.  My son said that they mainly located the heart after cutting it open.  He said that a squid only has one layer of skin.  Last year for the biology science lab, they dissected a shark and found a crab with it's pinchers in the shark's stomach.  My son said that he liked the shark dissection better than dissecting the squid because of finding the crab in it's stomach.  When my son came home, he created his own cadaver with his clothes and used a gorilla slipper for the head.  He then pretended he was dissecting the body and identified the various organs that were discussed during the demonstration and tried to replicate these in his own model of the human body.  At times, our home can seem a bit creepy with all of these body models my son creates, but I can tell he is really learning and want him to feel comfortable exploring his interests openly, so I am fine with being a little freaked out when I walk into a room because of the learning aspects. 

During the science classes, I take the younger children to the play area that is also science focused, but it is appropriate for children 7 and under, so the younger two who are 2 and 4 years old love exploring and learning in the play area.  This day was almost double booked, but I was able to fit in everything.  My 4 year old daughter is my artistic, creative child and she is currently in ballet.  I did not want her to miss her class she loves so much, so I dropped my son off at home after his science classes at 4:30 so he could prepare for his evening concert and I took my little daughter to her ballet class where she was able to learn and openly express herself artistically at 5 p.m.  I love watching her through the window in her class as she smiles and dances around with such confidence.  This is what really motivates her to learn and I am so happy we have the means to allow her to have this opportunity.

I normally do not like to feel overly busy, but some days, everything just happens on the same day and this is something that will often happen in college also as you thoroughly explore your interests through your classes.  Well, normally my 7 year old son would go along when my daughter had her ballet class, but on this day, his Dad took some time off from work so he could help by preparing my son for his concert later that night.  Another interest that my son has is music.  I learned of a recorder class a couple months ago where he attends once a week and tonight was their Christmas concert.  I could tell my son was a little nervous about this.  He had to arrive at 6 p.m.  My daughter's ballet class is from 5-6, so my husband took my son to the church for his concert and we all arrived at 6:30 to watch him in his first recorder concert.  So our day came to a nice ending around 8 p.m.

The reason I titled this entry as college as 7 years old is because unschooling just reminds me so much of college.  It is interests focused and career focused.  It involves various classes based on interests.  It helps a child be well rounded, but not in a way that is predetermined by someone else, but by the child.  It helps prevent boredom and learned helplessness.  This is when learning occurs.  Every child is different and should be respected for their differences.  This is where unschooling comes in.  So is my child attending college at the age of 7?  Perhaps he is.