We are an unschooling family of 5 with a 7 year old son, 5 year old daughter and 2 year old baby boy and we wanted to share our experiences with others who may be interested in unschooling, are unschooling, or have the desire to learn about unschooling. We have been unschooling for 2 years and have discovered that it is a wonderful experience. I have discovered through this experience that once you become an unschooler, there is no turning back. Enjoy!
Friday, May 23, 2014
Thinking about saying goodbye to the blog
I was thinking about not doing this blog anymore, but instead, just maintaining my unschooling Facebook page. However, if others really like my blog entries and would like to continue reading them on blogger, please let me know and I'll continue with the blog. My Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/pages/Unschooling-Our-Way/542805365768918.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Unschooling a 2 year old
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 people think that you do not really start the schooling process until your children are 3 or 4 for preschool or 5 or 6 for kindergarten, however, unschooling a 2 year old is a wonderful experience. I have an intense, inquisitive little 2 year old man who absolutely loves to learn and once I started noticing that he was capable of doing many of the things that the older children do, he has been so much happier to be included in the learning process. I have three children, a 7 year old boy, 5 year old girl, and 2 year old boy, so today as I describe unschooling a 2 year old, I will mainly focus on my 2 year old, but also compare his learning to the older two when they were his age. Since we had not started any formal schooling yet, since we initially started with a more structured approach with my oldest son, when he was 2 years old, he was also unschooled, it is just natural learning.
Reading/Language Arts: My 2 year old loves books, he just loves them. If he could sit and look through books or have me read to him all day long, he would. Reading is also a great way for language development. I probably read to my two year old at least 2 hours a day because he makes me do it. He sits me down in a chair and grabs books and says, "read me this!" He's really bossy. So I read him whatever books he wants to read. Then after each book, he will read the book back to me. He has the ability to memorize a simple book after reading it one time, by simple, I mean three or four word sentences on each page. So we read, read, read together. When my daughter was 2, she was very similar and loved reading book after book after book. My oldest son was different. He did not like reading books very much and was difficult to understand at the age of two. Instead, he was able to dress himself at a very young age, maybe a little over one. So he would dress like super heroes mostly and run around the house acting like his favorite character, so I would read to him while he was doing back flips off the couch, rolling around on the floor, jumping on the bed, etc. He just did not like sitting and reading like the other two. He is more of a mover when he learns, otherwise, he zones out.
Math: Math is everywhere. My daughter loves having her nails painted because she's a girly girl. Well, my 2 year old is a girly boy, well, sorta, he is really a brute, but anyway, he also loves having his nails painted and he has to have his toe nails and finger nails painted. When we do this, we count to 100. He seems to be stuck counting 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2... and has been stuck at this for a very long time. sometimes he will count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, if he is repeating after me, but then on his own, he goes back to 3, 2, 3, 2... He may not be an overly quick math kid. My oldest son could probably count to about 30 at the age of 2 and my daughter could probably count to 5 or 10. We all have our strengths. He loves helping me fetch the eggs from the chicken coop and we will count the eggs. We count his cars a lot because he loves playing with cars and he also loves helping me bake cookies, muffin or cook dinner. He is a great helper, so we do a lot of measuring with cooking. Measuring is a great visual for learning math. My two year old has always loved cars and trains and loves creating track sequences for the trains with his sister. So he is able to learn math visually through this.
Science: My two year old boy loves science. He loves going to the science museum and exploring hands on to see how everything works. He loves one area where he can push a button and watch a ball float up into the air or push a button to watch the hot air balloon inflate and float to the ceiling. He loved doing an activity at the Indianapolis Children's Museum where a vacuum would suck a ball into this machine and he would watch it go into the air. He did this over and over and would probably still be doing it if we did not make him stop. He is fascinated by movement and what makes things move. He has always had a fascination with cars and trains. He also loves animals. He has always been a dog lover, but now he is starting to explore other animals. He finds elephants fascinating. He loves watching the Baby Einstein videos over and over and will often pick out books or videos with animals at the library. He loves any animal, zoo animals, farm animals, it does not matter. He loves imitating animal sounds also and act out their movements. My daughter participates in science activities, but does not seem to have as much of a fascination with them as the boys do. She does science activities now, at 5, but at two, she was more interesting in reading and being creative artistically. My oldest son, who is 7 years old, is a science guy. He loves every aspect of science, animals, and the human body. At two, he was very interested in super heroes, their movements and behaviors and started having a fascination with monkeys and apes at that young age and this is still a passion of his.
History: My two year old boy loves old cars and seeing old buggies and how things moved from the beginning of time. He also loves looking at family pictures with his brother and sister. This is recent history, but far in the past for someone who was born less than three years ago. I will read history books to the older children and he will listen also, but since his main interest is cars, he really gets passionate when we are talking about the history of cars while he does not seem to be as interested in other history unless his family is involved directly.
Art: My two year old loves art. This is my daughter's strong subject. She loves to paint, so since she wants to paint a lot, so does my two year old son and he is very amazing at expressing himself through painting and art. He will often take objects and incorporate them into his art, such as nature or magnetic letters. It does not matter, he just loves creating. He also likes to draw and loves trying to draw cars, mummies, and penguins. He loves combining colors and started learning his colors when he was one years old. We always talks about the colors of his cars and he will name colors of cars as we are driving around. We are always aware of all of the colors of cars that surround us when my two year old is with us. My daughter and older son also loved art at two, but may not have been as advanced with their knowledge of colors at this age as my youngest son. He is just fascinated by colors, especially when a car is involved.
Music: My 2 year old boy loves music. He loves making up songs about his cars and will mimic show tunes or any music he hears. He can really belt out his songs and sings very on-tune for a two year old. He is a great song writer. We are a musical family. I do a lot of singing while my husband plays guitar and drums and we also have a piano. My 2 year old son is very drawn to the drums and can keep a beat well at his young age. My daughter has always loved singing, dancing and piano while my oldest son would try to play guitar when he was two to imitate his father and sing. I think my younger two may have more of the music gene than my oldest son, but I guess we will find this out with time.
As you can see, a two year old can very enthusiastically participate in the unschooling process. He is developing a love for learning at his young age and I try to encourage him by reading to him as much as he wants, letting him write in my journal, count with him and let him help whenever he wants to help with preparing food. He makes learning seem like so much fun. He is very inspirational with his enthusiasm. I love two year olds. So far, it is one of my favorite ages. So if you have a little one, there is no limit on when you can start unschooling them. Life is learning.
Many people think that you do not really start the schooling process until your children are 3 or 4 for preschool or 5 or 6 for kindergarten, however, unschooling a 2 year old is a wonderful experience. I have an intense, inquisitive little 2 year old man who absolutely loves to learn and once I started noticing that he was capable of doing many of the things that the older children do, he has been so much happier to be included in the learning process. I have three children, a 7 year old boy, 5 year old girl, and 2 year old boy, so today as I describe unschooling a 2 year old, I will mainly focus on my 2 year old, but also compare his learning to the older two when they were his age. Since we had not started any formal schooling yet, since we initially started with a more structured approach with my oldest son, when he was 2 years old, he was also unschooled, it is just natural learning.
Reading/Language Arts: My 2 year old loves books, he just loves them. If he could sit and look through books or have me read to him all day long, he would. Reading is also a great way for language development. I probably read to my two year old at least 2 hours a day because he makes me do it. He sits me down in a chair and grabs books and says, "read me this!" He's really bossy. So I read him whatever books he wants to read. Then after each book, he will read the book back to me. He has the ability to memorize a simple book after reading it one time, by simple, I mean three or four word sentences on each page. So we read, read, read together. When my daughter was 2, she was very similar and loved reading book after book after book. My oldest son was different. He did not like reading books very much and was difficult to understand at the age of two. Instead, he was able to dress himself at a very young age, maybe a little over one. So he would dress like super heroes mostly and run around the house acting like his favorite character, so I would read to him while he was doing back flips off the couch, rolling around on the floor, jumping on the bed, etc. He just did not like sitting and reading like the other two. He is more of a mover when he learns, otherwise, he zones out.
Math: Math is everywhere. My daughter loves having her nails painted because she's a girly girl. Well, my 2 year old is a girly boy, well, sorta, he is really a brute, but anyway, he also loves having his nails painted and he has to have his toe nails and finger nails painted. When we do this, we count to 100. He seems to be stuck counting 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2... and has been stuck at this for a very long time. sometimes he will count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, if he is repeating after me, but then on his own, he goes back to 3, 2, 3, 2... He may not be an overly quick math kid. My oldest son could probably count to about 30 at the age of 2 and my daughter could probably count to 5 or 10. We all have our strengths. He loves helping me fetch the eggs from the chicken coop and we will count the eggs. We count his cars a lot because he loves playing with cars and he also loves helping me bake cookies, muffin or cook dinner. He is a great helper, so we do a lot of measuring with cooking. Measuring is a great visual for learning math. My two year old has always loved cars and trains and loves creating track sequences for the trains with his sister. So he is able to learn math visually through this.
Science: My two year old boy loves science. He loves going to the science museum and exploring hands on to see how everything works. He loves one area where he can push a button and watch a ball float up into the air or push a button to watch the hot air balloon inflate and float to the ceiling. He loved doing an activity at the Indianapolis Children's Museum where a vacuum would suck a ball into this machine and he would watch it go into the air. He did this over and over and would probably still be doing it if we did not make him stop. He is fascinated by movement and what makes things move. He has always had a fascination with cars and trains. He also loves animals. He has always been a dog lover, but now he is starting to explore other animals. He finds elephants fascinating. He loves watching the Baby Einstein videos over and over and will often pick out books or videos with animals at the library. He loves any animal, zoo animals, farm animals, it does not matter. He loves imitating animal sounds also and act out their movements. My daughter participates in science activities, but does not seem to have as much of a fascination with them as the boys do. She does science activities now, at 5, but at two, she was more interesting in reading and being creative artistically. My oldest son, who is 7 years old, is a science guy. He loves every aspect of science, animals, and the human body. At two, he was very interested in super heroes, their movements and behaviors and started having a fascination with monkeys and apes at that young age and this is still a passion of his.
History: My two year old boy loves old cars and seeing old buggies and how things moved from the beginning of time. He also loves looking at family pictures with his brother and sister. This is recent history, but far in the past for someone who was born less than three years ago. I will read history books to the older children and he will listen also, but since his main interest is cars, he really gets passionate when we are talking about the history of cars while he does not seem to be as interested in other history unless his family is involved directly.
Art: My two year old loves art. This is my daughter's strong subject. She loves to paint, so since she wants to paint a lot, so does my two year old son and he is very amazing at expressing himself through painting and art. He will often take objects and incorporate them into his art, such as nature or magnetic letters. It does not matter, he just loves creating. He also likes to draw and loves trying to draw cars, mummies, and penguins. He loves combining colors and started learning his colors when he was one years old. We always talks about the colors of his cars and he will name colors of cars as we are driving around. We are always aware of all of the colors of cars that surround us when my two year old is with us. My daughter and older son also loved art at two, but may not have been as advanced with their knowledge of colors at this age as my youngest son. He is just fascinated by colors, especially when a car is involved.
Music: My 2 year old boy loves music. He loves making up songs about his cars and will mimic show tunes or any music he hears. He can really belt out his songs and sings very on-tune for a two year old. He is a great song writer. We are a musical family. I do a lot of singing while my husband plays guitar and drums and we also have a piano. My 2 year old son is very drawn to the drums and can keep a beat well at his young age. My daughter has always loved singing, dancing and piano while my oldest son would try to play guitar when he was two to imitate his father and sing. I think my younger two may have more of the music gene than my oldest son, but I guess we will find this out with time.
As you can see, a two year old can very enthusiastically participate in the unschooling process. He is developing a love for learning at his young age and I try to encourage him by reading to him as much as he wants, letting him write in my journal, count with him and let him help whenever he wants to help with preparing food. He makes learning seem like so much fun. He is very inspirational with his enthusiasm. I love two year olds. So far, it is one of my favorite ages. So if you have a little one, there is no limit on when you can start unschooling them. Life is learning.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Make it Simple
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 am basically going into my third year of unschooling and I have learned a lot through this process. I still have some of the ideas that the kids need to socialize with children their own age and that there needs to be somewhat of a routine or schedule with our lives. That does make sense to live in this manner, but now I am starting to want to have more spontaneity, such as, if the children say they want to go to a museum an hour or two away from home for the day, we can just up and go without always having schedule conflicts. This year, we had recorder Monday once a week, science Tuesday once a month, ballet Wednesday once a week, art and hockey Thursday one a week and nature Friday once a month. So we did not necessarily always have something scheduled every day of the week, but occasionally the once a month activities would land on the same week and then we would. I felt like we were committing to too many activities and did not have enough down time.
My plan is to only do one out of the house day weekly and this will be Thursday. My daughter was feeling overwhelmed with her Wednesday ballet class. It is a shame because the teacher is so nice and also homeschools. I was very happy with the program, but it seemed to be a little too much for my daughter. It was the peers that were the problem, not the class itself. So I am not completely ruling out ballet, but we are going to take a bit of a break from it. My son also enjoyed his Monday recorder class for a while, but then was pretty overwhelmed by going every week. I think it has been a positive experience for him, but I would prefer not to continue with it simply because it is another thing on the schedule and it is on Monday rather than Thursday. So I felt recorder class was very positive and a great introduction for reading music, but now we are ready to move on to something new.
My plan for this homeschool year is hockey on Thursday nights and art classes when they start up in the fall that will also be on Thursday and that's all for the weekly activities. The children will then attend science class once a month and nature class once a month. These will be the only scheduled activities unless there are other things for Thursday. This will leave room for my son to audition for plays, go on field trips, do spontaneous road trips and just have a more relaxed schedule. I think it will work much better. If other activities or lessons pop up, I will just make sure everything is on Thursday. We will have one regular out of the house day a week rather than three.
I am still learning that I can say 'no' and my children do not have to be in every activity I can find. I am glad I discovered this now. Baby boy is happy playing hockey with his older brother and there are other little girls the age of my daughter that go to hockey night and my daughter is happy doing her ballet freely around the house and not going to a class at this time. So I think we have a good plan and I hope I feel like we are headed in the right direction with this plan. It is a learning process for everyone involved. The children love 'stay at home' days and I think having four a week sometimes will really help all of us. So I have learned to say 'no' and relax with this. We do not need to take on the world. We are just unschooling, not creating mania.
I am basically going into my third year of unschooling and I have learned a lot through this process. I still have some of the ideas that the kids need to socialize with children their own age and that there needs to be somewhat of a routine or schedule with our lives. That does make sense to live in this manner, but now I am starting to want to have more spontaneity, such as, if the children say they want to go to a museum an hour or two away from home for the day, we can just up and go without always having schedule conflicts. This year, we had recorder Monday once a week, science Tuesday once a month, ballet Wednesday once a week, art and hockey Thursday one a week and nature Friday once a month. So we did not necessarily always have something scheduled every day of the week, but occasionally the once a month activities would land on the same week and then we would. I felt like we were committing to too many activities and did not have enough down time.
My plan is to only do one out of the house day weekly and this will be Thursday. My daughter was feeling overwhelmed with her Wednesday ballet class. It is a shame because the teacher is so nice and also homeschools. I was very happy with the program, but it seemed to be a little too much for my daughter. It was the peers that were the problem, not the class itself. So I am not completely ruling out ballet, but we are going to take a bit of a break from it. My son also enjoyed his Monday recorder class for a while, but then was pretty overwhelmed by going every week. I think it has been a positive experience for him, but I would prefer not to continue with it simply because it is another thing on the schedule and it is on Monday rather than Thursday. So I felt recorder class was very positive and a great introduction for reading music, but now we are ready to move on to something new.
My plan for this homeschool year is hockey on Thursday nights and art classes when they start up in the fall that will also be on Thursday and that's all for the weekly activities. The children will then attend science class once a month and nature class once a month. These will be the only scheduled activities unless there are other things for Thursday. This will leave room for my son to audition for plays, go on field trips, do spontaneous road trips and just have a more relaxed schedule. I think it will work much better. If other activities or lessons pop up, I will just make sure everything is on Thursday. We will have one regular out of the house day a week rather than three.
I am still learning that I can say 'no' and my children do not have to be in every activity I can find. I am glad I discovered this now. Baby boy is happy playing hockey with his older brother and there are other little girls the age of my daughter that go to hockey night and my daughter is happy doing her ballet freely around the house and not going to a class at this time. So I think we have a good plan and I hope I feel like we are headed in the right direction with this plan. It is a learning process for everyone involved. The children love 'stay at home' days and I think having four a week sometimes will really help all of us. So I have learned to say 'no' and relax with this. We do not need to take on the world. We are just unschooling, not creating mania.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Unschooling Saturday
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!
Children learn daily, so yes, I do consider Saturday a school day. I only am required to keep track of 180 days per year in our state, but in our unschooling home, our children go to school 365 days a year. Each day is a learning experience. They are either learning how to manage a home, how to do math, how things were long ago, how to read, how to spell, how to talk, how things work, how to measure, how to count money, how to add money, nutrition, the list is endless. They learn daily. Life is learning.
It is May, the weather is supposed to be better, so today was garage sale day. I have my oldest son, who is 7, my daughter, who is 5 and baby boy who is, 2. However, the only one who loves going to garage sales is my oldest son. My daughter just is not a shopper. Her idea of shopping is go to a store, get what she wants, leave. Baby boy is just crazy sometimes and my oldest son and I had a shopping addiction prior to the other two coming along and I trained him well. He loves the hunt and finding that special item. He loves the magic of going to a garage sale, so he was my helper today. We bundled up on this not so warm May day and hit some garage sales. I usually collect mostly books at garage sales, but often we will find other useful items as well. My son is interested in the sports, hockey and golf at the moment and he loves anything about science, spooky things and has some interests in history and is really working on spelling and learning to read right now. My daughter loves ballet, being creative and really likes My Little Pony. Baby boy loves cars, trains, trucks and is starting to have a lot of interest in animals. He has always been a dog lover, but now is starting to expand his repertoire with his love for animals. Our best finds for the day were, drum roll, a goalie mask, a golf club, a small handheld dictionary, history books, a book about machines, a My Little Pony book and coloring book, a ballet video and foot position mat, and a book about farm animals and zoo animals, among a few other items. It was a good garage sale day.
After our garage sale adventure, I took my son to a local natural food co-op to pick up some food items. He enjoys helping me at the store and has a good understanding of the food groups, organic versus non-organic and overall health and nutrition. I try to always be open and honest with my son and share any information I have about anything. I have been learning a lot about organic and natural foods, cleaners and just basically living a healthier lifestyle within the last couple years and have been sharing this knowledge with my children. I have learned that there are natural antibodies in raw honey that fight off bacteria and infection, so we always make sure that we have raw honey. I've also been learning that by buying mostly raw items, we can get more nutrients from the items and avoid preservatives and unhealthy additives, so I get fresh fruits and vegetables and raw, organic nuts and honey. I also get organic milk and juices and natural meats without any artificial additives. As we shopped, we discussed what we were buying and why we were buying it. We do go out to eat and get candy from time to time and drink pop, but for the most part, we try to mainly ingest raw and organic items.
Once we got home, the children were all excited about the new garage sale items. I got several simple books to read with my 2 year old son, so we started with those. He is now getting to the point where he likes to read the books after I read them to him and he will memorize the simple books after I read them one time. He is very enthusiastic about his reading too. He loves books. He learned the names of some new animals today through his new animal books and was very excited about this. My oldest son's favorite find was a book about spooky tricks, so he started reading through his book and creating spooky tricks to share with the rest of us. He then started looking through a book about haunted castles that we found. He also started looking up words in his new dictionary and was excited about doing this and learning the meanings of certain words. My daughter watched her ballet video and then danced around the house in a tutu for the rest of the evening. Then we read the new My Little Pony book and after I read it, my daughter read her memorized version of the book to me. This was a very productive unschooling day.
Garage sale days are very fun and inspiring homeschool day for the children. Simple things, like old used books can be so inspirational by bringing something new into their lives and maybe lighting a spark that was starting to dull a bit. Now they are all very motivated to learn new things. I am predicting a very productive summer of learning this year. Saturdays can be the best unschooling day of the week. Everyone should do Saturday school. :)
Children learn daily, so yes, I do consider Saturday a school day. I only am required to keep track of 180 days per year in our state, but in our unschooling home, our children go to school 365 days a year. Each day is a learning experience. They are either learning how to manage a home, how to do math, how things were long ago, how to read, how to spell, how to talk, how things work, how to measure, how to count money, how to add money, nutrition, the list is endless. They learn daily. Life is learning.
It is May, the weather is supposed to be better, so today was garage sale day. I have my oldest son, who is 7, my daughter, who is 5 and baby boy who is, 2. However, the only one who loves going to garage sales is my oldest son. My daughter just is not a shopper. Her idea of shopping is go to a store, get what she wants, leave. Baby boy is just crazy sometimes and my oldest son and I had a shopping addiction prior to the other two coming along and I trained him well. He loves the hunt and finding that special item. He loves the magic of going to a garage sale, so he was my helper today. We bundled up on this not so warm May day and hit some garage sales. I usually collect mostly books at garage sales, but often we will find other useful items as well. My son is interested in the sports, hockey and golf at the moment and he loves anything about science, spooky things and has some interests in history and is really working on spelling and learning to read right now. My daughter loves ballet, being creative and really likes My Little Pony. Baby boy loves cars, trains, trucks and is starting to have a lot of interest in animals. He has always been a dog lover, but now is starting to expand his repertoire with his love for animals. Our best finds for the day were, drum roll, a goalie mask, a golf club, a small handheld dictionary, history books, a book about machines, a My Little Pony book and coloring book, a ballet video and foot position mat, and a book about farm animals and zoo animals, among a few other items. It was a good garage sale day.
After our garage sale adventure, I took my son to a local natural food co-op to pick up some food items. He enjoys helping me at the store and has a good understanding of the food groups, organic versus non-organic and overall health and nutrition. I try to always be open and honest with my son and share any information I have about anything. I have been learning a lot about organic and natural foods, cleaners and just basically living a healthier lifestyle within the last couple years and have been sharing this knowledge with my children. I have learned that there are natural antibodies in raw honey that fight off bacteria and infection, so we always make sure that we have raw honey. I've also been learning that by buying mostly raw items, we can get more nutrients from the items and avoid preservatives and unhealthy additives, so I get fresh fruits and vegetables and raw, organic nuts and honey. I also get organic milk and juices and natural meats without any artificial additives. As we shopped, we discussed what we were buying and why we were buying it. We do go out to eat and get candy from time to time and drink pop, but for the most part, we try to mainly ingest raw and organic items.
Once we got home, the children were all excited about the new garage sale items. I got several simple books to read with my 2 year old son, so we started with those. He is now getting to the point where he likes to read the books after I read them to him and he will memorize the simple books after I read them one time. He is very enthusiastic about his reading too. He loves books. He learned the names of some new animals today through his new animal books and was very excited about this. My oldest son's favorite find was a book about spooky tricks, so he started reading through his book and creating spooky tricks to share with the rest of us. He then started looking through a book about haunted castles that we found. He also started looking up words in his new dictionary and was excited about doing this and learning the meanings of certain words. My daughter watched her ballet video and then danced around the house in a tutu for the rest of the evening. Then we read the new My Little Pony book and after I read it, my daughter read her memorized version of the book to me. This was a very productive unschooling day.
Garage sale days are very fun and inspiring homeschool day for the children. Simple things, like old used books can be so inspirational by bringing something new into their lives and maybe lighting a spark that was starting to dull a bit. Now they are all very motivated to learn new things. I am predicting a very productive summer of learning this year. Saturdays can be the best unschooling day of the week. Everyone should do Saturday school. :)
Monday, May 12, 2014
Bigfoot studies: 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 I am just going to describe a typical day of our unschooling family and that day would be today. My boys always wake up before my daughter, she needs her beauty rest. I allow the children to wake up naturally, so we don't have any set schedule. I like allowing the children to stay up late so that they can spend time with their Dad in the evening also. However, my sons usually wake up pretty early around 8:30 or 9 so they can see their Dad before he goes to work and they were up fairly early today. My oldest son, who is 7, played outside with a baseball for a while and my youngest son, who is 2, played with cars, but my oldest son was really anticipating my daughter waking up today to play with her. I guess he had big plans for the day.
Once my 5 year old daughter got up and had her breakfast, she first had to draw pictures of My Little Ponies. This was an extension from the day before when she created a My Little Pony quiz where she created questions for each family member to figure out which My Little Pony we were. I got Rarity. She created pictures of our ponies for everyone the night before, but I guess she needed to draw a large picture of Twilight Sparkle today to finish that project. After she completed this task she had created for herself, she joined her brother as they set up a scene using the Scooby Doo characters, some prince and princesses, maybe a few super heroes and some scary fish. They played for a while as baby boy watched Baby Einstein with the animals. He really likes elephants. At one point, I was cuddling him and thought he may go to sleep since he has a little cold, but he just looked at me and said, "I want to dress like a penguin". That seemed reasonable, we put the penguin costume on him and he was a penguin for a good hour or so. I collect costumes usually from garage sales or wherever I find them. You never know when you may have the desire to be a penguin, super hero, monkey. Those urges hit and you need to be prepared.
We had lunch and baby boy decided he wanted a bath since he now has the cold that started with his sister that we probably picked up at the zoo last week. I had taken some 'me time' doing yoga and taking a shower and I guess the children were busy while I was doing this. They had traced all of their footprints along with Pinky Pie's footprint and created a bigfoot footprint and measured them with a measuring tape and had them all labeled. My oldest son is fascinated with bigfoot. Even though skeptics do not feel bigfoot is real and there has been no solid evidence found indicating that he is, my son still believes in the yeti. He is so excited about a mysterious ape man wandering around the world. We got a book about bigfoot a couple weeks ago at the library and read about how people have made plaster cast of big foot footprints as proof and we learned that there is an actual bigfoot display at a museum in Idaho. Crypto zoologists are the scientists who study bigfoot sightings among other sightings of strange creatures whose existence has yet to be proven. So my son and daughter spent the afternoon creating a bigfoot museum in our front yard. They even had professional attire for this important job and used Cub Scout patches for their official badges. I guess none of the neighbors wanted to look at their museum though and then it seemed like it was going to start storming, so the museum closed.
I spent some time outside with baby boy looking at airplanes, helicopters and making wishes by blowing the seeds off of dandelions, then the children decided to come in and watch PBS kid shows for some inspiration. This was followed by finishing the book about cryptids such as bigfoot and learning about The Lock Ness Monster and the Giant Squid. My son took a Cryptozoologist quiz and it told him he should not have a career solving mysteries. However, it did list careers he could have that could lead to searching for bigfoot, so you never know, maybe he will be the one to find this unknown species of ape in North America. He has plans to go on a bigfoot hunt with his Dad this summer. I think the younger children and I will pass on that one.
So as you can see, our day was quite diverse and most days are like this in our unschooling home. The children seem to do math, science, art, reading, and history in their day to day life. It's just in a more casual, child focussed manner than if they were to go to school or use a structured curriculum. It is amazing how much I learn from this too. I never knew a giant squid existed the size of that monster nor did I know the terms cryptids or cryptozoologist until we got the book about bigfoot. I also did not know that the lock ness monster was spotted in Scotland and the first giant squid was found near Norway. Nor was I aware that animals that are thought to have died off millions or billions of years ago may still exist today. I love stay at home days. They are the most productive days we have. However, the out of the house days do help with socializing and being inspired by our community, but stay at home days are my favorite. So do you believe in bigfoot?
Today I am just going to describe a typical day of our unschooling family and that day would be today. My boys always wake up before my daughter, she needs her beauty rest. I allow the children to wake up naturally, so we don't have any set schedule. I like allowing the children to stay up late so that they can spend time with their Dad in the evening also. However, my sons usually wake up pretty early around 8:30 or 9 so they can see their Dad before he goes to work and they were up fairly early today. My oldest son, who is 7, played outside with a baseball for a while and my youngest son, who is 2, played with cars, but my oldest son was really anticipating my daughter waking up today to play with her. I guess he had big plans for the day.
Once my 5 year old daughter got up and had her breakfast, she first had to draw pictures of My Little Ponies. This was an extension from the day before when she created a My Little Pony quiz where she created questions for each family member to figure out which My Little Pony we were. I got Rarity. She created pictures of our ponies for everyone the night before, but I guess she needed to draw a large picture of Twilight Sparkle today to finish that project. After she completed this task she had created for herself, she joined her brother as they set up a scene using the Scooby Doo characters, some prince and princesses, maybe a few super heroes and some scary fish. They played for a while as baby boy watched Baby Einstein with the animals. He really likes elephants. At one point, I was cuddling him and thought he may go to sleep since he has a little cold, but he just looked at me and said, "I want to dress like a penguin". That seemed reasonable, we put the penguin costume on him and he was a penguin for a good hour or so. I collect costumes usually from garage sales or wherever I find them. You never know when you may have the desire to be a penguin, super hero, monkey. Those urges hit and you need to be prepared.
We had lunch and baby boy decided he wanted a bath since he now has the cold that started with his sister that we probably picked up at the zoo last week. I had taken some 'me time' doing yoga and taking a shower and I guess the children were busy while I was doing this. They had traced all of their footprints along with Pinky Pie's footprint and created a bigfoot footprint and measured them with a measuring tape and had them all labeled. My oldest son is fascinated with bigfoot. Even though skeptics do not feel bigfoot is real and there has been no solid evidence found indicating that he is, my son still believes in the yeti. He is so excited about a mysterious ape man wandering around the world. We got a book about bigfoot a couple weeks ago at the library and read about how people have made plaster cast of big foot footprints as proof and we learned that there is an actual bigfoot display at a museum in Idaho. Crypto zoologists are the scientists who study bigfoot sightings among other sightings of strange creatures whose existence has yet to be proven. So my son and daughter spent the afternoon creating a bigfoot museum in our front yard. They even had professional attire for this important job and used Cub Scout patches for their official badges. I guess none of the neighbors wanted to look at their museum though and then it seemed like it was going to start storming, so the museum closed.
I spent some time outside with baby boy looking at airplanes, helicopters and making wishes by blowing the seeds off of dandelions, then the children decided to come in and watch PBS kid shows for some inspiration. This was followed by finishing the book about cryptids such as bigfoot and learning about The Lock Ness Monster and the Giant Squid. My son took a Cryptozoologist quiz and it told him he should not have a career solving mysteries. However, it did list careers he could have that could lead to searching for bigfoot, so you never know, maybe he will be the one to find this unknown species of ape in North America. He has plans to go on a bigfoot hunt with his Dad this summer. I think the younger children and I will pass on that one.
So as you can see, our day was quite diverse and most days are like this in our unschooling home. The children seem to do math, science, art, reading, and history in their day to day life. It's just in a more casual, child focussed manner than if they were to go to school or use a structured curriculum. It is amazing how much I learn from this too. I never knew a giant squid existed the size of that monster nor did I know the terms cryptids or cryptozoologist until we got the book about bigfoot. I also did not know that the lock ness monster was spotted in Scotland and the first giant squid was found near Norway. Nor was I aware that animals that are thought to have died off millions or billions of years ago may still exist today. I love stay at home days. They are the most productive days we have. However, the out of the house days do help with socializing and being inspired by our community, but stay at home days are my favorite. So do you believe in bigfoot?
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Freedom
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 are fairly new in the homeschooling journey. We started thinking about doing it when my oldest son was 4 years old and started unschooling when he was 5 1/2 years old. He will soon be 8, so this is about our 4th year for starting a mindset for homeschooling and 2 1/2 for practicing unschooling. As my husband and I adapt to this lifestyle, we start thinking outside of the box for our own well-being too. My husband currently works a full time job that includes a moderate income to pay for the basics and health insurance while I mainly stay home with the kids and work at my counseling private practice very part-time in the evening up to 6 hours a week. This is a very traditional way to live and does not really fit well with the unschooling philosophy of family time and freedom in my opinion. I wonder if other unschooling families also run into this dilemma if their lives are more traditional with societal norms so to speak. It brings about a level of frustration as we are teaching the children about having freedom to make their own decisions and learn what inspires them, but we are in situations where we really are not living out our full potential and somewhat lacking inspiration.
I went to school for a bunch of years when I was younger to obtain my counseling degree and licensure and always wanted to have my own counseling private practice. My husband went to school for a lot of years too to obtain a master's degree to be a college professor and researcher of anthropology, but has no desire to use the degree, but rather apply it towards being a professional musician. So the trick is figuring out how to model a life of freedom where we are living out our dreams so that we can set good examples for the children to do the same. We also would like to incorporate travel as part of the homeschooling journey for education related to geography, history, anthropology, math, among other subjects, so that the subjects can be more hands on and less traditional bookwork.
This is a process and I am going to share our plan and this may help inspire other unschooling families to live a life that models what they want to teach their children in our society of schedules, 40 hour a week jobs, and bills. The following is our plan and hopefully it can inspire you to apply it to your own life at some level as well if you feel the same way.
1. First, pay off all of our major bills including our cars and house. This can be done by careful planning and living cheap. We do not pay for TV, so our only bills aside from some debt related to credit cards and student loans are our house and one car and utilities, taxes, insurance, things that we have to have along with Internet and phone which are business expenses. I am going through items at our house regularly and donating or selling, so it helps with not wanting to spend as much money if we are constantly getting rid of things. I really like the minimalist rationale, but have not quite achieved it yet. The minimalist philosophy parallels with a life of freedom. This is approximately a five year plan for us, although, I would like to start traveling in 2 years, so perhaps a miracle will happen and we can do this more quickly. Freedom and teaching the children to live a free life is important to us. We have also made attempts to reduce spending on food by obtaining chickens and my husband has started a fruit and vegetable garden in our front yard. I have learned to crochet and have made a lot of hats and scarves. I also buy many of the children's clothes second hand or have friends who will often give us 2nd hand clothes, so this reduces clothing spending for our growing children. I have a consignment account at a local consigner shop where I take clothes, shoes and toys and then have a credit to make purchases there. Financial freedom is a great place to start and the best way to do this is to come up with a good plan to pay off bills by starting with the smallest and working your way up and reduce spending on unnecessary items in your life.
2. The second step to our plan is for me to work more as a counselor. I have arranged to only work three days a week and since counseling is somewhat seasonal where I am busiest in the spring and fall, that will leave flexibility with travel time in the summer and winter. Since my availability is so limited, I have not advertised up to this point and simply get referrals through word of mouth and insurance companies and can see up to 6 people per week. However, once the children can spend some time at home alone or if my husband's schedule could be altered slightly, I would be able to have a full time income with part-time hours and have low overhead for my business since my expenses are small. I simply have to maintain my state licensure requirements, have a phone, Internet, insurance and an office space, which I already have in place. If you do not have an advance degree, it is still possible to figure out a part-time career for yourself to help with a free lifestyle. I have known mother's who started up photography, craft or cleaning businesses with no advanced schooling. Everyone has strengths and finding strengths that will help bring in a fairly regular income into your home would help with finding your freedom in an unschooling home.
3. The third step is for my husband to build up his music career. He is a song writer, guitarist and drummer. This is a hobby at this time that he fits into his schedule while working a 40 hour/week job and being a family man, so he has many challenges with obtaining his goal. He is starting small. Last summer he played at a local farmer's market at least once a month and is scheduled to play this summer also. He has entered to compete in a finger style guitar competition in July. He has a MacBook Pro and is teaching himself how to record his work and has experimented with his guitar and electronic drums to do this. I have been helping him by contacting places where I think he could be hired to play his guitar. I know not everyone has talent, but there are many options. I know some people who have seasonal landscaping companies, tree business or roofing companies. Or if you or your husband are one with a career related advance degree, being a consultant or doing a job independently will often lead to more possibilities, it is best to just start small and be positive.
These are just steps we have in mind for a free lifestyle where I work as a counselor for about 5 to 8 hours three days a week during the spring and fall and my husband works as a freelance musician where he is able to schedule gigs as we travel to help with funding. This is our five years plan to prepare for a life of freedom to help inspire and be healthy role models for our unschooled children. Life is about following your dreams, sticking with your plan to do this, and feeling peaceful and free about life. I figure the best way to set positive examples for our children is to live the life we are trying to help them create for themselves. The goal of unschooling in our home is learning to live a life of happiness, contentment and freedom while being inspired and living to our fullest potential. I am just hoping we can find others doing the same once we reach our lifestyle goal with our new unschooling and traveling mindset. If you have made positive changes with financial freedom and lifestyle changes, feel free to share ideas. I would love to learn about them.
We are fairly new in the homeschooling journey. We started thinking about doing it when my oldest son was 4 years old and started unschooling when he was 5 1/2 years old. He will soon be 8, so this is about our 4th year for starting a mindset for homeschooling and 2 1/2 for practicing unschooling. As my husband and I adapt to this lifestyle, we start thinking outside of the box for our own well-being too. My husband currently works a full time job that includes a moderate income to pay for the basics and health insurance while I mainly stay home with the kids and work at my counseling private practice very part-time in the evening up to 6 hours a week. This is a very traditional way to live and does not really fit well with the unschooling philosophy of family time and freedom in my opinion. I wonder if other unschooling families also run into this dilemma if their lives are more traditional with societal norms so to speak. It brings about a level of frustration as we are teaching the children about having freedom to make their own decisions and learn what inspires them, but we are in situations where we really are not living out our full potential and somewhat lacking inspiration.
I went to school for a bunch of years when I was younger to obtain my counseling degree and licensure and always wanted to have my own counseling private practice. My husband went to school for a lot of years too to obtain a master's degree to be a college professor and researcher of anthropology, but has no desire to use the degree, but rather apply it towards being a professional musician. So the trick is figuring out how to model a life of freedom where we are living out our dreams so that we can set good examples for the children to do the same. We also would like to incorporate travel as part of the homeschooling journey for education related to geography, history, anthropology, math, among other subjects, so that the subjects can be more hands on and less traditional bookwork.
This is a process and I am going to share our plan and this may help inspire other unschooling families to live a life that models what they want to teach their children in our society of schedules, 40 hour a week jobs, and bills. The following is our plan and hopefully it can inspire you to apply it to your own life at some level as well if you feel the same way.
1. First, pay off all of our major bills including our cars and house. This can be done by careful planning and living cheap. We do not pay for TV, so our only bills aside from some debt related to credit cards and student loans are our house and one car and utilities, taxes, insurance, things that we have to have along with Internet and phone which are business expenses. I am going through items at our house regularly and donating or selling, so it helps with not wanting to spend as much money if we are constantly getting rid of things. I really like the minimalist rationale, but have not quite achieved it yet. The minimalist philosophy parallels with a life of freedom. This is approximately a five year plan for us, although, I would like to start traveling in 2 years, so perhaps a miracle will happen and we can do this more quickly. Freedom and teaching the children to live a free life is important to us. We have also made attempts to reduce spending on food by obtaining chickens and my husband has started a fruit and vegetable garden in our front yard. I have learned to crochet and have made a lot of hats and scarves. I also buy many of the children's clothes second hand or have friends who will often give us 2nd hand clothes, so this reduces clothing spending for our growing children. I have a consignment account at a local consigner shop where I take clothes, shoes and toys and then have a credit to make purchases there. Financial freedom is a great place to start and the best way to do this is to come up with a good plan to pay off bills by starting with the smallest and working your way up and reduce spending on unnecessary items in your life.
2. The second step to our plan is for me to work more as a counselor. I have arranged to only work three days a week and since counseling is somewhat seasonal where I am busiest in the spring and fall, that will leave flexibility with travel time in the summer and winter. Since my availability is so limited, I have not advertised up to this point and simply get referrals through word of mouth and insurance companies and can see up to 6 people per week. However, once the children can spend some time at home alone or if my husband's schedule could be altered slightly, I would be able to have a full time income with part-time hours and have low overhead for my business since my expenses are small. I simply have to maintain my state licensure requirements, have a phone, Internet, insurance and an office space, which I already have in place. If you do not have an advance degree, it is still possible to figure out a part-time career for yourself to help with a free lifestyle. I have known mother's who started up photography, craft or cleaning businesses with no advanced schooling. Everyone has strengths and finding strengths that will help bring in a fairly regular income into your home would help with finding your freedom in an unschooling home.
3. The third step is for my husband to build up his music career. He is a song writer, guitarist and drummer. This is a hobby at this time that he fits into his schedule while working a 40 hour/week job and being a family man, so he has many challenges with obtaining his goal. He is starting small. Last summer he played at a local farmer's market at least once a month and is scheduled to play this summer also. He has entered to compete in a finger style guitar competition in July. He has a MacBook Pro and is teaching himself how to record his work and has experimented with his guitar and electronic drums to do this. I have been helping him by contacting places where I think he could be hired to play his guitar. I know not everyone has talent, but there are many options. I know some people who have seasonal landscaping companies, tree business or roofing companies. Or if you or your husband are one with a career related advance degree, being a consultant or doing a job independently will often lead to more possibilities, it is best to just start small and be positive.
These are just steps we have in mind for a free lifestyle where I work as a counselor for about 5 to 8 hours three days a week during the spring and fall and my husband works as a freelance musician where he is able to schedule gigs as we travel to help with funding. This is our five years plan to prepare for a life of freedom to help inspire and be healthy role models for our unschooled children. Life is about following your dreams, sticking with your plan to do this, and feeling peaceful and free about life. I figure the best way to set positive examples for our children is to live the life we are trying to help them create for themselves. The goal of unschooling in our home is learning to live a life of happiness, contentment and freedom while being inspired and living to our fullest potential. I am just hoping we can find others doing the same once we reach our lifestyle goal with our new unschooling and traveling mindset. If you have made positive changes with financial freedom and lifestyle changes, feel free to share ideas. I would love to learn about them.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
A spring week 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!
We had a very long, cold winter this year and spring is normally a time when people start coming out of hibernation, but this year because of the extreme winter, it almost feels like we were all traumatized in some way after being cooped up so long inside our homes while at times being snowed in and have outdoor temperatures that were subzero and unsafe. I still feel like I am in some type of post winter daze, but I still do spring type activities by getting outside and staying active with the children.
Normally, I try to have two stay at home days per week where we just relax and enjoy our home environment, but this week was a busy out of the house week and we had something scheduled daily. Monday starts out our week with recorder class. My oldest son started playing the recorder in the fall with a recorder orchestra. He plays soprano recorder and they also have alto and bass recorders in their little orchestra of 6 to 12 year olds. The contra bass is not played by any of the younger kids, but it is this giant wood contraption that stands about six feet tall. I never knew this many types of recorders existed until my son joined the class in October. My son was feeling very discouraged and uninspired with recorder class. There is a concert this week and I told him that since he did not feel it was for him, he was welcome to quit after that concert. Then after I told him that, the teacher gave him his own professional soprano recorder. My son was so excited that he has practiced it several hours a day since he received it. Apparently he just needed a new incentive to keep his interest and now he no longer feels like he wants to quit recorder class and has a lot of enthusiasm about sticking with it for a while longer. This started a very musical week for him as he practiced his new recorder daily.
The children attend science classes at a local science museum once a month and Tuesday of this week was science day. My 7 year old son and 5 year old daughter attend these classes together. The classes are divided by age group 5-8 year olds are grouped together, 9-12 year olds and 13-16 year olds. The classes include a half hour demonstration and a hands on lab that usually takes about a hour and then they have some free time to explore the museum and spend time with their friends. The program goes from 1:30 to 4 p.m. This week they learned about germs, how they spread and the dangers of cigarette smoke on the body and the environment. So the topic this time around was focused on health, but the topics vary each month and cover biology, chemistry, robotics, math, earth science, among others. The classes usually include about 50 children, so on these days, the children learn about science and also have the opportunity to socialize with their friends. After participating in these science classes, my daughter well go to the class and will share things she learned or just talk about spending time with her friend and then that will satisfy her science needs for the month. My oldest son, loves science. He will fully participate in the class, answer most of the questions and talk about what is discussed and often be inspired to create his own experiments throughout the month based on what was introduced during the class. He loves science days.
Wednesday was ballet day. I treat the children to lunch on ballet day and today they chose a pizza franchise. Eating lunch at a restaurant with three young children is not as challenging as some may think. They are able to learn social etiquette and how to behave in a public restaurant and my oldest son, who is 7 years old, has enough confidence to give our order to the server. So this has been part of ballet day since we started the spring, midday session. My daughter, who is now five years old, started ballet last summer with Cinderella camp when she was four years old and has attended the four year old ballet classes during the fall, winter and spring sessions. She seems to learn a lot during her ballet classes, loves the teacher and enjoys making new friends in her class. This has been a wonderful introduction to ballet for her. While she does the class, I give the boys the option of waiting in the car and bringing reading material or games to play or just waiting in the building where they can watch their sister through the window and socialize with the other families. Lately, they have been choosing to stay in the building and seem to be content with this choice. Since it is spring and the weather is finally nice, we scheduled a park day after ballet and will continue to do this during spring, summer and fall as long as the weather cooperates. Today we met three other families at the park and the children had a couple hours of free play with their friends. My daughter works on her ballet skills and all of the children have the opportunity to work on social skills and build friendships on Wednesdays.
Thursdays are hockey days. My son had been requesting to play floor hockey for months, but I was having a challenge with finding a place for him to do this since he did not want to play ice hockey, which is more readily available in our community. Then I came across a local non-for-profit business where they play floor hockey on a weekly basis and it is not competitive, but rather fun and always ends with a positive message and a bible verse since this is considered a ministry. We were doing art class on Thursdays too at one of the local libraries, but it is over until September, so we had the day free until hockey time. My oldest son thought it would be a wonderful day to go to the zoo. They watched the old King Kong movie from the 1930s with their Dad in the morning, so my oldest son was in the mood to see some great apes and our local zoo has three orangutans. My five year old daughter wanted to go to the zoo to swim. They have a small pool in one section of the zoo where young children can play. Baby boy likes looking at the animals and loves the train. So we enthusiastically went to the zoo to spend some time before the weekly hockey class. My oldest son, my science guy, loves animals, especially great apes. So our first stop is always the Indonesian area where he enjoys walking through the rain forest exhibit and having the opportunity to see the Orangutans. Since my daughter mainly wants to swim, we went to stop number two at the Australian area where the little pool is so she could splash around in the water. These adventures are also learning experiences for me and what I learned today is that we will arrange for pool days for my daughter and no longer swim at the zoo. My daughter seemed to enjoy it for the most part, but cried a couple times when she was splashed in the face and then the boys decided to participate, but were not completely prepared with the right clothing attire, but I figured it was hot and they would probably dry off, so I thought I would go with the flow, which worked out fine with my oldest son, but not so much with baby boy. Of course he was determined to leave his shirt on and I got his shorts off of him, but they got back on him at some point and ended up wet and of course they were jean shorts. That was fun while it lasted, but when it came to an end, it was complete misery for baby boy and anyone in his path. Since we had hockey afterward and mad boy refused to wear his wet shirt, my only option was to get a dry shirt from the gift shop where fairness kicked in and because a dry shirt was in order, so was a mermaid doll and a chimpanzee mask. This led to some recovery from the zoo chaos, we grabbed some food and headed to hockey where baby boy's smile returned and the boys had a great time playing hockey while my daughter was able to admire her new mermaid and I started planning in my head how we would fit pool days into our schedule for her new swimming interests that sounds like great fun for me even if it is just her and I while the boys visit a friend. However, swim time at the zoo will no longer be an option with this unschooling family. :)
Tomorrow, Friday, will include nature class that meets once a month where my son and daughter will attend and then the spring recorder concert for my oldest son in the evening. This is a typical unschooling week for us. We often have activities that are scheduled weekly and monthly that seem to define our routine or schedule and the rest is free for self-directed learning. I actually enjoy the weeks when we are home more because that is when more spontaneity occurs in relation to learning, but weeks like this are nice too because they can bring the children inspiration for the slower days. Life is all about having a variety of experiences and exploring interests and finding who we are as individuals and in relation to others and unschooling is a great start for this life journey as it has the freedom for self-exploration and learning from our environment, community and families. I hope you enjoyed reading about our week.
We had a very long, cold winter this year and spring is normally a time when people start coming out of hibernation, but this year because of the extreme winter, it almost feels like we were all traumatized in some way after being cooped up so long inside our homes while at times being snowed in and have outdoor temperatures that were subzero and unsafe. I still feel like I am in some type of post winter daze, but I still do spring type activities by getting outside and staying active with the children.
Normally, I try to have two stay at home days per week where we just relax and enjoy our home environment, but this week was a busy out of the house week and we had something scheduled daily. Monday starts out our week with recorder class. My oldest son started playing the recorder in the fall with a recorder orchestra. He plays soprano recorder and they also have alto and bass recorders in their little orchestra of 6 to 12 year olds. The contra bass is not played by any of the younger kids, but it is this giant wood contraption that stands about six feet tall. I never knew this many types of recorders existed until my son joined the class in October. My son was feeling very discouraged and uninspired with recorder class. There is a concert this week and I told him that since he did not feel it was for him, he was welcome to quit after that concert. Then after I told him that, the teacher gave him his own professional soprano recorder. My son was so excited that he has practiced it several hours a day since he received it. Apparently he just needed a new incentive to keep his interest and now he no longer feels like he wants to quit recorder class and has a lot of enthusiasm about sticking with it for a while longer. This started a very musical week for him as he practiced his new recorder daily.
The children attend science classes at a local science museum once a month and Tuesday of this week was science day. My 7 year old son and 5 year old daughter attend these classes together. The classes are divided by age group 5-8 year olds are grouped together, 9-12 year olds and 13-16 year olds. The classes include a half hour demonstration and a hands on lab that usually takes about a hour and then they have some free time to explore the museum and spend time with their friends. The program goes from 1:30 to 4 p.m. This week they learned about germs, how they spread and the dangers of cigarette smoke on the body and the environment. So the topic this time around was focused on health, but the topics vary each month and cover biology, chemistry, robotics, math, earth science, among others. The classes usually include about 50 children, so on these days, the children learn about science and also have the opportunity to socialize with their friends. After participating in these science classes, my daughter well go to the class and will share things she learned or just talk about spending time with her friend and then that will satisfy her science needs for the month. My oldest son, loves science. He will fully participate in the class, answer most of the questions and talk about what is discussed and often be inspired to create his own experiments throughout the month based on what was introduced during the class. He loves science days.
Wednesday was ballet day. I treat the children to lunch on ballet day and today they chose a pizza franchise. Eating lunch at a restaurant with three young children is not as challenging as some may think. They are able to learn social etiquette and how to behave in a public restaurant and my oldest son, who is 7 years old, has enough confidence to give our order to the server. So this has been part of ballet day since we started the spring, midday session. My daughter, who is now five years old, started ballet last summer with Cinderella camp when she was four years old and has attended the four year old ballet classes during the fall, winter and spring sessions. She seems to learn a lot during her ballet classes, loves the teacher and enjoys making new friends in her class. This has been a wonderful introduction to ballet for her. While she does the class, I give the boys the option of waiting in the car and bringing reading material or games to play or just waiting in the building where they can watch their sister through the window and socialize with the other families. Lately, they have been choosing to stay in the building and seem to be content with this choice. Since it is spring and the weather is finally nice, we scheduled a park day after ballet and will continue to do this during spring, summer and fall as long as the weather cooperates. Today we met three other families at the park and the children had a couple hours of free play with their friends. My daughter works on her ballet skills and all of the children have the opportunity to work on social skills and build friendships on Wednesdays.
Thursdays are hockey days. My son had been requesting to play floor hockey for months, but I was having a challenge with finding a place for him to do this since he did not want to play ice hockey, which is more readily available in our community. Then I came across a local non-for-profit business where they play floor hockey on a weekly basis and it is not competitive, but rather fun and always ends with a positive message and a bible verse since this is considered a ministry. We were doing art class on Thursdays too at one of the local libraries, but it is over until September, so we had the day free until hockey time. My oldest son thought it would be a wonderful day to go to the zoo. They watched the old King Kong movie from the 1930s with their Dad in the morning, so my oldest son was in the mood to see some great apes and our local zoo has three orangutans. My five year old daughter wanted to go to the zoo to swim. They have a small pool in one section of the zoo where young children can play. Baby boy likes looking at the animals and loves the train. So we enthusiastically went to the zoo to spend some time before the weekly hockey class. My oldest son, my science guy, loves animals, especially great apes. So our first stop is always the Indonesian area where he enjoys walking through the rain forest exhibit and having the opportunity to see the Orangutans. Since my daughter mainly wants to swim, we went to stop number two at the Australian area where the little pool is so she could splash around in the water. These adventures are also learning experiences for me and what I learned today is that we will arrange for pool days for my daughter and no longer swim at the zoo. My daughter seemed to enjoy it for the most part, but cried a couple times when she was splashed in the face and then the boys decided to participate, but were not completely prepared with the right clothing attire, but I figured it was hot and they would probably dry off, so I thought I would go with the flow, which worked out fine with my oldest son, but not so much with baby boy. Of course he was determined to leave his shirt on and I got his shorts off of him, but they got back on him at some point and ended up wet and of course they were jean shorts. That was fun while it lasted, but when it came to an end, it was complete misery for baby boy and anyone in his path. Since we had hockey afterward and mad boy refused to wear his wet shirt, my only option was to get a dry shirt from the gift shop where fairness kicked in and because a dry shirt was in order, so was a mermaid doll and a chimpanzee mask. This led to some recovery from the zoo chaos, we grabbed some food and headed to hockey where baby boy's smile returned and the boys had a great time playing hockey while my daughter was able to admire her new mermaid and I started planning in my head how we would fit pool days into our schedule for her new swimming interests that sounds like great fun for me even if it is just her and I while the boys visit a friend. However, swim time at the zoo will no longer be an option with this unschooling family. :)
Tomorrow, Friday, will include nature class that meets once a month where my son and daughter will attend and then the spring recorder concert for my oldest son in the evening. This is a typical unschooling week for us. We often have activities that are scheduled weekly and monthly that seem to define our routine or schedule and the rest is free for self-directed learning. I actually enjoy the weeks when we are home more because that is when more spontaneity occurs in relation to learning, but weeks like this are nice too because they can bring the children inspiration for the slower days. Life is all about having a variety of experiences and exploring interests and finding who we are as individuals and in relation to others and unschooling is a great start for this life journey as it has the freedom for self-exploration and learning from our environment, community and families. I hope you enjoyed reading about our week.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Grade Levels
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!
In most cultures, it is the norm to think of most school age children in categories of grade levels. It often is the first question people will ask a child, "well, what grade are you in now?" to start up a conversation. The challenge with unschooling and grade levels is basically there are no grade levels. Children learn at their own rate and at their own speed and grade levels are irrelevant, especially for the lower elementary grades. If your child has visions of attending college someday, grade levels in junior high and high school even with the unschooling philosophy may start to make more sense, but with lower elementary, is there really a need for grade levels?
When I started this homeschooling journey, I did not begin as an unschooler. Unschooling is something that started to make more sense to me than a more structured, traditional approach when my oldest son was 5 1/2 years old. I considered him kindergarten at that point and my idea about grade levels was age 5, kindergarten, 6, first grade, 7, second grade, 8, 3rd grade and so on. So when the children turn a new age, they are in a new grade, but my mind also thinks in terms of what grade would they be going to if they were in public school. So even though we are unschooling, I have not been able to get out of the habit of grade levels and my son is also very determined to announce his grade level to everyone he knows. The children seem to have the desire to be classified in grade levels. It probably makes it easier when associating with school children at a playground and anyone they may have a conversation with in any culture who will start the conversation with, "so, what grade are you in now", so my view is basically, there is not anything wrong with grade levels.
My oldest son has a birthday coming up and he was proudly saying, "on my birthday, I will be in 3rd grade". Then I started thinking, hmmmm, he does not read at a 3rd grade level, but rather kindergarten or 1st grade level since he is more of a science kid. He understands the basic concepts of adding and subtracting with basic math since we have used more of a natural math approach, but uses his fingers still when doing this, so I started doubting myself and wondering if I should be doing more structure with him from time to time. I guess my mind has not completely committed to the unschooling philosophy even though I know this is the best learning approach. So I found a bunch of 1st/2nd grade books that I had collected through Amazon, garage sales and random people I've met and encouraged my son to work through some of the workbooks and read the stories marked grade 2 just so that I felt comfortable with him calling himself a third grader at the time of his birthday. So he started doing this on his own and said he was bored with some of the books, but did find one chapter book he found interesting and read a couple pages in it, so I was glad he was putting in the initiative. I guess the book was about Aliens, so of course that would interest a 7 year old boy. I was then surprised to find him reading Shakespeare before bed a couple nights ago. He said that he was just making up stories while he was pretending to read it. Perhaps he was not challenged by the 2nd grade level books. I began reading Julius Ceasar thinking that if my son is showing an interest in this, I need to read through it and put effort towards understanding it. It is written as a play and my next step will be to read this to my son if he is interested in me doing so. I figure if he isn't inspired by chapter books about dogs, if Shakespeare inspires him, we will just go with that.
I ended up with the Shakespeare book last year. I went to a garage sale that I was attracted to because there was a huge gothic looking antique mirror in the middle of the yard. I knew I really did not have a place in my home for the large mirror, nor could it fit in the small hatchback of a car that I was driving that day, but it attracted me to the garage sale none the less. This was a great find. I found an elementary geography book from 1896 along with a complete works of William Shakespeare and the owner of all of these interesting items was a minister and scholar and when he learned that we were homeschooling, he grabbed a few large US history books out of his car for me to take along too and all of these items were priced for just pennies basically. Life is learning and I never know what experience will lead to inspiration in our unschooling home and seeing that gothic mirror, lead me to getting a book about William Shakespeare's work and a 7 year old interested in reading it.
So my opinion about grade levels is that it is a great motivator for learning and even if you are unschooling, I don't know if eliminating grade levels is a necessary step for transitioning into this philosophy. My son wanting to be considered third grade has led him to trying to read Shakespeare. I see no harm in this. Perhaps William will inspire a new unschooling tangent.
In most cultures, it is the norm to think of most school age children in categories of grade levels. It often is the first question people will ask a child, "well, what grade are you in now?" to start up a conversation. The challenge with unschooling and grade levels is basically there are no grade levels. Children learn at their own rate and at their own speed and grade levels are irrelevant, especially for the lower elementary grades. If your child has visions of attending college someday, grade levels in junior high and high school even with the unschooling philosophy may start to make more sense, but with lower elementary, is there really a need for grade levels?
When I started this homeschooling journey, I did not begin as an unschooler. Unschooling is something that started to make more sense to me than a more structured, traditional approach when my oldest son was 5 1/2 years old. I considered him kindergarten at that point and my idea about grade levels was age 5, kindergarten, 6, first grade, 7, second grade, 8, 3rd grade and so on. So when the children turn a new age, they are in a new grade, but my mind also thinks in terms of what grade would they be going to if they were in public school. So even though we are unschooling, I have not been able to get out of the habit of grade levels and my son is also very determined to announce his grade level to everyone he knows. The children seem to have the desire to be classified in grade levels. It probably makes it easier when associating with school children at a playground and anyone they may have a conversation with in any culture who will start the conversation with, "so, what grade are you in now", so my view is basically, there is not anything wrong with grade levels.
My oldest son has a birthday coming up and he was proudly saying, "on my birthday, I will be in 3rd grade". Then I started thinking, hmmmm, he does not read at a 3rd grade level, but rather kindergarten or 1st grade level since he is more of a science kid. He understands the basic concepts of adding and subtracting with basic math since we have used more of a natural math approach, but uses his fingers still when doing this, so I started doubting myself and wondering if I should be doing more structure with him from time to time. I guess my mind has not completely committed to the unschooling philosophy even though I know this is the best learning approach. So I found a bunch of 1st/2nd grade books that I had collected through Amazon, garage sales and random people I've met and encouraged my son to work through some of the workbooks and read the stories marked grade 2 just so that I felt comfortable with him calling himself a third grader at the time of his birthday. So he started doing this on his own and said he was bored with some of the books, but did find one chapter book he found interesting and read a couple pages in it, so I was glad he was putting in the initiative. I guess the book was about Aliens, so of course that would interest a 7 year old boy. I was then surprised to find him reading Shakespeare before bed a couple nights ago. He said that he was just making up stories while he was pretending to read it. Perhaps he was not challenged by the 2nd grade level books. I began reading Julius Ceasar thinking that if my son is showing an interest in this, I need to read through it and put effort towards understanding it. It is written as a play and my next step will be to read this to my son if he is interested in me doing so. I figure if he isn't inspired by chapter books about dogs, if Shakespeare inspires him, we will just go with that.
I ended up with the Shakespeare book last year. I went to a garage sale that I was attracted to because there was a huge gothic looking antique mirror in the middle of the yard. I knew I really did not have a place in my home for the large mirror, nor could it fit in the small hatchback of a car that I was driving that day, but it attracted me to the garage sale none the less. This was a great find. I found an elementary geography book from 1896 along with a complete works of William Shakespeare and the owner of all of these interesting items was a minister and scholar and when he learned that we were homeschooling, he grabbed a few large US history books out of his car for me to take along too and all of these items were priced for just pennies basically. Life is learning and I never know what experience will lead to inspiration in our unschooling home and seeing that gothic mirror, lead me to getting a book about William Shakespeare's work and a 7 year old interested in reading it.
So my opinion about grade levels is that it is a great motivator for learning and even if you are unschooling, I don't know if eliminating grade levels is a necessary step for transitioning into this philosophy. My son wanting to be considered third grade has led him to trying to read Shakespeare. I see no harm in this. Perhaps William will inspire a new unschooling tangent.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Spring Break
I will be taking a break from the blog during the month of April. I'll be back in May! :)
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Unschooling Apes
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 a short blog entry, but I just wanted to share a little information about how we explore a particular interests with a hands on approach, research, reading, math, and using film and art to explore the interest fully.
My 7 year old son loves apes. He finds them so interesting, so much of our homeschooling is focused on the study of apes. He loves seeing the apes at the zoo and it almost seems like the apes can tell how much he loves them. When we went to the Toledo zoo last summer, the orangutan came over by my son like he wanted to share his food with him. The gorilla looked him right in the face and seemed to have love in his eyes. This was a great hands on activity where he could see the apes up close and personal. I know not everyone is supportive of zoos, but I feel like it is a great learning experience for children. As long as the animals are treated well, I think it is wonderful that these places exist, otherwise the chances of children actually seeing these animals they read about would more than likely not happen and there could be confusion between facts and fiction because of this. My son's ape fascination has been going on for a couple years now, so this could be an interest that leads to a passion or career in the future.
This past week, we grabbed a book about monkeys and apes at the library. We are doing a lot of research on monkeys and apes right now. I am learning way more about monkeys and apes than I ever thought anyone would want to know. I allow my son to pick out a book of interest from the library on a weekly basis. I encourage him to read, but I do not force it. He is not a strong reader yet, but I want him to enjoy reading. I made a mistake and pushed it too much in the beginning prior to learning about the unschooling approach and I got a lot of resistance because of that. I have learned to let him learn as he is ready and this approach works so much better for us.
Then he wanted to get the movie King Kong. We were able to get a 1933 version of King Kong and my son bought it with his own money. So by getting this film, we are covering some history, learning about film making because it includes special features and of course, there's an ape in it. What ape loving boy wouldn't love that? He also used some math during this process with money by paying for the movie himself. He got a $5 bill from his piggy bank. The movie was $4.41 on Amazon, so I had him figure out what change I owed him. He then was able to apply math and feel proud that he bought something on his own. So he has been watching this old movie over and over. My guess is the ape obsession may be here to stay.
We were able to cover the subjects of reading/literature, science and research, art and film, history and math simply by following his interest of apes. This is the art of unschooling.
This is a short blog entry, but I just wanted to share a little information about how we explore a particular interests with a hands on approach, research, reading, math, and using film and art to explore the interest fully.
My 7 year old son loves apes. He finds them so interesting, so much of our homeschooling is focused on the study of apes. He loves seeing the apes at the zoo and it almost seems like the apes can tell how much he loves them. When we went to the Toledo zoo last summer, the orangutan came over by my son like he wanted to share his food with him. The gorilla looked him right in the face and seemed to have love in his eyes. This was a great hands on activity where he could see the apes up close and personal. I know not everyone is supportive of zoos, but I feel like it is a great learning experience for children. As long as the animals are treated well, I think it is wonderful that these places exist, otherwise the chances of children actually seeing these animals they read about would more than likely not happen and there could be confusion between facts and fiction because of this. My son's ape fascination has been going on for a couple years now, so this could be an interest that leads to a passion or career in the future.
This past week, we grabbed a book about monkeys and apes at the library. We are doing a lot of research on monkeys and apes right now. I am learning way more about monkeys and apes than I ever thought anyone would want to know. I allow my son to pick out a book of interest from the library on a weekly basis. I encourage him to read, but I do not force it. He is not a strong reader yet, but I want him to enjoy reading. I made a mistake and pushed it too much in the beginning prior to learning about the unschooling approach and I got a lot of resistance because of that. I have learned to let him learn as he is ready and this approach works so much better for us.
Then he wanted to get the movie King Kong. We were able to get a 1933 version of King Kong and my son bought it with his own money. So by getting this film, we are covering some history, learning about film making because it includes special features and of course, there's an ape in it. What ape loving boy wouldn't love that? He also used some math during this process with money by paying for the movie himself. He got a $5 bill from his piggy bank. The movie was $4.41 on Amazon, so I had him figure out what change I owed him. He then was able to apply math and feel proud that he bought something on his own. So he has been watching this old movie over and over. My guess is the ape obsession may be here to stay.
We were able to cover the subjects of reading/literature, science and research, art and film, history and math simply by following his interest of apes. This is the art of unschooling.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Unschooling Challenge--Relaxation and Peacefulness Versus Busy, Manic, Chaos
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 Challenge--Relaxation and Peacefulness versus Busy, Manic, Chaos
The homeschooling community is bombarded with events and experiences to the point where we could have an entire day filled with activities outside of our home and they would all be very educational and interesting and this could be done 7 days a week. It is wonderful that these activities are available and that our community is so inviting for children to learn; however, I find that often the most significant learning happens in our home environment in a relaxed atmosphere where we are not constantly rushed to be somewhere or plan something. I find that learning and contentment with life will often happen on the down days rather than on the busy days. So once again, I am faced with a challenge of determining our priorities and what are essential for learning and let go of some of the other events in our lives that seem like more than we are wanting to handle at this time.
My son likes hockey, chess, acting, music, ballet, socializing, wearing costumes, pretend play, writing stories, creating art projects, super heroes, comic books, science, math, Star Wars, golf, tennis, bowling, animals, geography, etc. The list is endless and therefore, we could very easily be trying to cram everything into every given week to increase enrichment in our lives. Then I have the younger two who have their own interests and will soon have many activities they want to try. So that my head does not start spinning and blow off into oblivion, I need to come up with a downsizing plan for this unschooling adventure.
This past week, we had something scheduled daily and I prefer to have at least 2 'stay at home days' each week. Monday was my son's recorder class, Tuesday, my daughter had ballet because the previous week, we had a blizzard on ballet day where we got about 9 inches of snow within 24 hours, so her Wednesday ballet class had to be rescheduled. Wednesday my daughter had ballet again and then we went out to eat after her ballet and did not return home until late afternoon. Thursday, I decided to let my children try out an art class that I had been hearing about at one of the libraries, so we went to that, hung out at the library for a while, had some downtime for about an hour and then went to hockey and did not get home until almost 8 p.m. About a month ago, I had scheduled a socialization gathering at the science museum with a homeschool group and since I had organized it, it would be rude to not show up, so on Friday, we went to the science museum, ran some errands afterward and did not arrive home until close to dinnertime. Today I need to do grocery shopping and tomorrow, my husband's family wanted to have a gathering to celebrate March birthdays.
Ok, my head is starting to spin, ok, ok, I caught it.
Then I hear about activities and I think, oh, that will be great for my son or daughter. Baby boy just goes along. He doesn't do anything yet. For example, someone is starting a chess club and wants to meet twice a month for that. My son loves playing chess, so I volunteered us to be participants. My daughter is always saying that she wants to have more friends. She has met a couple little friends through ballet and homeschool activities, but she seems to have a very social personality and always wants more friends, so I noticed one Mom was starting a girl Scout troop and I thought that would be a great way for her to meet new friends. I had my son in Cub Scouts for a while, but we had to pull away from that because they would have 2 to 3 activities a week and it started to seem like too much. Then I decided to join a book club and they want to meet 1 to 2 times a month. These activities all sound like fun, but then I start to realize that our time here on earth is not enough for all of the opportunities presented to us. My spontaneity and inability to focus on one thing with a life of multitasking, have sort of led me to a loop of chaos when I have 3 children to manage.
So I had a talk with my son. I asked him what his favorite activities are that he does and he said that he really likes hockey, his 2nd favorite is art class and his 3rd favorite is his recorder class. We no longer do Cub Scouts with him. My daughter is content with ballet and she is insure about art class. She went to the first class, but she says that she may prefer to just play with her younger brother instead while her older brother goes to the art class. I am leaving this choice up to her. My son also wants to audition for plays with the youth theatre. So far, he auditioned for one play, Willy Wonka. He did not get a part, but if he would have, they practice 5 or more days a week, so we need to leave our schedule open for that possibility.
So this is my plan. Wednesdays will include ballet for my daughter, lunch and park time once it is warm. Thursdays will include art class for my oldest son and maybe daughter, park time when it is warmer, and hockey for my oldest son. There will be a monthly science class for my oldest son and daughter on Tuesdays , a monthly nature class for my son and daughter on Fridays, and a monthly book club on Fridays for mom that includes playtime for the kids. The rest of the time will be open, free and calm to just enjoy life and be spontaneous. This is our current goal. We will reduce our busy schedule and find peace. Doesn't that sound wonderful?
The goal is to simplify our lives and have balance where we are not constantly on the go and unable to think straight, but we have some activities to enjoy and help us learn and we also have down time to reflect and gain wisdom. Priorities are key. What are our priorities as individuals? What can we do without in our day to day lives? I think these are questions we ask ourselves throughout our lives. Life can be so exciting with so many opportunities, that it is so easy to take on more responsibilities than we need to in order to be happy and content. So we are downsizing our homeschooling activities so there is room for more cuddle time and just being together rather than constantly running. We are going to take time to breathe and learn from life itself without constant exterior stimulation around us that in the long run can bring about confusion and anxiety. Our current goal is to just enjoy life, breath, live and learn as we care for each other and all of these pets we collected last year that led to a no new pet policy this year, but that is a whole separate story.
Unschooling Challenge--Relaxation and Peacefulness versus Busy, Manic, Chaos
The homeschooling community is bombarded with events and experiences to the point where we could have an entire day filled with activities outside of our home and they would all be very educational and interesting and this could be done 7 days a week. It is wonderful that these activities are available and that our community is so inviting for children to learn; however, I find that often the most significant learning happens in our home environment in a relaxed atmosphere where we are not constantly rushed to be somewhere or plan something. I find that learning and contentment with life will often happen on the down days rather than on the busy days. So once again, I am faced with a challenge of determining our priorities and what are essential for learning and let go of some of the other events in our lives that seem like more than we are wanting to handle at this time.
My son likes hockey, chess, acting, music, ballet, socializing, wearing costumes, pretend play, writing stories, creating art projects, super heroes, comic books, science, math, Star Wars, golf, tennis, bowling, animals, geography, etc. The list is endless and therefore, we could very easily be trying to cram everything into every given week to increase enrichment in our lives. Then I have the younger two who have their own interests and will soon have many activities they want to try. So that my head does not start spinning and blow off into oblivion, I need to come up with a downsizing plan for this unschooling adventure.
This past week, we had something scheduled daily and I prefer to have at least 2 'stay at home days' each week. Monday was my son's recorder class, Tuesday, my daughter had ballet because the previous week, we had a blizzard on ballet day where we got about 9 inches of snow within 24 hours, so her Wednesday ballet class had to be rescheduled. Wednesday my daughter had ballet again and then we went out to eat after her ballet and did not return home until late afternoon. Thursday, I decided to let my children try out an art class that I had been hearing about at one of the libraries, so we went to that, hung out at the library for a while, had some downtime for about an hour and then went to hockey and did not get home until almost 8 p.m. About a month ago, I had scheduled a socialization gathering at the science museum with a homeschool group and since I had organized it, it would be rude to not show up, so on Friday, we went to the science museum, ran some errands afterward and did not arrive home until close to dinnertime. Today I need to do grocery shopping and tomorrow, my husband's family wanted to have a gathering to celebrate March birthdays.
Ok, my head is starting to spin, ok, ok, I caught it.
Then I hear about activities and I think, oh, that will be great for my son or daughter. Baby boy just goes along. He doesn't do anything yet. For example, someone is starting a chess club and wants to meet twice a month for that. My son loves playing chess, so I volunteered us to be participants. My daughter is always saying that she wants to have more friends. She has met a couple little friends through ballet and homeschool activities, but she seems to have a very social personality and always wants more friends, so I noticed one Mom was starting a girl Scout troop and I thought that would be a great way for her to meet new friends. I had my son in Cub Scouts for a while, but we had to pull away from that because they would have 2 to 3 activities a week and it started to seem like too much. Then I decided to join a book club and they want to meet 1 to 2 times a month. These activities all sound like fun, but then I start to realize that our time here on earth is not enough for all of the opportunities presented to us. My spontaneity and inability to focus on one thing with a life of multitasking, have sort of led me to a loop of chaos when I have 3 children to manage.
So I had a talk with my son. I asked him what his favorite activities are that he does and he said that he really likes hockey, his 2nd favorite is art class and his 3rd favorite is his recorder class. We no longer do Cub Scouts with him. My daughter is content with ballet and she is insure about art class. She went to the first class, but she says that she may prefer to just play with her younger brother instead while her older brother goes to the art class. I am leaving this choice up to her. My son also wants to audition for plays with the youth theatre. So far, he auditioned for one play, Willy Wonka. He did not get a part, but if he would have, they practice 5 or more days a week, so we need to leave our schedule open for that possibility.
So this is my plan. Wednesdays will include ballet for my daughter, lunch and park time once it is warm. Thursdays will include art class for my oldest son and maybe daughter, park time when it is warmer, and hockey for my oldest son. There will be a monthly science class for my oldest son and daughter on Tuesdays , a monthly nature class for my son and daughter on Fridays, and a monthly book club on Fridays for mom that includes playtime for the kids. The rest of the time will be open, free and calm to just enjoy life and be spontaneous. This is our current goal. We will reduce our busy schedule and find peace. Doesn't that sound wonderful?
The goal is to simplify our lives and have balance where we are not constantly on the go and unable to think straight, but we have some activities to enjoy and help us learn and we also have down time to reflect and gain wisdom. Priorities are key. What are our priorities as individuals? What can we do without in our day to day lives? I think these are questions we ask ourselves throughout our lives. Life can be so exciting with so many opportunities, that it is so easy to take on more responsibilities than we need to in order to be happy and content. So we are downsizing our homeschooling activities so there is room for more cuddle time and just being together rather than constantly running. We are going to take time to breathe and learn from life itself without constant exterior stimulation around us that in the long run can bring about confusion and anxiety. Our current goal is to just enjoy life, breath, live and learn as we care for each other and all of these pets we collected last year that led to a no new pet policy this year, but that is a whole separate story.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Unschooling Wednesday: Writing Projects
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 began the day by saying, "mom, I'm going to make a calendar". He had his Spiderman Calendar that he was using as a guide and his plan was to make his very own King Kong calendar with every month and day and King Kong illustrations on each page. By doing this, he is working on his spelling of every month of the year and learning how many days each month has, working on his drawing skills and being able to divide up the weeks and days by creating a grid by hand.
I gave my son his own calendar when he was about 6 and had him mark the days so he could learn his dates, months and days of the week. He would often be more aware of the date than I usually am during this time. He does not do this by hand anymore, but usually keeps track of the day, year, month and day in his head well. So I guess he is ready for the next step of creating his own calendar. Perhaps as this progresses, we may find calendars from other cultures and other centuries and assess similarities and differences between them. For now, we are sticking with our standard American calendar for our time.
This was followed by my daughter going to her ballet class and we just waited for her during her ballet. The boys did not seem to show much interest in focusing on anything during ballet time, so we just socialized with the other ballet families during this time.
My rule with the children is that they can be in one physical activity starting sometime at the age of 4. My oldest son did T-ball in the summers when he was 4, 5 and 6 and ballet during the school year initially when he was 4, 5, 6 and 7. He was in the Nutcracker 3 times. He also played soccer for a few weeks to see if he liked it in the fall, but he did not want to play it again. Now he plays hockey weekly. My daughter chose to do Cinderella ballet camp during the summer and we were so impressed with the program, we decided to stick with it and she has done ballet for fall, winter and spring. She really likes ballet and this has been the only activity she is interested in doing at this time. Her ballet class does not do big performances in an auditorium, but is geared towards preschool children, so I feel like it is a good fit for her. I figure my children can be well rounded and try a lot of different things or just find one thing they really like and stick with that so that they can do it really well. Either way, we try to be encouraging and supportive for whatever they may have interest in doing.
After ballet, we stopped for lunch and then went to pick up a free desk that someone posted on one of the local Facebook homeschooling sites. My oldest son has needed his own work space for a while now and I have been searching for a small, traditional school desk for him. I found one a few days ago and today was the day to get it.
We picked up the desk from a nice family, brought it home and set it up. I put a few of my son's self-initiated projects in his desk and he said, "oh good, now I have somewhere to keep my orangutan data". I had no idea he had orangutan data. He showed me a folder he had created and had written facts about orangutans. It was so cute because he was trying to read me what he had written and he couldn't read his own writing because his spelling is so bad. So I am going to sit down with him and write out his facts correctly so that he can also include these in his folder. This way he will be able to read it better.
I am amazed by how much he has been trying to write the last couple weeks. He has initiated 3 writing projects within a 2 week period. I am going to guide him and encourage him with his new interests in writing and my prediction is within a month, he will be able to write fairly well and spell fairly accurately. He seems to be moving into a new developmental phase with his learning.
Unschooling is trusting your children and letting them be the guide to their education. They will learn and be inspired by the world around them. The parents' job is to pay close attention to developmental stages, interests, and ideas. Then to encourage, support and find resources related to these so that a child can thoroughly explore the world at their own speed. Since I switched to the unschooling approach about 2 years ago, it is amazing how motivated my son is to learn. What was once a struggle is now inspiring. This is a very exciting way to raise children. There have been ups and downs with this approach as there is with most things in life, but I am very happy with the results and look forward to seeing how their lives will develop as they become adults and start to share their contributions with society. The possibilities are endless with no walls to disable growth of any kind.
My 7 year old son began the day by saying, "mom, I'm going to make a calendar". He had his Spiderman Calendar that he was using as a guide and his plan was to make his very own King Kong calendar with every month and day and King Kong illustrations on each page. By doing this, he is working on his spelling of every month of the year and learning how many days each month has, working on his drawing skills and being able to divide up the weeks and days by creating a grid by hand.
I gave my son his own calendar when he was about 6 and had him mark the days so he could learn his dates, months and days of the week. He would often be more aware of the date than I usually am during this time. He does not do this by hand anymore, but usually keeps track of the day, year, month and day in his head well. So I guess he is ready for the next step of creating his own calendar. Perhaps as this progresses, we may find calendars from other cultures and other centuries and assess similarities and differences between them. For now, we are sticking with our standard American calendar for our time.
This was followed by my daughter going to her ballet class and we just waited for her during her ballet. The boys did not seem to show much interest in focusing on anything during ballet time, so we just socialized with the other ballet families during this time.
My rule with the children is that they can be in one physical activity starting sometime at the age of 4. My oldest son did T-ball in the summers when he was 4, 5 and 6 and ballet during the school year initially when he was 4, 5, 6 and 7. He was in the Nutcracker 3 times. He also played soccer for a few weeks to see if he liked it in the fall, but he did not want to play it again. Now he plays hockey weekly. My daughter chose to do Cinderella ballet camp during the summer and we were so impressed with the program, we decided to stick with it and she has done ballet for fall, winter and spring. She really likes ballet and this has been the only activity she is interested in doing at this time. Her ballet class does not do big performances in an auditorium, but is geared towards preschool children, so I feel like it is a good fit for her. I figure my children can be well rounded and try a lot of different things or just find one thing they really like and stick with that so that they can do it really well. Either way, we try to be encouraging and supportive for whatever they may have interest in doing.
After ballet, we stopped for lunch and then went to pick up a free desk that someone posted on one of the local Facebook homeschooling sites. My oldest son has needed his own work space for a while now and I have been searching for a small, traditional school desk for him. I found one a few days ago and today was the day to get it.
We picked up the desk from a nice family, brought it home and set it up. I put a few of my son's self-initiated projects in his desk and he said, "oh good, now I have somewhere to keep my orangutan data". I had no idea he had orangutan data. He showed me a folder he had created and had written facts about orangutans. It was so cute because he was trying to read me what he had written and he couldn't read his own writing because his spelling is so bad. So I am going to sit down with him and write out his facts correctly so that he can also include these in his folder. This way he will be able to read it better.
I am amazed by how much he has been trying to write the last couple weeks. He has initiated 3 writing projects within a 2 week period. I am going to guide him and encourage him with his new interests in writing and my prediction is within a month, he will be able to write fairly well and spell fairly accurately. He seems to be moving into a new developmental phase with his learning.
Unschooling is trusting your children and letting them be the guide to their education. They will learn and be inspired by the world around them. The parents' job is to pay close attention to developmental stages, interests, and ideas. Then to encourage, support and find resources related to these so that a child can thoroughly explore the world at their own speed. Since I switched to the unschooling approach about 2 years ago, it is amazing how motivated my son is to learn. What was once a struggle is now inspiring. This is a very exciting way to raise children. There have been ups and downs with this approach as there is with most things in life, but I am very happy with the results and look forward to seeing how their lives will develop as they become adults and start to share their contributions with society. The possibilities are endless with no walls to disable growth of any kind.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Unschooling Monday: Music Day
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 not necessarily a life without routine. Often outside activities we have throughout the week define our routine and today is music day in the afternoon where my son attends his weekly recorder class.
Our day began with my 7 year old son playing around with some free on-line educational game sites. Today he played around with Teach Your Monster To Read and Switcheroo Zoo. He enjoys playing with both of these sites, but did say that he is ready for something more challenging, so I'll have to get my research goggles out and find some sites geared more towards 2nd or maybe 3rd grade to give him more of a challenge.
While he did this, my 5 year old daughter said that she wanted to have drawing time, so I just gave her a pad of paper and a big box of crayons. She then created several pictures of ice skaters and My Little Ponies. We went to Disney on Ice over the weekend and apparently this left an impression on her. She also went sliding across the foyer in between drawings in her socks and a pretty little skirt and tank top so that she could pretend she was ice skating. She was oh so lovely. I am thinking ice skating may be in our near future. My daughter loves figure skating and my son loves hockey, so I could probably persuade both of them to give it a try so I can get some good exercise too.
While they were busy, baby boy was playing with his cars and watching Sponge Bob, so I was able to have some self-care time. I try to do yoga five days a week with 20 min. to 30 min. routines, so I did my yoga while the others were busy with their activities and had a hot shower without too many interruptions. Self-care is essential for a homeschooling mom. Without mom time, I do not think I could survive this lifestyle.
This was followed by lunch and then we took off to take my son to his recorder class. My son has been playing recorder since October and actually got to participate in a concert at Christmas time with the older kids. My son did say that he was ready to be finished with the recorder, but if they start an activity, I like for them to at least finish the semester or year before moving onto something else. He has the desire to someday play the Tuba, but needs to master the recorder initially. We all have our dreams.
A couple weeks ago, we were planning on taking the kids to the roller dome on my husband's birthday, but we are not the most organized family and the roller dome was closed, surprise, surprise. So instead, we drove around and went to different music stores. My husband is a musician and this is what he wanted to do when his first dream was shattered by a closed, locked door at the roller dome. Well, we came across a music store that had orchestra type instruments and my son was able to see a real live tuba, his dream instrument. I guess they set up free classes where kids can come and try out different instruments and the nice lady at the store said that because of my son's size, she would start him on a baritone since the giant tuba, sousaphone, weighs 30 pounds and my son is only around 50 pounds. So this is something we plan to set up this summer with a group of other families.
From this day, I learned that there is an interest in ice skating and my son is working hard on his recorder so that he can prepare for his baritone or tuba lessons maybe next fall. These are new interests that have appeared in our lives within the last few months. It is important to expose the children to a diverse amount of activities so that they have the opportunity to be well rounded, pay close attention to what brings a sparkle to their eye and motivates them to love life and then just go with it. I keep our options open and I do not force my children to commit to anything if they do not want to do it. I just figure if they are finished with one activity, they are ready for something better. Life is all about experiences and feeling inspired, so I figure it is best to start this from the beginning rather than to wait until it is too late and the motivation and spark for living has declined during the teen years. Life should always be inspiring and uplifting. If this is how it begins, chances are, this will continue and boredom will not be part of our language in our home. Their entire life will simply be a big learning experience filled with dreams and new talents and experiences throughout.
Perhaps I'll have a professional ice skater and a professional musician with his giant tuba. Or perhaps these are just short lived interests that will lead to something even better. It is impossible to know. That is why all interests should be respected no matter how silly they may seem or how amazing they could be. This is a beginning of a life of hope. Unschooling is a great start to a positive and interesting life.
Unschooling is not necessarily a life without routine. Often outside activities we have throughout the week define our routine and today is music day in the afternoon where my son attends his weekly recorder class.
Our day began with my 7 year old son playing around with some free on-line educational game sites. Today he played around with Teach Your Monster To Read and Switcheroo Zoo. He enjoys playing with both of these sites, but did say that he is ready for something more challenging, so I'll have to get my research goggles out and find some sites geared more towards 2nd or maybe 3rd grade to give him more of a challenge.
While he did this, my 5 year old daughter said that she wanted to have drawing time, so I just gave her a pad of paper and a big box of crayons. She then created several pictures of ice skaters and My Little Ponies. We went to Disney on Ice over the weekend and apparently this left an impression on her. She also went sliding across the foyer in between drawings in her socks and a pretty little skirt and tank top so that she could pretend she was ice skating. She was oh so lovely. I am thinking ice skating may be in our near future. My daughter loves figure skating and my son loves hockey, so I could probably persuade both of them to give it a try so I can get some good exercise too.
While they were busy, baby boy was playing with his cars and watching Sponge Bob, so I was able to have some self-care time. I try to do yoga five days a week with 20 min. to 30 min. routines, so I did my yoga while the others were busy with their activities and had a hot shower without too many interruptions. Self-care is essential for a homeschooling mom. Without mom time, I do not think I could survive this lifestyle.
This was followed by lunch and then we took off to take my son to his recorder class. My son has been playing recorder since October and actually got to participate in a concert at Christmas time with the older kids. My son did say that he was ready to be finished with the recorder, but if they start an activity, I like for them to at least finish the semester or year before moving onto something else. He has the desire to someday play the Tuba, but needs to master the recorder initially. We all have our dreams.
A couple weeks ago, we were planning on taking the kids to the roller dome on my husband's birthday, but we are not the most organized family and the roller dome was closed, surprise, surprise. So instead, we drove around and went to different music stores. My husband is a musician and this is what he wanted to do when his first dream was shattered by a closed, locked door at the roller dome. Well, we came across a music store that had orchestra type instruments and my son was able to see a real live tuba, his dream instrument. I guess they set up free classes where kids can come and try out different instruments and the nice lady at the store said that because of my son's size, she would start him on a baritone since the giant tuba, sousaphone, weighs 30 pounds and my son is only around 50 pounds. So this is something we plan to set up this summer with a group of other families.
From this day, I learned that there is an interest in ice skating and my son is working hard on his recorder so that he can prepare for his baritone or tuba lessons maybe next fall. These are new interests that have appeared in our lives within the last few months. It is important to expose the children to a diverse amount of activities so that they have the opportunity to be well rounded, pay close attention to what brings a sparkle to their eye and motivates them to love life and then just go with it. I keep our options open and I do not force my children to commit to anything if they do not want to do it. I just figure if they are finished with one activity, they are ready for something better. Life is all about experiences and feeling inspired, so I figure it is best to start this from the beginning rather than to wait until it is too late and the motivation and spark for living has declined during the teen years. Life should always be inspiring and uplifting. If this is how it begins, chances are, this will continue and boredom will not be part of our language in our home. Their entire life will simply be a big learning experience filled with dreams and new talents and experiences throughout.
Perhaps I'll have a professional ice skater and a professional musician with his giant tuba. Or perhaps these are just short lived interests that will lead to something even better. It is impossible to know. That is why all interests should be respected no matter how silly they may seem or how amazing they could be. This is a beginning of a life of hope. Unschooling is a great start to a positive and interesting life.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Unschooling Friday: A Day at Home
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 in our unschooling home. My oldest son who is 7 years old started his day by helping out with cleaning up his room. I've been trying to vacuum daily because this is an activity I hate doing, so I figure if I make myself do it everyday, it will get me in a routine, well, in his room, there is one corner where I cannot see the floor, so his job today was to find he floor there so I can finish vacuuming his room. He asked if he could take a break from this job after doing it for about a half hour and I did not see a problem with that. He then brought out all of his stuffed animals, created full costumes for all of them and gave them hockey sticks. He used random things he found around the house for very elaborate goalie costumes and then he had a game a hockey with his stuffed animals.
Hockey is a new interest for my son. I discovered a young couple who is trying to start a business where they do floor hockey in the community and incorporate hockey into a ministry of sorts. So after each hockey game, the coach will go over some positive messages and maybe even read a bible verse as part of the event. We are a secular homeschooling family, but I am open to all religions and expressions of spirituality, so I see this as a positive experience for my son. Well, this week, the coach put on full goalie gear and apparently that left an impression on my son from what I was able to witness today.
After his intense hockey game with his stuffed animals, he got his horse stuffed animal and created this contraption with blankets, chairs and what not and used that to make his way into the kitchen. I asked him what he was doing and he said that he created a Trojan horse so that I would not see him. I asked him how he learned about a Trojan horse and he said that he learned about it through the Starfall Program, which is a free, on-line reading and math program for kindergarten and lower elementary ages. He made his way into the kitchen and said that he wanted to do some experiments. He likes mixing food together and heating it up or freezing it to see what happens. After doing an aimless concoction, he decided to try to make me a healthy Pepsi. He mixed cranberry juice, baking soda, vanilla and some strawberries and put them in the Magic Bullet mixer and watched it fizz and mix. It was really interesting. It is a little too baking soda tasting, but I think he may have the beginning of an idea started. He felt very proud of what he created. He then found his way into his bedroom and had some quiet play time with super heroes for a while.
This gave me the opportunity to spend time with the younger two children. Baby boy was playing with cars while his bigger sister was playing out scenes with her My Little Pony toys. My daughter is now 5 years old and her little brother is almost 3. Baby boy decided he wanted to read books, so we sat on the rocking chair and read Goodnight Moon and Cars over and over. I would read some and then he would act like he was reading, but his version was usually just a lot of babbling. While we had reading time, my daughter found some giftwrapping tissue paper and decided that she would make hair bows for everyone in the house. These activities took a good hour or so and then baby boy wanted to read a pop up book about Monsters, so we looked at that one for a while, but it is a bit more wordy and baby boy did not have the patience for that, so we mainly looked at the pop up pictures. Once everyone in the house and all of the pets had a tissue paper hair bow, the 3 children decided to have some downtime and watch PBS. So it was time to watch some Dinosaur Train.
This was our day. Some days we are out of the house a lot, but I really like the stay at home days. On these days, the children can really explore their creativity, relax and embrace who they are as little people. So our stay at home days are our self-discovery days. Everyone needs down time to express their creativity and this is why I love these days. The house is generally more messy on these days, but I'd rather have messy creativity happening rather than clean, brain stagnating boredom. It also helps them learn how to entertain themselves and love who they are. I love stay at home days in our unschooling family and I may just have a healthy Pepsi to drink sometime in the near future if we have more days like this.
Today was a stay at home day in our unschooling home. My oldest son who is 7 years old started his day by helping out with cleaning up his room. I've been trying to vacuum daily because this is an activity I hate doing, so I figure if I make myself do it everyday, it will get me in a routine, well, in his room, there is one corner where I cannot see the floor, so his job today was to find he floor there so I can finish vacuuming his room. He asked if he could take a break from this job after doing it for about a half hour and I did not see a problem with that. He then brought out all of his stuffed animals, created full costumes for all of them and gave them hockey sticks. He used random things he found around the house for very elaborate goalie costumes and then he had a game a hockey with his stuffed animals.
Hockey is a new interest for my son. I discovered a young couple who is trying to start a business where they do floor hockey in the community and incorporate hockey into a ministry of sorts. So after each hockey game, the coach will go over some positive messages and maybe even read a bible verse as part of the event. We are a secular homeschooling family, but I am open to all religions and expressions of spirituality, so I see this as a positive experience for my son. Well, this week, the coach put on full goalie gear and apparently that left an impression on my son from what I was able to witness today.
After his intense hockey game with his stuffed animals, he got his horse stuffed animal and created this contraption with blankets, chairs and what not and used that to make his way into the kitchen. I asked him what he was doing and he said that he created a Trojan horse so that I would not see him. I asked him how he learned about a Trojan horse and he said that he learned about it through the Starfall Program, which is a free, on-line reading and math program for kindergarten and lower elementary ages. He made his way into the kitchen and said that he wanted to do some experiments. He likes mixing food together and heating it up or freezing it to see what happens. After doing an aimless concoction, he decided to try to make me a healthy Pepsi. He mixed cranberry juice, baking soda, vanilla and some strawberries and put them in the Magic Bullet mixer and watched it fizz and mix. It was really interesting. It is a little too baking soda tasting, but I think he may have the beginning of an idea started. He felt very proud of what he created. He then found his way into his bedroom and had some quiet play time with super heroes for a while.
This gave me the opportunity to spend time with the younger two children. Baby boy was playing with cars while his bigger sister was playing out scenes with her My Little Pony toys. My daughter is now 5 years old and her little brother is almost 3. Baby boy decided he wanted to read books, so we sat on the rocking chair and read Goodnight Moon and Cars over and over. I would read some and then he would act like he was reading, but his version was usually just a lot of babbling. While we had reading time, my daughter found some giftwrapping tissue paper and decided that she would make hair bows for everyone in the house. These activities took a good hour or so and then baby boy wanted to read a pop up book about Monsters, so we looked at that one for a while, but it is a bit more wordy and baby boy did not have the patience for that, so we mainly looked at the pop up pictures. Once everyone in the house and all of the pets had a tissue paper hair bow, the 3 children decided to have some downtime and watch PBS. So it was time to watch some Dinosaur Train.
This was our day. Some days we are out of the house a lot, but I really like the stay at home days. On these days, the children can really explore their creativity, relax and embrace who they are as little people. So our stay at home days are our self-discovery days. Everyone needs down time to express their creativity and this is why I love these days. The house is generally more messy on these days, but I'd rather have messy creativity happening rather than clean, brain stagnating boredom. It also helps them learn how to entertain themselves and love who they are. I love stay at home days in our unschooling family and I may just have a healthy Pepsi to drink sometime in the near future if we have more days like this.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Black Squirrels vs. Grey Squirrels: 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!
There was a black squirrel.
Then there came a grey squirrel that wanted the tree
that was bigger.
The grey squirrel saw the black squirrel, said, "Let's fight in the war".
Woohoo! I win, you lose! The End
I love self-initiated projects because it helps me see what my child needs to work on, which apparently his spelling and sentence structure needs some work, but it also helps me see how he is gaining confidence and understanding his life experiences. A few days prior to this, he was bullied by some bigger kids at the science museum and he allowed them to crush his spirits for the day rather than standing up for himself. We talked about how he could handle things differently the next time if something like this happens again by verbally standing up for himself. I would not want him to have a physical fight, of course, and we talked about how this is not the way to handle conflicts. He has also had some education on wars with WWII in particular because his grandfather fought in this war and we have talked about it with some age appropriate detail and watched a documentary about it. He was able to see the relationship with the squirrels in relation to his situation at the science museum and how the smaller squirrels seem to be the stronger ones. So I saw this story as something very positive for him where he was able to gain confidence in himself and know that even if he is smaller than someone else, he can still stand up for himself and be strong.
We went back to the science museum this week for some classes and I am unsure if the bullies were there this time around. If they were, there were no significant incidents, but what I did see was a confident little boy with a big group of boys of all ages and he looked so happy and confident. I also had reports from another mom that he raised his hand and answered most of the questions correctly in his class. I am always running after my toddler while he does his class, so I let him and his sister attend the class independently while some of the parents choose to go to the class with their children. My son loves science and is like a sponge when it comes to scientific knowledge. His knowledge base regarding science goes way beyond mine and he is only 7 years old. So when he said he never wanted to return to the science museum, I knew it was time for him to learn a new lesson about human nature. No one should prevent you from pursuing your dreams, especially some insecure bully types. One of his dreams is to be a scientist and I am glad he was able to see a relationship between human and squirrel behavior with the smaller squirrel being victorious despite his petite physical characteristics.
In regard to the spelling and sentence structure issue, I went through his book and rewrote everything on lined paper for him to practice writing with the proper spelling and sentence structure. So this self-initiated project was a great example of observation and expression along with a learning experience covering some of the essential basics of writing including proper spelling and sentence structure.
My son felt inspired and decided to write a book. He wrote a book about the war between the grey and black squirrels in our back yard. The grey squirrels are larger than the black squirrels, but the black squirrels are so assertive that they try to take over, so all of the grey squirrels are being segregated to the front yard. My son found this so inspiring, so he wrote a book with complete illustration with the war between the grey and black squirrels. I may have a young author on my hands.
Attack of the Squirrels
Black vs. Grey
Attack of the Squirrels
Black vs. Grey
There was a black squirrel.
Then there came a grey squirrel that wanted the tree
that was bigger.
The grey squirrel saw the black squirrel, said, "Let's fight in the war".
Woohoo! I win, you lose! The End
I love self-initiated projects because it helps me see what my child needs to work on, which apparently his spelling and sentence structure needs some work, but it also helps me see how he is gaining confidence and understanding his life experiences. A few days prior to this, he was bullied by some bigger kids at the science museum and he allowed them to crush his spirits for the day rather than standing up for himself. We talked about how he could handle things differently the next time if something like this happens again by verbally standing up for himself. I would not want him to have a physical fight, of course, and we talked about how this is not the way to handle conflicts. He has also had some education on wars with WWII in particular because his grandfather fought in this war and we have talked about it with some age appropriate detail and watched a documentary about it. He was able to see the relationship with the squirrels in relation to his situation at the science museum and how the smaller squirrels seem to be the stronger ones. So I saw this story as something very positive for him where he was able to gain confidence in himself and know that even if he is smaller than someone else, he can still stand up for himself and be strong.
We went back to the science museum this week for some classes and I am unsure if the bullies were there this time around. If they were, there were no significant incidents, but what I did see was a confident little boy with a big group of boys of all ages and he looked so happy and confident. I also had reports from another mom that he raised his hand and answered most of the questions correctly in his class. I am always running after my toddler while he does his class, so I let him and his sister attend the class independently while some of the parents choose to go to the class with their children. My son loves science and is like a sponge when it comes to scientific knowledge. His knowledge base regarding science goes way beyond mine and he is only 7 years old. So when he said he never wanted to return to the science museum, I knew it was time for him to learn a new lesson about human nature. No one should prevent you from pursuing your dreams, especially some insecure bully types. One of his dreams is to be a scientist and I am glad he was able to see a relationship between human and squirrel behavior with the smaller squirrel being victorious despite his petite physical characteristics.
In regard to the spelling and sentence structure issue, I went through his book and rewrote everything on lined paper for him to practice writing with the proper spelling and sentence structure. So this self-initiated project was a great example of observation and expression along with a learning experience covering some of the essential basics of writing including proper spelling and sentence structure.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
How to deal with bullies
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's lesson was much different than most of our unschooling lessons are. My son learned how to deal with a bully. Since we do homeschool, this is not a common occurrence like it may be if he were to go to a private or public school where the student to teacher ratio is a bit skewed. Bullying could happen daily in a school environment. So luckily for my son, it does not happen daily, but it does still happen. One thing that is very different with homeschool than sending a child to school is that they have a tendency to have friends of all ages rather than same age peers. This concept took me a while to get used to and I remember pushing for a same age peer group for my little boy initially because it just seemed like that would be the norm, but after doing this for three years, I have become very relaxed with my child's friendships and just let them happen naturally and he has some friends who are a couple years younger than him, his age and several years older and personality is key rather than age. If his personality cliques with another child, they become friends and they are not concerned with age.
We went to the local science museum today for a homeschool class that we go to on a monthly basis. My son was playing with one of his friends who is 10 years old while my son is just 7 years old and some other homeschool kids told my son he was a baby and he should not be playing with the older children. This broke my son's heart because he loves playing with his friends and he sees them regularly and has good relationships with them. He held his hurt inside though, did not respond and went to his class and then felt like he was being left out in his class and like everyone was picking on him. When I went to pick him up from his class, he almost ran out of the room and then when we got into the car, he just burst into tears. He said that he never wanted to go back to the science museum again and this is normally something he enjoys because he loves science and he usually loves being around the other children. Little boys are always nominating him to be their best friend because he has such a laid back disposition and a sweet personality, so this was very unlike him. I asked him to explain and he told me the story and what happened to him and how it made him feel. I told him I would need to think about this for a few minutes to help him appropriately. I also promised him cuddle time when we got home.
So when we got home, we came up with a plan. If this happened again, instead of walking away and feeling hurt, he would respond with, 'it is not nice to call people names and I am not a baby, babies are under 2 years old and I am 7. Don't ever call me a baby again, you were wrong to do that'. I then went on to explain to him that the only reason someone would call him a name and try to leave him out is if they did not feel good about themselves and they try to make other people look bad to improve how they feel about themselves, but in reality, they are really insecure and sad. So this was not a personal attack against him, but instead just their way of dealing with their own problems. After telling him this, we cuddled for a while and he seemed much better. What was breaking his heart was that he was being told not to be friends with someone for a shallow reason and he looked to this person as having some type of authority over him when in reality they did not have any.
So this was lesson #1 on how to deal with a bully. There are many people around who are not kind and confident and gentle, so I'm sure it will not be the last lesson on how to deal with bullies. I'm glad that this is rare and bullying is not the norm with homeschool events, but I am also glad it happens occasionally because it helps teach my son how to get along with all types and not everyone is going to be a moral, kind individual who is always looking out for him and trying to help care for him. It is unfortunate, but everyone in the world is not good. My son is already aware of this, of course, but this helped him have experience with it and we came up with a plan together on a better way to handle it in the future so that he does not internalize it and make himself upset. It also helped him gain some insight of why someone would be this way. Human nature can often be one of the most challenging lessons. I am glad my son had the opportunity to learn more about this today. If it happens again, he will have the tools to better deal with the situation and he gained confidence in himself too.
Today's lesson was much different than most of our unschooling lessons are. My son learned how to deal with a bully. Since we do homeschool, this is not a common occurrence like it may be if he were to go to a private or public school where the student to teacher ratio is a bit skewed. Bullying could happen daily in a school environment. So luckily for my son, it does not happen daily, but it does still happen. One thing that is very different with homeschool than sending a child to school is that they have a tendency to have friends of all ages rather than same age peers. This concept took me a while to get used to and I remember pushing for a same age peer group for my little boy initially because it just seemed like that would be the norm, but after doing this for three years, I have become very relaxed with my child's friendships and just let them happen naturally and he has some friends who are a couple years younger than him, his age and several years older and personality is key rather than age. If his personality cliques with another child, they become friends and they are not concerned with age.
We went to the local science museum today for a homeschool class that we go to on a monthly basis. My son was playing with one of his friends who is 10 years old while my son is just 7 years old and some other homeschool kids told my son he was a baby and he should not be playing with the older children. This broke my son's heart because he loves playing with his friends and he sees them regularly and has good relationships with them. He held his hurt inside though, did not respond and went to his class and then felt like he was being left out in his class and like everyone was picking on him. When I went to pick him up from his class, he almost ran out of the room and then when we got into the car, he just burst into tears. He said that he never wanted to go back to the science museum again and this is normally something he enjoys because he loves science and he usually loves being around the other children. Little boys are always nominating him to be their best friend because he has such a laid back disposition and a sweet personality, so this was very unlike him. I asked him to explain and he told me the story and what happened to him and how it made him feel. I told him I would need to think about this for a few minutes to help him appropriately. I also promised him cuddle time when we got home.
So when we got home, we came up with a plan. If this happened again, instead of walking away and feeling hurt, he would respond with, 'it is not nice to call people names and I am not a baby, babies are under 2 years old and I am 7. Don't ever call me a baby again, you were wrong to do that'. I then went on to explain to him that the only reason someone would call him a name and try to leave him out is if they did not feel good about themselves and they try to make other people look bad to improve how they feel about themselves, but in reality, they are really insecure and sad. So this was not a personal attack against him, but instead just their way of dealing with their own problems. After telling him this, we cuddled for a while and he seemed much better. What was breaking his heart was that he was being told not to be friends with someone for a shallow reason and he looked to this person as having some type of authority over him when in reality they did not have any.
So this was lesson #1 on how to deal with a bully. There are many people around who are not kind and confident and gentle, so I'm sure it will not be the last lesson on how to deal with bullies. I'm glad that this is rare and bullying is not the norm with homeschool events, but I am also glad it happens occasionally because it helps teach my son how to get along with all types and not everyone is going to be a moral, kind individual who is always looking out for him and trying to help care for him. It is unfortunate, but everyone in the world is not good. My son is already aware of this, of course, but this helped him have experience with it and we came up with a plan together on a better way to handle it in the future so that he does not internalize it and make himself upset. It also helped him gain some insight of why someone would be this way. Human nature can often be one of the most challenging lessons. I am glad my son had the opportunity to learn more about this today. If it happens again, he will have the tools to better deal with the situation and he gained confidence in himself too.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
A Day in the Life of an Unschooler: Project Laundry
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!
A virus has attacked our home. Ahhhhh! What did this mean? A 7 year old boy who is tall enough to reach all of the dials and can read fairly well has matured to the point where he can do laundry. So how is this related to homeschooling you say? As of yesterday, laundry has become a very strong interest for my son and he is so proud that he can do it on his own. It brings him confidence to know that he can take care of himself and help out the family. He loves operating the machines and learning about how they work. He is also learning how washing pillows and bedspreads and sheets helps nasty viruses from returning once they hit so instead of being sick for 2 months, our family of five will be sick for maybe 2 weeks tops as it sneaks its way into all of the little bodies. Well, he started by washing some clothes and then moved onto a couple pillows and bedspreads for 'project virus go away'. Then he took the sheets off of all the beds and washed those. Then he started a load of towels and has rugs waiting in line once the towels are finished. He set the dryer to buzz when it's done and as soon as he hears it buzz, he is off to do more laundry with such an enthusiasm. This is the most laundry that has been done in my home in a short period of time since we have lived here. It is quite amazing. He has been doing his best to help put it away too. Eventually, I never thought I would say this, but we might run out of dirty laundry.
My job as an unschooling parent when he has a new interest is to basically go with it and see where it leads us. I never know what this interest may be or what direction it may go, but it is always inspiring and I seem to learn as much as he does. So I am thinking his interest in laundry can venture into how machines or appliances work. We may be able to find information on this or it could even go into a direction of fabrics and how they are cared for and perhaps how they are made. Perhaps we will get to the point where we will obtain some wool and make our own fabric. Maybe it'll send me or my other children in a new direction with this introduction of a laundry obsession. I am not sure which direction it will lead, but one thing I do know for sure is I am no longer behind on laundry. He has had the dream of building a helper robot that can do housework while the rest of us just do fun things. Perhaps his laundry obsession will lead to the development of the helper robot. Or perhaps it will lead into a study of illness and how different cleaning agents can kill viruses and bacteria. The possibilities are endless.
I just heard the dryer ding and within seconds, I hear the little laundry expert in there doing his thing. Project laundry may have a part 2. :) At the beginning phases of this new interest, I am very satisfied with the dirty laundry issue and I am also happy that someone is enthusiastic about doing a job that I often do not have time to do or will forget to do. Did I mention that I really enjoy unschooling? I would recommend it for everyone if I could.
A virus has attacked our home. Ahhhhh! What did this mean? A 7 year old boy who is tall enough to reach all of the dials and can read fairly well has matured to the point where he can do laundry. So how is this related to homeschooling you say? As of yesterday, laundry has become a very strong interest for my son and he is so proud that he can do it on his own. It brings him confidence to know that he can take care of himself and help out the family. He loves operating the machines and learning about how they work. He is also learning how washing pillows and bedspreads and sheets helps nasty viruses from returning once they hit so instead of being sick for 2 months, our family of five will be sick for maybe 2 weeks tops as it sneaks its way into all of the little bodies. Well, he started by washing some clothes and then moved onto a couple pillows and bedspreads for 'project virus go away'. Then he took the sheets off of all the beds and washed those. Then he started a load of towels and has rugs waiting in line once the towels are finished. He set the dryer to buzz when it's done and as soon as he hears it buzz, he is off to do more laundry with such an enthusiasm. This is the most laundry that has been done in my home in a short period of time since we have lived here. It is quite amazing. He has been doing his best to help put it away too. Eventually, I never thought I would say this, but we might run out of dirty laundry.
My job as an unschooling parent when he has a new interest is to basically go with it and see where it leads us. I never know what this interest may be or what direction it may go, but it is always inspiring and I seem to learn as much as he does. So I am thinking his interest in laundry can venture into how machines or appliances work. We may be able to find information on this or it could even go into a direction of fabrics and how they are cared for and perhaps how they are made. Perhaps we will get to the point where we will obtain some wool and make our own fabric. Maybe it'll send me or my other children in a new direction with this introduction of a laundry obsession. I am not sure which direction it will lead, but one thing I do know for sure is I am no longer behind on laundry. He has had the dream of building a helper robot that can do housework while the rest of us just do fun things. Perhaps his laundry obsession will lead to the development of the helper robot. Or perhaps it will lead into a study of illness and how different cleaning agents can kill viruses and bacteria. The possibilities are endless.
I just heard the dryer ding and within seconds, I hear the little laundry expert in there doing his thing. Project laundry may have a part 2. :) At the beginning phases of this new interest, I am very satisfied with the dirty laundry issue and I am also happy that someone is enthusiastic about doing a job that I often do not have time to do or will forget to do. Did I mention that I really enjoy unschooling? I would recommend it for everyone if I could.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Intrinsic versus Extrensic Motivation
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!
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/be-my-guest-unschooling-reflects-current-cognitive-research/
I read the above article today regarding intrinsic versus extrinsic learning and how studies have revealed the positive effects of intrinsic learning, which if you're doing it the right way, should be the main learning style of unschooling. I found this article very interesting and it helped me feel confident that unschooling is the best direction for me and deep down, I feel like it would be the best direction for everyone. It touched on how if extrinsic motivations are incorporated into learning when the person is already intrinsically motivated, it can actually have an adverse effect on motivation to learn. So grades and awards for learning could actually interfere in the learning process instead of encouraging a child.
This idea made me think back to when I was in school and some of my friends would get paid for their grades and I told my parents about it. They told me that I should be motivated to learn just to learn and being paid for grades was not necessary. I accepted it and was not overly concerned that they did not agree to pay me for my grades. Money has never been a huge motivator for me to succeed in my life. However, experiences like that are probably why. I had older parents who had already raised several children before me and they seemed to learn from their mistakes. I also was not given an allowance and was told that helping is just part of being a member of the family. I guess this wisdom motivated me to use this same thinking style with my own children. So we do not use grades and if they do well at something, a trophy is not necessary, but just the satisfaction that they succeeded is enough.
This also made me think about the different things that inspire my 7 year old son. We went to the children's museum when he was 5 and he sat through a demonstration about how to prepare a mummy. That was followed by a year of mummy research and building mummies and learning about mummies, making mummy costumes, finding videos about mummies and thinking about mummies nonstop. We would go to the library and leave with 4 books about mummies and we would read all of the books. There were no grades during this time, no tests and no expectations. He just really found mummies to be the most interesting thing that had ever come into his life. Then he discovered great apes and loved watching the orangutans at our local zoo. He then learned everything he could learn about great apes. We got books about great apes, he has several orangutan, gorilla and chimpanzee toys. He would look through my husband's physical anthropology book and when I asked him if he could take a college course, what would it be? He said that he would like to take a physical anthropology course studying non-human primates and maybe learn about studies on orangutans. He also said that he wanted to learn Indonesian because this was the main language in Borneo and Sumatra where the Orangutans live in the wild and we learned of an orangutan sanctuary where they study orangutans. So my husband has been working with him on learning Indonesian. He also learned that palm oil is destroying the orangutan habitat because rain forest are being destroyed for palm oil plantations. That made me aware of how many things have palm oil as a main ingredient. I was never aware of any of these things until my 7 year old became interested in them and he is not graded on any of this. He just wants to learn. He is also fascinated by the anatomy of the human body and likes to make replicas of the human body out of various objects laying around the house. He is a very busy child and is always learning. If someone came up to him and said that if he did a quiz about orangutans and got an A, they would give him a trophy, I doubt this would motivate him because he already has the intrinsic motivation to keep the momentum going. He is like a sponge when something catches his interest and there is no need for a reward at the end of the day. Learning is reward enough.
If he was in a typical first or second grade classroom, would he have any of the knowledge he has today? I do not see any way he would. He has had the freedom to learn what he wants when he wants and he would be so limited in a classroom setting. With this mindset, it is amazing where he may be ten years from now or what type of career he may choose with this style of learning being introduced so early in his life. It is also interesting to think about how different society would be if people were focused more on the intrinsic value rather than the extrinsic value of existence. Would people stay at full time jobs they hated? Would there be as much misery and dissatisfaction among people of all ages? Money is often the focus of motivation when in reality, passion and interest would be a much more efficient motivator when dealing with life in general and career choices. Intrinsic motivation is key with having a happy and productive life and I am so glad unschooling is an option to make this mindset possible to blossom in a human being.
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/be-my-guest-unschooling-reflects-current-cognitive-research/
I read the above article today regarding intrinsic versus extrinsic learning and how studies have revealed the positive effects of intrinsic learning, which if you're doing it the right way, should be the main learning style of unschooling. I found this article very interesting and it helped me feel confident that unschooling is the best direction for me and deep down, I feel like it would be the best direction for everyone. It touched on how if extrinsic motivations are incorporated into learning when the person is already intrinsically motivated, it can actually have an adverse effect on motivation to learn. So grades and awards for learning could actually interfere in the learning process instead of encouraging a child.
This idea made me think back to when I was in school and some of my friends would get paid for their grades and I told my parents about it. They told me that I should be motivated to learn just to learn and being paid for grades was not necessary. I accepted it and was not overly concerned that they did not agree to pay me for my grades. Money has never been a huge motivator for me to succeed in my life. However, experiences like that are probably why. I had older parents who had already raised several children before me and they seemed to learn from their mistakes. I also was not given an allowance and was told that helping is just part of being a member of the family. I guess this wisdom motivated me to use this same thinking style with my own children. So we do not use grades and if they do well at something, a trophy is not necessary, but just the satisfaction that they succeeded is enough.
This also made me think about the different things that inspire my 7 year old son. We went to the children's museum when he was 5 and he sat through a demonstration about how to prepare a mummy. That was followed by a year of mummy research and building mummies and learning about mummies, making mummy costumes, finding videos about mummies and thinking about mummies nonstop. We would go to the library and leave with 4 books about mummies and we would read all of the books. There were no grades during this time, no tests and no expectations. He just really found mummies to be the most interesting thing that had ever come into his life. Then he discovered great apes and loved watching the orangutans at our local zoo. He then learned everything he could learn about great apes. We got books about great apes, he has several orangutan, gorilla and chimpanzee toys. He would look through my husband's physical anthropology book and when I asked him if he could take a college course, what would it be? He said that he would like to take a physical anthropology course studying non-human primates and maybe learn about studies on orangutans. He also said that he wanted to learn Indonesian because this was the main language in Borneo and Sumatra where the Orangutans live in the wild and we learned of an orangutan sanctuary where they study orangutans. So my husband has been working with him on learning Indonesian. He also learned that palm oil is destroying the orangutan habitat because rain forest are being destroyed for palm oil plantations. That made me aware of how many things have palm oil as a main ingredient. I was never aware of any of these things until my 7 year old became interested in them and he is not graded on any of this. He just wants to learn. He is also fascinated by the anatomy of the human body and likes to make replicas of the human body out of various objects laying around the house. He is a very busy child and is always learning. If someone came up to him and said that if he did a quiz about orangutans and got an A, they would give him a trophy, I doubt this would motivate him because he already has the intrinsic motivation to keep the momentum going. He is like a sponge when something catches his interest and there is no need for a reward at the end of the day. Learning is reward enough.
If he was in a typical first or second grade classroom, would he have any of the knowledge he has today? I do not see any way he would. He has had the freedom to learn what he wants when he wants and he would be so limited in a classroom setting. With this mindset, it is amazing where he may be ten years from now or what type of career he may choose with this style of learning being introduced so early in his life. It is also interesting to think about how different society would be if people were focused more on the intrinsic value rather than the extrinsic value of existence. Would people stay at full time jobs they hated? Would there be as much misery and dissatisfaction among people of all ages? Money is often the focus of motivation when in reality, passion and interest would be a much more efficient motivator when dealing with life in general and career choices. Intrinsic motivation is key with having a happy and productive life and I am so glad unschooling is an option to make this mindset possible to blossom in a human being.
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