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.