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!

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

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.