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.