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.