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.