Grade Levels

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!


In most cultures, it is the norm to think of most school age children in categories of grade levels.  It often is the first question people will ask a child, "well, what grade are you in now?" to start up a conversation.  The challenge with unschooling and grade levels is basically there are no grade levels.  Children learn at their own rate and at their own speed and grade levels are irrelevant, especially for the lower elementary grades.  If your child has visions of attending college someday, grade levels in junior high and high school even with the unschooling philosophy may start to make more sense, but with lower elementary, is there really a need for grade levels? 


When I started this homeschooling journey, I did not begin as an unschooler.  Unschooling is something that started to make more sense to me than a more structured, traditional approach when my oldest son was 5 1/2 years old.  I considered him kindergarten at that point and my idea about grade levels was age 5, kindergarten, 6, first grade, 7, second grade, 8, 3rd grade and so on.  So when the children turn a new age, they are in a new grade, but my mind also thinks in terms of what grade would they be going to if they were in public school.  So even though we are unschooling, I have not been able to get out of the habit of grade levels and my son is also very determined to announce his grade level to everyone he knows.  The children seem to have the desire to be classified in grade levels.  It probably makes it easier when associating with school children at a playground and anyone they may have a conversation with in any culture who will start the conversation with, "so, what grade are you in now", so my view is basically, there is not anything wrong with grade levels. 


My oldest son has a birthday coming up and he was proudly saying, "on my birthday, I will be in 3rd grade".  Then I started thinking, hmmmm, he does not read at a 3rd grade level, but rather kindergarten or 1st grade level since he is more of a science kid.  He understands the basic concepts of adding and subtracting with basic math since we have used more of a natural math approach, but uses his fingers still when doing this, so I started doubting myself and wondering if I should be doing more structure with him from time to time.  I guess my mind has not completely committed to the unschooling philosophy even though I know this is the best learning approach.  So I found a bunch of 1st/2nd grade books that I had collected through Amazon, garage sales and random people I've met and encouraged my son to work through some of the workbooks and read the stories marked grade 2 just so that I felt comfortable with him calling himself a third grader at the time of his birthday.  So he started doing this on his own and said he was bored with some of the books, but did find one chapter book he found interesting and read a couple pages in it, so I was glad he was putting in the initiative. I guess the book was about Aliens, so of course that would interest a 7 year old boy.  I was then surprised to find him reading Shakespeare before bed a couple nights ago.  He said that he was just making up stories while he was pretending to read it.  Perhaps he was not challenged by the 2nd grade level books.  I began reading Julius Ceasar thinking that if my son is showing an interest in this, I need to read through it and put effort towards understanding it.  It is written as a play and my next step will be to read this to my son if he is interested in me doing so.  I figure if he isn't inspired by chapter books about dogs, if Shakespeare inspires him, we will just go with that.


I ended up with the Shakespeare book last year. I went to a garage sale that I was attracted to because there was a huge gothic looking antique mirror in the middle of the yard.  I knew I really did not have a place in my home for the large mirror, nor could it fit in the small hatchback of a car that I was driving that day, but it attracted me to the garage sale none the less.  This was a great find.  I found an elementary geography book from 1896 along with a complete works of William Shakespeare and the owner of all of these interesting items was a minister and scholar and when he learned that we were homeschooling, he grabbed a few large US history books out of his car for me to take along too and all of these items were priced for just pennies basically.  Life is learning and I never know what experience will lead to inspiration in our unschooling home and seeing that gothic mirror, lead me to getting a book about William Shakespeare's work and a 7 year old interested in reading it.


 So my opinion about grade levels is that it is a great motivator for learning and even if you are unschooling, I don't know if eliminating grade levels is a necessary step for transitioning into this philosophy.  My son wanting to be considered third grade has led him to trying to read Shakespeare.  I see no harm in this.  Perhaps William will inspire a new unschooling tangent.