Make it Simple

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!


I am basically going into my third year of unschooling and I have learned a lot through this process.  I still have some of the ideas that the kids need to socialize with children their own age and that there needs to be somewhat of a routine or schedule with our lives.  That does make sense to live in this manner, but now I am starting to want to have more spontaneity, such as, if the children say they want to go to a museum an hour or two away from home for the day, we can just up and go without always having schedule conflicts.  This year, we had recorder Monday once a week, science Tuesday once a month, ballet Wednesday once a week, art and hockey Thursday one a week and nature  Friday once a month.  So we did not necessarily always have something scheduled every day of the week, but occasionally the once a month activities would land on the same week and then we would.  I felt like we were committing to too many activities and did not have enough down time.


My plan is to only do one out of the house day weekly and this will be Thursday.  My daughter was feeling overwhelmed with her Wednesday ballet class.  It is a shame because the teacher is so nice and also homeschools.  I was very happy with the program, but it seemed to be a little too much for my daughter.  It was the peers that were the problem, not the class itself. So I am not completely ruling out ballet, but we are going to take a bit of a break from it.  My son also enjoyed his Monday recorder class for a while, but then was pretty overwhelmed by going every week. I think it has been a positive experience for him, but I would prefer not to continue with it simply because it is another thing on the schedule and it is on Monday rather than Thursday.  So I felt recorder class was very positive and a great introduction for reading music, but now we are ready to move on to something new.


My plan for this homeschool year is hockey on Thursday nights and art classes when they start up in the fall that will also be on Thursday and that's all for the weekly activities.  The children will then attend science class once a month and nature class once a month.  These will be the only scheduled activities unless there are other things for Thursday.  This will leave room for my son to audition for plays, go on field trips, do spontaneous road trips and just have a more relaxed schedule.  I think it will work much better.  If other activities or lessons pop up, I will just make sure everything is on Thursday.  We will have one regular out of the house day a week rather than three.


I am still learning that I can say 'no' and my children do not have to be in every activity I can find.  I am glad I discovered this now.  Baby boy is happy playing hockey with his older brother and there are other little girls the age of my daughter that go to hockey night and my daughter is happy doing her ballet freely around the house and not going to a class at this time.  So I think we have a good plan and I hope I feel like we are headed in the right direction with this plan.  It is a learning process for everyone involved.  The children love 'stay at home' days and I think having four a week sometimes will really help all of us.  So I have learned to say 'no' and relax with this.  We do not need to take on the world.  We are just unschooling, not creating mania.