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!
Learning to read has been challenging for my oldest son. Teaching him to do this has also been challenging for me. I guess I figured that I would teach him some basic reading concepts and read to him a lot and teach him simple words and he would learn them and build on what he was taught and be reading on his own fairly quickly since he had so much one on one time from me and I was so consistent with him. I started doing this when he was 4 or 5 years old because many people I would talk to said that their young children were reading well around that age. Initially, I was using a more structured approach with my son where we would sit down a couple times a week for a couple hours and work through books, workbooks, and flashcards prior to learning about unschooling when my son was 5 1/2. We would also do spelling test once a week with very simple 1 or 2 letter words or words from books he was learning. However, he was not learning. It was very frustrating for me. He just could not understand and would not remember anything I was teaching him. I felt hopeless at that point mainly because I was comparing his progress to what I assumed other children were doing at his age based on what other parents were saying and what I had observed with some little reading geniuses.
I then visited a friend from college I had not seen for years. Her husband and she both had education degrees and her husband had been working as an elementary school teacher for many years. I expressed my concerns about my little 5 year old boy not being able to read. Her husband just laughed and said, "ah, he can't read" and pointed to his 8 year old son. I thought that seemed odd and then they explained to me that as a child's brain develops, other aspects of learning are more beneficial than early reading. They said that a child's eye site and brain development is often not ready for reading until a child is 9, 10 or older, so early reading can be detrimental towards brain development younger than that age if a child is not yet ready. I also had another person who was an occupational therapist tell me the exact same thing as my teaching friends did about children not being able to read until the age of 9 or 10 and early reading can be detrimental if a child is not ready. They did not know one another, but had the exact same information. So why is early reading pushed in the schools when only a small percentage of the children are ready to read at 5 or 6? This is very confusing for me.
I then took a break from pushing reading and we started to move into the unschooling realm. I discovered 'Bob Books' and the book, 'Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons' when my son was about 6 years old and started using those about once a week or when my son showed interest in working on his reading. He started gaining confidence with his reading after this and was able to sort of do basic reading, but at 7 1/2, he still is not fluent with reading and perhaps he will not be until he is 9 or 10, but my concern is that his younger brother and sister could surpass him with reading levels since they are so interested in learning since they do not know anything but unschooling and I do not want this to happen. It would be embarrassing for him and make him feel bad about himself, so I am encouraging him to practice his reading daily, but not pushing him to read things he is not comfortable reading.
So we are going to get into a routine of having reading time daily after lunch. I have my 7 year old son pick three books that are more advanced than Bob Books, but still basic and I have him read them over and over until he gets them correct. Another idea that I recently learned about that has helped motivate my son to want to read is I started an email address for him and found him some local pen pals with family and friends. He loves checking his messages and writing back and thinks this is so much fun. If he misspells words, I write them on big lined paper for him to practice writing them. This has been the most positive experience for him to learn to read and write, so I would recommend it and it does need to be monitored closely.
These experiences have put my mind at ease. I no longer do the force reading like I did initially, which was not productive. I am much more relaxed with reading time and I no longer get frustrated with my son when he misses a simple word we have been over millions of times. He will understand reading concepts as he matures and develops. If he reaches the age of 10 and has not progressed beyond where he is now, I will seek extra help, but at this time, I am just going to relax and enjoy my children and reading lots of books. Reading fluency will come with time.
We are an unschooling family of 5 with a 7 year old son, 5 year old daughter and 2 year old baby boy and we wanted to share our experiences with others who may be interested in unschooling, are unschooling, or have the desire to learn about unschooling. We have been unschooling for 2 years and have discovered that it is a wonderful experience. I have discovered through this experience that once you become an unschooler, there is no turning back. Enjoy!
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Informal Quizes
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 started with a more structured approach with my 7 year old son and I used to have him do simple math problems in workbooks. He would go through the process and complete his assignments, but did not seem motivated and I do not know if he was really learning much, so I stopped doing this when he was 5 1/2 when I started using more of an unschooling approach. Since then, we have used a natural math approach where we count money, use a calendar, tell time, measuring with cooking, general measuring, counting and various things like this. We probably do math daily this way. I also bought my son a calculator with which he could play. He likes to figure out answers and then use the calculator to see if he is correct. However, I figured he was just adding and subtracting and I was not really concerned with much else at this point. I do want him to stay current with his grade level in case I ever do have to send him to school, but I do not have a lot of concerns about this.
Well, last night, I was curious, so I decided to test him and I asked him what is 9x6? We had not really covered multiplication yet, but I guess we have explained it to him informally. I was really surprised when he gave me the correct answer. Even though I am the main one teaching him along with his dad and a couple extra classes with none of them being math, it seems like he should be learning mainly what I teach him, but he learns so much more from day to day living. Even though he is only 7 years old and is at a first/second grade level, he is understanding math that I do not remember doing until third or fourth grade. He was very enthusiastic about doing his math also.
As I type this, he is in the process of counting to 60 60 times because I told him it would take an hour before the ice cream sandwiches are cold enough to eat. Math is everywhere. :)
Friday, January 24, 2014
Project Messy House: Plan B
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 wrote a blog about a messy house awhile back about this great plan and how I was going to be victorious over the messy house and well, it didn't work. My house is still a big mess. So I came up with plan B. You see, I have 3 children who are homeschooled and under the age of 8 and a husband and a bunch of stuff in a 3 bedroom, ranch style home that is about 2000 square feet. We do not have a huge amount of storage space, but we do have a bunch of junk that's only purpose is to be stored somewhere. I read a blog a while back about cleaning/decluttering one room a month, well, my house has 9ish rooms in an open, some rooms are gigantic while others are small sort of way, so that just would not be very productive. My plan is to divide the house into 4 sections and do a thorough cleaning and decluttering and reorganizing, remodeling, redecorating plan doing one section a month. So every 4 months each section will move to the next level. I think this could work. I also read another blog about staging your home for living from the becoming minimalist site and this has inspired me and given me some great ideas. Now I just need to put them into action.
The sections are as followed:
1. The 20' x 20' chaos room will be transformed into a lovely adult art room where my husband and I will play music, watch movies we like, do crafty things such as woodworking, sewing, crochet and it will be decorated with art including our children's art and original arts that we have found, painted or had relatives paint for us. The room will eventually be painted a charcoal behind the flat screen and a light grey on the other walls and have hard wood flooring without popcorn ceiling and possibly a nice 3 season room off of the back door with a basement under it in the future so that we have a nice storm shelter area. This is my idea of staging this room for us to live in it. So during the month of January, I'm doing phase one of this project. I am getting clutter out of the room that does not fit in with this plan including all toys and kid type things. My husband and I need our own space without tripping over blocks, dolls, cars, super heroes and whatever else ends up on the floor. We need a place to relax that is especially for us and we have not had this since we have lived in this home because we could not figure out what to do with this room. The kid type items will then be moved to the kitchen if they are art supplies, the living room for books and movies and their bedrooms for toys. All we will have left in this room once we are finished with phase one will be a TV/stereo DVD player, drum set, my husband's guitars, a recliner, and a love seat. My husband had plans to build a rectangular crafting table and we may put the dog cage under the table to get it out of the way from the rest of the house. We also have a small bistro table that is going to be used for a sewing machine I got for Christmas about 8 years ago and have never used. I have made a big dent in this room and I am confident that I will complete phase 1 by the end of January. The next time I get to his room, I will more than likely paint it, but not this time around. I don't want to feel overwhelmed by this project or I will give up and quit.
2. Section 2 is a less daunting project. It includes the kitchen and foyer area. We have a fairly nice galley kitchen that is pretty long and skinny. It is one of those kitchens that is sort of separate from the other rooms and I find it to be a nice little escape area. The kitchen includes the kitchen basics, we really do not need much. The more you have, the bigger a mess you could possibly have to clean. I like to keep kitchen messes at a minimum, so we will probably be purging a lot of our kitchen items when I get to this room. First, we have the goal of going down to 1 plate and 1 bowl per person and possibly 1 frying pan, 1 large pot, 1 small pot, just the basics. We have two large storage closets in the kitchen also and my plans are to really organize these and figure out exactly how we will use them. I have not put a lot of thought into this project yet because that it my February project and I am still mentally focused on the chaos room transformation. We do not have a den, but I have my own business, so the kitchen is also my office space. I have my laptop, a little bill organizer caddy, and a work and important documents filing cabinet. There is an extra little table in here that could make this an eat in kitchen, but since we are homeschooling, it is where I keep art supplies and I have a 2nd filing cabinet that will also be used for art supplies along with a drawer and cabinet. This area still needs a little work, but like I said, I am not mentally focused on that right now.
The 2nd part of section 2 is our foyer area. It has a fish tank, a dog cage and some tropical plants and usually some junk piled in weird places. My goal is for it to have a fish tank and plants only. In February, the floors and counter tops and cabinets will be completely scrubbed and organized. We do have some cracked tile that needs replaced and there are also crevices at the bottom of the wall and some possible cracks at the corners of the windows that need to be filled in and we need some screens in the kitchen windows. It may also be painted. My husband also has a goal of replacing our front door with gothic/contemporary solid wood doors with big metal knockers and our backdoor also needs to be replaced. However, phase one of this project will just be cleaning and organizing and decluttering by purging some unneeded items. Oh, the drain is doing something strange now, so we also need to call a plumber in February. For the time being, I am using a bucket rather than the sink. :)
3. Section 3 includes our living room/great room/dining room/library/kid room, back hall and laundry/utility/cat room. The living room/great room/dining room/library/kid room is basically a giant, multipurpose room. I think it is something like 30' x 17' or something like that. It's huge. It includes a large dining room table, a lovely baby grand piano, a large floor to ceiling flagstone fire place, a recliner, coffee table, couch, kid table and bookshelves with the children's books, informational books, and photo books. It also has two TVs. One is for watching TV/DVDs while the other is for VHS tapes. The library/kid area is the closest room to the kid's bedrooms, so this is hopefully all the further their toys will get. I want them to feel like they can play with their toys outside of their bedrooms, so they do not feel isolated and at the ages of 7, 4 and 2, they need to still play with toys to learn and be content and happy. However, I am tired of our house having toy flooring. So instead of taking one step and stepping on a super hero, the next step a princess costume and then step three being a car, I would like to walk through a room and step on either carpet or tile. Is that too much to ask? I have a Pak-n-play in place for my 2 year old to have his own little area to play with his cars and not be bothered. I was using it as time-out area for him when he hits his sister, but now he request to go in there because I think when he starts a war zone, he is really just wanting some personal space and this is a nice little area for him to have this. The pak-n-play is a temporary item in this room that works well for the moment. We will pack it away as soon as it does not seem necessary anymore, but at this time, we still use it daily for baby boy. This room is actually in pretty good shape in relation to organizing and decluttering because as I was working on the chaos room, this room had some work done also, so this room should not be a lot of work in March when it's turn comes up on the rotation. A future project may be to redo the flooring and ceiling and some of the paint, but not this time around.
However, the back hallway will be a job. I do not even know what is in this area. It has become a storage area and is where there was once a front door, but at some point, someone must have decided that it needed to be closer to the driveway and added a new front entrance. So we have a 2nd front door with shelves against it at the moment. There is also a coat closet that is just full of disorganized junk. So project back hall will probably take up most of my time in March. Eventually, I would like to transform this area into a half bath or a full bath with a small stand up shower. I would also like to put a wall where there is a door. But for now, it is a big chaos corner and phase one will be to eliminate the chaos in this part of our home.
The laundry room/utility room, cat room could use a good scrub down, but beyond that, it should not be a lot of extra work in March. It could use new flooring, but it is back and out of the way, so this is not a huge deal to me.
4. Section 4 is the bedrooms, bathrooms and hallway. These are maintained fairly well, so aside from deep cleaning and going through clothes and toys and maybe rearranging a bit, there will not be a lot of overwhelming work for this project in April. In the future, I do have interest in new ceilings, flooring, paint touch ups and a bathroom remodel, but for this year a deep cleaning and some decluttering should do the trick for this section.
Then I will start over with the lovely music/entertainment/arts and crafts room that will be so much less overwhelming than the first time around. I really think this plan will work. I do dishes and laundry daily, trash take out as needed, bills twice a month, and weekly vacuum and dusting that is more of a group effort rather than just me, so I hope this plan works and I hope it also gives you some ideas if you have some of the same challenges I am facing as a homeschooling family of five and figuring out a good system to keep a nice, educational environment that we can feel proud of rather than embarrassed if someone randomly stops by for a surprise visit. My goal is to stage our home for living. It will probably be an ongoing project, but we can take our time and do what we can. There is no rush and one section a month is very workable. I love unschooling, writing, being creative, researching, but I hate cleaning with a passion. I am hoping this plan makes it easier to maintain my home so that it no longer interferes with my family's passions.
I wrote a blog about a messy house awhile back about this great plan and how I was going to be victorious over the messy house and well, it didn't work. My house is still a big mess. So I came up with plan B. You see, I have 3 children who are homeschooled and under the age of 8 and a husband and a bunch of stuff in a 3 bedroom, ranch style home that is about 2000 square feet. We do not have a huge amount of storage space, but we do have a bunch of junk that's only purpose is to be stored somewhere. I read a blog a while back about cleaning/decluttering one room a month, well, my house has 9ish rooms in an open, some rooms are gigantic while others are small sort of way, so that just would not be very productive. My plan is to divide the house into 4 sections and do a thorough cleaning and decluttering and reorganizing, remodeling, redecorating plan doing one section a month. So every 4 months each section will move to the next level. I think this could work. I also read another blog about staging your home for living from the becoming minimalist site and this has inspired me and given me some great ideas. Now I just need to put them into action.
The sections are as followed:
1. The 20' x 20' chaos room will be transformed into a lovely adult art room where my husband and I will play music, watch movies we like, do crafty things such as woodworking, sewing, crochet and it will be decorated with art including our children's art and original arts that we have found, painted or had relatives paint for us. The room will eventually be painted a charcoal behind the flat screen and a light grey on the other walls and have hard wood flooring without popcorn ceiling and possibly a nice 3 season room off of the back door with a basement under it in the future so that we have a nice storm shelter area. This is my idea of staging this room for us to live in it. So during the month of January, I'm doing phase one of this project. I am getting clutter out of the room that does not fit in with this plan including all toys and kid type things. My husband and I need our own space without tripping over blocks, dolls, cars, super heroes and whatever else ends up on the floor. We need a place to relax that is especially for us and we have not had this since we have lived in this home because we could not figure out what to do with this room. The kid type items will then be moved to the kitchen if they are art supplies, the living room for books and movies and their bedrooms for toys. All we will have left in this room once we are finished with phase one will be a TV/stereo DVD player, drum set, my husband's guitars, a recliner, and a love seat. My husband had plans to build a rectangular crafting table and we may put the dog cage under the table to get it out of the way from the rest of the house. We also have a small bistro table that is going to be used for a sewing machine I got for Christmas about 8 years ago and have never used. I have made a big dent in this room and I am confident that I will complete phase 1 by the end of January. The next time I get to his room, I will more than likely paint it, but not this time around. I don't want to feel overwhelmed by this project or I will give up and quit.
2. Section 2 is a less daunting project. It includes the kitchen and foyer area. We have a fairly nice galley kitchen that is pretty long and skinny. It is one of those kitchens that is sort of separate from the other rooms and I find it to be a nice little escape area. The kitchen includes the kitchen basics, we really do not need much. The more you have, the bigger a mess you could possibly have to clean. I like to keep kitchen messes at a minimum, so we will probably be purging a lot of our kitchen items when I get to this room. First, we have the goal of going down to 1 plate and 1 bowl per person and possibly 1 frying pan, 1 large pot, 1 small pot, just the basics. We have two large storage closets in the kitchen also and my plans are to really organize these and figure out exactly how we will use them. I have not put a lot of thought into this project yet because that it my February project and I am still mentally focused on the chaos room transformation. We do not have a den, but I have my own business, so the kitchen is also my office space. I have my laptop, a little bill organizer caddy, and a work and important documents filing cabinet. There is an extra little table in here that could make this an eat in kitchen, but since we are homeschooling, it is where I keep art supplies and I have a 2nd filing cabinet that will also be used for art supplies along with a drawer and cabinet. This area still needs a little work, but like I said, I am not mentally focused on that right now.
The 2nd part of section 2 is our foyer area. It has a fish tank, a dog cage and some tropical plants and usually some junk piled in weird places. My goal is for it to have a fish tank and plants only. In February, the floors and counter tops and cabinets will be completely scrubbed and organized. We do have some cracked tile that needs replaced and there are also crevices at the bottom of the wall and some possible cracks at the corners of the windows that need to be filled in and we need some screens in the kitchen windows. It may also be painted. My husband also has a goal of replacing our front door with gothic/contemporary solid wood doors with big metal knockers and our backdoor also needs to be replaced. However, phase one of this project will just be cleaning and organizing and decluttering by purging some unneeded items. Oh, the drain is doing something strange now, so we also need to call a plumber in February. For the time being, I am using a bucket rather than the sink. :)
3. Section 3 includes our living room/great room/dining room/library/kid room, back hall and laundry/utility/cat room. The living room/great room/dining room/library/kid room is basically a giant, multipurpose room. I think it is something like 30' x 17' or something like that. It's huge. It includes a large dining room table, a lovely baby grand piano, a large floor to ceiling flagstone fire place, a recliner, coffee table, couch, kid table and bookshelves with the children's books, informational books, and photo books. It also has two TVs. One is for watching TV/DVDs while the other is for VHS tapes. The library/kid area is the closest room to the kid's bedrooms, so this is hopefully all the further their toys will get. I want them to feel like they can play with their toys outside of their bedrooms, so they do not feel isolated and at the ages of 7, 4 and 2, they need to still play with toys to learn and be content and happy. However, I am tired of our house having toy flooring. So instead of taking one step and stepping on a super hero, the next step a princess costume and then step three being a car, I would like to walk through a room and step on either carpet or tile. Is that too much to ask? I have a Pak-n-play in place for my 2 year old to have his own little area to play with his cars and not be bothered. I was using it as time-out area for him when he hits his sister, but now he request to go in there because I think when he starts a war zone, he is really just wanting some personal space and this is a nice little area for him to have this. The pak-n-play is a temporary item in this room that works well for the moment. We will pack it away as soon as it does not seem necessary anymore, but at this time, we still use it daily for baby boy. This room is actually in pretty good shape in relation to organizing and decluttering because as I was working on the chaos room, this room had some work done also, so this room should not be a lot of work in March when it's turn comes up on the rotation. A future project may be to redo the flooring and ceiling and some of the paint, but not this time around.
However, the back hallway will be a job. I do not even know what is in this area. It has become a storage area and is where there was once a front door, but at some point, someone must have decided that it needed to be closer to the driveway and added a new front entrance. So we have a 2nd front door with shelves against it at the moment. There is also a coat closet that is just full of disorganized junk. So project back hall will probably take up most of my time in March. Eventually, I would like to transform this area into a half bath or a full bath with a small stand up shower. I would also like to put a wall where there is a door. But for now, it is a big chaos corner and phase one will be to eliminate the chaos in this part of our home.
The laundry room/utility room, cat room could use a good scrub down, but beyond that, it should not be a lot of extra work in March. It could use new flooring, but it is back and out of the way, so this is not a huge deal to me.
4. Section 4 is the bedrooms, bathrooms and hallway. These are maintained fairly well, so aside from deep cleaning and going through clothes and toys and maybe rearranging a bit, there will not be a lot of overwhelming work for this project in April. In the future, I do have interest in new ceilings, flooring, paint touch ups and a bathroom remodel, but for this year a deep cleaning and some decluttering should do the trick for this section.
Then I will start over with the lovely music/entertainment/arts and crafts room that will be so much less overwhelming than the first time around. I really think this plan will work. I do dishes and laundry daily, trash take out as needed, bills twice a month, and weekly vacuum and dusting that is more of a group effort rather than just me, so I hope this plan works and I hope it also gives you some ideas if you have some of the same challenges I am facing as a homeschooling family of five and figuring out a good system to keep a nice, educational environment that we can feel proud of rather than embarrassed if someone randomly stops by for a surprise visit. My goal is to stage our home for living. It will probably be an ongoing project, but we can take our time and do what we can. There is no rush and one section a month is very workable. I love unschooling, writing, being creative, researching, but I hate cleaning with a passion. I am hoping this plan makes it easier to maintain my home so that it no longer interferes with my family's passions.
A Week in the Life of an Unschooler: Do we have a theatre star?
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 I am going to talk about what an unschooling week looks like. Each week seems to be a little different and there is always some level of spontaneity involved. My desire for my children is that they know how to handle a lot of different types of situations and people so that functioning as adults can be an easy transition for them and help them gain wisdom as children so that the lack of wisdom does not need to cripple them as young adults like it does for many. It is important to be able to go with the flow of life because it can be quite unpredictable.
This week began with my husband being home from work due to MLK day. As the children get older, I will educate them on this, but at their young ages of 2, 4 and 7, we did not focus on the importance of this day at this time. I have to think a lot about how to address issues of racism and various prejudices because I really do not want any of that to be part of my children's lives. It's just negative and wrong and unnecessary, but making a difference can be quite empowering, so perhaps I will approach it in that manner when we do teach them about it. Anyway, my husband was home today, so he got to take my son to his recorder class. Whenever I go to this, I have the younger two children, so I do not have a lot of time to participate in it and just take the younger two children to the nursery where they can play, but my husband went alone with my son, so he was part of the class too. My son got to teach his Dad how to play the recorder. I thought their story about recorder class was so sweet. Then my husband took my son shopping at the natural food Co-op. So they had a great father/son day together.
That evening, I discovered that auditions for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at our local youth theatre are on Tuesday. I actually thought we missed the audition and my son did not show a lot of interest in doing it. Well, I asked him again today and he said that he wanted to be in it. He was dead set against being an Oompa Loompa because he has a problem with people laughing at him. I explained that the only reason anyone would laugh at an Oompa Loompa is because they are funny, then he changed his mind and decided that being an Oompa Loompa would not be horrible if he had the opportunity to be part of a big production and was assigned this part. I looked at the audition requirements and it looked like singing a song was part of the process. I was not sure if my son could sing, so I asked him if he knew any songs. He said that he knows Jingle Bells, The Scooby Doo theme song and Spiderman, so these were our choices. I told him to sing and to my surprise, he had quite a nice voice and was singing in tune. So I figured he could audition, it was worth a shot. Initially we chose the Scooby Doo theme song, but once we started working on it, we realized that it was a little tricky so maybe choosing a simpler song would be a better choice. My son suggested the Oompa Loompa song since that would probably be his part if he were chosen, so we searched for it on You Tube and practiced the one about the chubby boy who falls into the chocolate river. It was simple and sort of funny, so my son started working on it around 10 p.m. He was able to learn the words and then really needed to go to bed, so I figured we would practice it throughout the day on Tuesday.
On Tuesday as we casually lived our day of cleaning the house, playing games, cuddling, the usual, from time to time I would look at my son and say, "hit it" and he would sing "Oompa Loompa Doompadeedoo, I've got the perfect puzzle for you..." He would fumble over the middle part a little, so we would work on it and I probably had him randomly sing it about 10 times throughout the day. I did have a schedule conflict with my daughter's ballet, but I was able to rearrange things so that we could do her ballet on Wednesday and the audition would not be as rushed. We arrived at the audition around 5 p.m. and the lady looked at me and said, "are you going to audition" and I just smiled and said, "no, he is". She seemed surprised since he looked so nervous and shy. There was a huge room full of parents and their children, much more than I was anticipating. I guess 82 children auditioned this evening and they were going to have more auditions the following evening too. He kept telling me that he felt really nervous. I just told him to take a deep breath to help him relax and to just pretend he is an Oompa Loompa when he sings the song. So he walked into his audition in a line of twelve children with him being 3rd from the front since he was one of the smaller ones at the age of 7 and I was so afraid he would start crying or just not talk to anyone since he does have a shy side to him. After the audition, he had a big smile on his face and looked completely happy and relaxed. He said that when he sang his song, the judges had huge smiles on their faces and seemed to like him the best and then when he went back to his seat, the girl next to him told him he did a great job. After hearing that, I was thinking, oh my, he may get a part.
Wednesday ended up being a ballet day since we rescheduled it from the day before, so the morning was laid back and then around 11, we started preparing for the 12:30 ballet class. My daughter loves her ballet class and while we wait, I usually hang out in the car and my 7 year old son practices reading while the little 2 year old guy likes to pretend he's driving the car and really enjoys messing with the windshield wipers and just tries to push whatever button he can get his hands on to work on his knowledge of cause and effect. My daughter works very hard in ballet, so she always needs a little down time after her class, so the three children decided to relax and watch some movies together for a while when we got home. I have been in the process of reorganizing the house, so this will give our lives a breath of fresh air. It almost feels like you get a new house if you do this from time to time. After that, I thought the kids would help me bake cookies and we would have an impromptu math/science lesson, but they seemed more interested in just eating the cookies after I made them, which is fine too, so they had some free time.
Thursday is here and the results for Willy Wonka are (drum roll) he didn't get a part. I told him and he said, "Ok, I want to play hockey now" and that was that. The next audition will be Snow White and the 7 Dwarves in April and he said that he wants to try out for that. So I'm going to get some information so that we can be better prepared for the tryout next time since he is interested in doing this. Today our project is cleaning the house well and maybe figure out some ideas for ant control. We have these tiny little ants that are taking over our home. AHHHHHH! My son discovered some ant trap ideas when he was trying to have an ant farm, so we may expand on this. We are starting to feel less compassionate about the ants and more war like now. He seemed to be better at eliminating them than starting an ant farm, so we are going to expand on this skill level he has and see how well the results are. If that does not work, we will have to resort to calling the poison people, but I really prefer not to do that. This will be a great science project. My son then decided to write a note to his friend to send in the mail and then watch Baby Einstein with his little brother. I then told my son he was going to play hockey tonight, so he got all excited and got ready and is taking his bike helmet so he can have more of a hockey player look. I guess some hockey players may wear a spiderman bike helmet. He smiled really big and said, "I look a lot like a hockey player. I even have missing teeth." You've gotta love a boy with a sense of humor. :) I have discovered the best way to be on time when you have 3 kids is to start getting ready an hour before we need to be there. It took me a while to figure out how to do this.
This Friday was supposed to be the day when my son goes to Urban Forestry Class where they explore an outdoor wooded classroom with a licensed teacher and learn about nature. However, with subzero temperatures and the schools being closed, we decided not to go and they are considering just canceling the class today anyway. Each session involves 3 classrooms once a month. The winter session had a blizzard for the first class scheduled in January and now there are subzero temperatures for the makeup time, so perhaps this class is not meant to be this January. We are having an extremely cold, snowy winter this year. So of course my daughter is wearing her new swimsuit today while the boys have been happily playing and baby boy is really enjoying Baby Einstein videos now. I try to take time to myself each morning and do yoga. The children were playing during this time and when I saw them, my oldest son had on an Indiana Jones hat, a Hawaiian shirt, some shorts, white socks pulled up to his knees, a light saber walking stick with a Spiderman backpack and they were all marching along in a line. My daughter had on a yellow dress, a purse and a pink hat and baby boy just had on his clothes for the day, he is not really a costume kid. I asked my oldest son what they were doing and he said that they were going to Africa, so they all got in their speed boat AKA the couch and floated to Africa and then set up camp in the living room. I guess at one point, my son had to use a tranquilizer gun on a lion who was trying to attack my daughter. They will be having some exciting African adventures on this cold January day.
I may start doing more blogs about our week. For me, it is interesting to see how diverse and spontaneous unschooling truly is. It is easier to see this by writing down what we do during a week's time. Let me know what you think. We love unschooling. :)
Today I am going to talk about what an unschooling week looks like. Each week seems to be a little different and there is always some level of spontaneity involved. My desire for my children is that they know how to handle a lot of different types of situations and people so that functioning as adults can be an easy transition for them and help them gain wisdom as children so that the lack of wisdom does not need to cripple them as young adults like it does for many. It is important to be able to go with the flow of life because it can be quite unpredictable.
This week began with my husband being home from work due to MLK day. As the children get older, I will educate them on this, but at their young ages of 2, 4 and 7, we did not focus on the importance of this day at this time. I have to think a lot about how to address issues of racism and various prejudices because I really do not want any of that to be part of my children's lives. It's just negative and wrong and unnecessary, but making a difference can be quite empowering, so perhaps I will approach it in that manner when we do teach them about it. Anyway, my husband was home today, so he got to take my son to his recorder class. Whenever I go to this, I have the younger two children, so I do not have a lot of time to participate in it and just take the younger two children to the nursery where they can play, but my husband went alone with my son, so he was part of the class too. My son got to teach his Dad how to play the recorder. I thought their story about recorder class was so sweet. Then my husband took my son shopping at the natural food Co-op. So they had a great father/son day together.
That evening, I discovered that auditions for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at our local youth theatre are on Tuesday. I actually thought we missed the audition and my son did not show a lot of interest in doing it. Well, I asked him again today and he said that he wanted to be in it. He was dead set against being an Oompa Loompa because he has a problem with people laughing at him. I explained that the only reason anyone would laugh at an Oompa Loompa is because they are funny, then he changed his mind and decided that being an Oompa Loompa would not be horrible if he had the opportunity to be part of a big production and was assigned this part. I looked at the audition requirements and it looked like singing a song was part of the process. I was not sure if my son could sing, so I asked him if he knew any songs. He said that he knows Jingle Bells, The Scooby Doo theme song and Spiderman, so these were our choices. I told him to sing and to my surprise, he had quite a nice voice and was singing in tune. So I figured he could audition, it was worth a shot. Initially we chose the Scooby Doo theme song, but once we started working on it, we realized that it was a little tricky so maybe choosing a simpler song would be a better choice. My son suggested the Oompa Loompa song since that would probably be his part if he were chosen, so we searched for it on You Tube and practiced the one about the chubby boy who falls into the chocolate river. It was simple and sort of funny, so my son started working on it around 10 p.m. He was able to learn the words and then really needed to go to bed, so I figured we would practice it throughout the day on Tuesday.
On Tuesday as we casually lived our day of cleaning the house, playing games, cuddling, the usual, from time to time I would look at my son and say, "hit it" and he would sing "Oompa Loompa Doompadeedoo, I've got the perfect puzzle for you..." He would fumble over the middle part a little, so we would work on it and I probably had him randomly sing it about 10 times throughout the day. I did have a schedule conflict with my daughter's ballet, but I was able to rearrange things so that we could do her ballet on Wednesday and the audition would not be as rushed. We arrived at the audition around 5 p.m. and the lady looked at me and said, "are you going to audition" and I just smiled and said, "no, he is". She seemed surprised since he looked so nervous and shy. There was a huge room full of parents and their children, much more than I was anticipating. I guess 82 children auditioned this evening and they were going to have more auditions the following evening too. He kept telling me that he felt really nervous. I just told him to take a deep breath to help him relax and to just pretend he is an Oompa Loompa when he sings the song. So he walked into his audition in a line of twelve children with him being 3rd from the front since he was one of the smaller ones at the age of 7 and I was so afraid he would start crying or just not talk to anyone since he does have a shy side to him. After the audition, he had a big smile on his face and looked completely happy and relaxed. He said that when he sang his song, the judges had huge smiles on their faces and seemed to like him the best and then when he went back to his seat, the girl next to him told him he did a great job. After hearing that, I was thinking, oh my, he may get a part.
Wednesday ended up being a ballet day since we rescheduled it from the day before, so the morning was laid back and then around 11, we started preparing for the 12:30 ballet class. My daughter loves her ballet class and while we wait, I usually hang out in the car and my 7 year old son practices reading while the little 2 year old guy likes to pretend he's driving the car and really enjoys messing with the windshield wipers and just tries to push whatever button he can get his hands on to work on his knowledge of cause and effect. My daughter works very hard in ballet, so she always needs a little down time after her class, so the three children decided to relax and watch some movies together for a while when we got home. I have been in the process of reorganizing the house, so this will give our lives a breath of fresh air. It almost feels like you get a new house if you do this from time to time. After that, I thought the kids would help me bake cookies and we would have an impromptu math/science lesson, but they seemed more interested in just eating the cookies after I made them, which is fine too, so they had some free time.
Thursday is here and the results for Willy Wonka are (drum roll) he didn't get a part. I told him and he said, "Ok, I want to play hockey now" and that was that. The next audition will be Snow White and the 7 Dwarves in April and he said that he wants to try out for that. So I'm going to get some information so that we can be better prepared for the tryout next time since he is interested in doing this. Today our project is cleaning the house well and maybe figure out some ideas for ant control. We have these tiny little ants that are taking over our home. AHHHHHH! My son discovered some ant trap ideas when he was trying to have an ant farm, so we may expand on this. We are starting to feel less compassionate about the ants and more war like now. He seemed to be better at eliminating them than starting an ant farm, so we are going to expand on this skill level he has and see how well the results are. If that does not work, we will have to resort to calling the poison people, but I really prefer not to do that. This will be a great science project. My son then decided to write a note to his friend to send in the mail and then watch Baby Einstein with his little brother. I then told my son he was going to play hockey tonight, so he got all excited and got ready and is taking his bike helmet so he can have more of a hockey player look. I guess some hockey players may wear a spiderman bike helmet. He smiled really big and said, "I look a lot like a hockey player. I even have missing teeth." You've gotta love a boy with a sense of humor. :) I have discovered the best way to be on time when you have 3 kids is to start getting ready an hour before we need to be there. It took me a while to figure out how to do this.
This Friday was supposed to be the day when my son goes to Urban Forestry Class where they explore an outdoor wooded classroom with a licensed teacher and learn about nature. However, with subzero temperatures and the schools being closed, we decided not to go and they are considering just canceling the class today anyway. Each session involves 3 classrooms once a month. The winter session had a blizzard for the first class scheduled in January and now there are subzero temperatures for the makeup time, so perhaps this class is not meant to be this January. We are having an extremely cold, snowy winter this year. So of course my daughter is wearing her new swimsuit today while the boys have been happily playing and baby boy is really enjoying Baby Einstein videos now. I try to take time to myself each morning and do yoga. The children were playing during this time and when I saw them, my oldest son had on an Indiana Jones hat, a Hawaiian shirt, some shorts, white socks pulled up to his knees, a light saber walking stick with a Spiderman backpack and they were all marching along in a line. My daughter had on a yellow dress, a purse and a pink hat and baby boy just had on his clothes for the day, he is not really a costume kid. I asked my oldest son what they were doing and he said that they were going to Africa, so they all got in their speed boat AKA the couch and floated to Africa and then set up camp in the living room. I guess at one point, my son had to use a tranquilizer gun on a lion who was trying to attack my daughter. They will be having some exciting African adventures on this cold January day.
I may start doing more blogs about our week. For me, it is interesting to see how diverse and spontaneous unschooling truly is. It is easier to see this by writing down what we do during a week's time. Let me know what you think. We love unschooling. :)
Monday, January 13, 2014
Project Ant Farm, or wait, I mean project ant trap
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!
Our home is in a nature preserve and we aren't poison type people where we do not use poisonous substances to get rid of insects, so we will see spiders and ants and roly polys, an occasional mouse and other little critters from time to time that sneak into our home. I generally do not like to harm them and will often use the vacuum or get them outside somehow rather than smashing them. Well, unless it is a really scary spider, but anyway, every winter, around January or February, we get little ants. They usually invade the bathroom, but this year, it was the kitchen. I finally put up an ant trap, but that did not go over well. They prefer what is on the kitchen counter rather than the ant trap deadly goodies, so I came up with a better idea and I asked my 7 year old son if he would be interested in making an ant farm. Of course the answer was yes, so I googled it and we were on our way to having about 500 pet ants who went from pest to pets in a matter of minutes.
First, my son remembered that he had a 5 gallon aquarium. We had originally got it for fish, but they did not do well in there for some reason, maybe the small size, and died. Then he decided to use it for his pet rock, which is a pretty easy pet to keep alive since it is, well, a rock. Today, he thought it would be a great home for his ant farm and he was right. It had pebbles in the bottom, but I thought they may like a sand or soil where they could burrow. I thought and thought and since there is still about a foot of snow on the ground outside, that was out and I was thinking of the soil from our house plants, but that did not seem like a good idea, so Mr. Smarty pants suggested the ash from the fireplace and this seemed perfect. So I shoveled out some of the ash from the fireplace and put about a 3 to 4 inch layer of that on top of the rocks. My son then put his pet rocks in there for them to climb on and his fake plants that were supposed to be for his dead fish, and voila, ant farm.
The next step was to catch the ants which I did not see as much of a challenge since their population going from the laundry room to the kitchen under their little secret crack between the wall and the counter seemed to be endless. If we put a little coconut oil or honey on the counter, they were immediately on it. So our approach was to put honey at the end of a cotton swab and catch about 10 at a time as the little nosy creatures crept out of their little secret hiding place. So the rest of the afternoon was spent catching ants, which felt strange to me because usually I'm trying to kill ants, not catch them. We even noticed the queen ant got in there somehow, but neither of us remembered catching her. She was easy to spot because she is bigger than the others and has wings. So we had our ants. We put one of the dry muffins I made yesterday in there because they honestly were not very good and some globs of coconut oil and honey and the busy workers were fed and happy so they started burrowing their little secret passageways in the ash. This was probably almost as exciting for me and it was for my children because I have never had an ant farm and never thought about having an ant farm until today. So like most projects with unschooling, it was very spontaneous, inspirational and educational all at one time and a great way to spend a winter afternoon.
My daughter named the queen ant, Princess. We did agree on no new pets this year, but since these were already in the house, we will let this one slide.
Day 2 of project ant farm:
Adding water to ash can produce lye. We have no plans to add water, but this was brought to my attention and lye can burn your skin. I would recommend using a different substance than ash, but the idea of the ant farm I thought was a great one. :)
After learning about the lye, I checked the ant farm and the ants died. So sad. However, a great ant trap would be to fill a container with ash for them to burrow topped with honey and coconut oil and you have yourself a very effective ant trap. :) This project had a bit of a twist. I will add to this blog as we experiment some more with the ant farm.
We replaced the ash with wood shavings. My son is still disappointed that his idea did not work for an ant farm, but there is still hope.
Day 3 of project ant farm:
Well, we don't have a lot of ants left now, but the wood shavings seem to be adequate, but not ideal. My husband decided to step in with project ant farm and use a jar and find soil this weekend, that way my son can watch them burrow again without causing their doom. So this has been a fun learning experience for all of us. I would definitely recommend having an ant farm, especially if you have an ant problem in your house rather than calling the poison people. Good luck!
Our home is in a nature preserve and we aren't poison type people where we do not use poisonous substances to get rid of insects, so we will see spiders and ants and roly polys, an occasional mouse and other little critters from time to time that sneak into our home. I generally do not like to harm them and will often use the vacuum or get them outside somehow rather than smashing them. Well, unless it is a really scary spider, but anyway, every winter, around January or February, we get little ants. They usually invade the bathroom, but this year, it was the kitchen. I finally put up an ant trap, but that did not go over well. They prefer what is on the kitchen counter rather than the ant trap deadly goodies, so I came up with a better idea and I asked my 7 year old son if he would be interested in making an ant farm. Of course the answer was yes, so I googled it and we were on our way to having about 500 pet ants who went from pest to pets in a matter of minutes.
First, my son remembered that he had a 5 gallon aquarium. We had originally got it for fish, but they did not do well in there for some reason, maybe the small size, and died. Then he decided to use it for his pet rock, which is a pretty easy pet to keep alive since it is, well, a rock. Today, he thought it would be a great home for his ant farm and he was right. It had pebbles in the bottom, but I thought they may like a sand or soil where they could burrow. I thought and thought and since there is still about a foot of snow on the ground outside, that was out and I was thinking of the soil from our house plants, but that did not seem like a good idea, so Mr. Smarty pants suggested the ash from the fireplace and this seemed perfect. So I shoveled out some of the ash from the fireplace and put about a 3 to 4 inch layer of that on top of the rocks. My son then put his pet rocks in there for them to climb on and his fake plants that were supposed to be for his dead fish, and voila, ant farm.
The next step was to catch the ants which I did not see as much of a challenge since their population going from the laundry room to the kitchen under their little secret crack between the wall and the counter seemed to be endless. If we put a little coconut oil or honey on the counter, they were immediately on it. So our approach was to put honey at the end of a cotton swab and catch about 10 at a time as the little nosy creatures crept out of their little secret hiding place. So the rest of the afternoon was spent catching ants, which felt strange to me because usually I'm trying to kill ants, not catch them. We even noticed the queen ant got in there somehow, but neither of us remembered catching her. She was easy to spot because she is bigger than the others and has wings. So we had our ants. We put one of the dry muffins I made yesterday in there because they honestly were not very good and some globs of coconut oil and honey and the busy workers were fed and happy so they started burrowing their little secret passageways in the ash. This was probably almost as exciting for me and it was for my children because I have never had an ant farm and never thought about having an ant farm until today. So like most projects with unschooling, it was very spontaneous, inspirational and educational all at one time and a great way to spend a winter afternoon.
My daughter named the queen ant, Princess. We did agree on no new pets this year, but since these were already in the house, we will let this one slide.
Day 2 of project ant farm:
Adding water to ash can produce lye. We have no plans to add water, but this was brought to my attention and lye can burn your skin. I would recommend using a different substance than ash, but the idea of the ant farm I thought was a great one. :)
After learning about the lye, I checked the ant farm and the ants died. So sad. However, a great ant trap would be to fill a container with ash for them to burrow topped with honey and coconut oil and you have yourself a very effective ant trap. :) This project had a bit of a twist. I will add to this blog as we experiment some more with the ant farm.
We replaced the ash with wood shavings. My son is still disappointed that his idea did not work for an ant farm, but there is still hope.
Day 3 of project ant farm:
Well, we don't have a lot of ants left now, but the wood shavings seem to be adequate, but not ideal. My husband decided to step in with project ant farm and use a jar and find soil this weekend, that way my son can watch them burrow again without causing their doom. So this has been a fun learning experience for all of us. I would definitely recommend having an ant farm, especially if you have an ant problem in your house rather than calling the poison people. Good luck!
Friday, January 10, 2014
Unschooling Foreign Language for preschool and lower elementary
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 of course are in an English speaking household. I took a couple Spanish classes in high school and college and if I hear it spoken enough, I start to pick up certain words or phrases, but I'm far from fluent. My husband on the other hand took Spanish to another level. He took classes in high school and college, but then lived in Chile for 2 months during undergrad to do research and he became somewhat fluent in Spanish. He also learned some Thai in grad school and is aware of some resources for learning southeast Asian languages. So we have some foreign language abilities between the 2 of us.
My son showed interest in learning Indonesian when he was 6 years old, so his Dad found some resources on a Northern Illinois University website called www.SEAsite.EDU that helped with teaching a language he did not know. So my son knows some Indonesian which will come in handy when he heads out on his adventures to save Orangutans when he is older. Dora books and videos were nice introductions to Spanish for the children. Now they like to watch their favorite videos in Spanish, French and Scooby Doo has a Portuguese version. The children have seen their favorite videos so much that they have them memorized, so this is a great way for a young mind to learn a new language. I figure as they get older, we can add subtitles to this too. As they move into their preteen and teenage years, we have plans to do some oversea travelling, so I'm sure this will help dramatically with their foreign language development.
With the amount of free time we have available, there are so many opportunities for learning. I am so happy we have chosen this direction for our children. I can hear Scooby Doo playing in Portuguese in the background as I type this. :)
We of course are in an English speaking household. I took a couple Spanish classes in high school and college and if I hear it spoken enough, I start to pick up certain words or phrases, but I'm far from fluent. My husband on the other hand took Spanish to another level. He took classes in high school and college, but then lived in Chile for 2 months during undergrad to do research and he became somewhat fluent in Spanish. He also learned some Thai in grad school and is aware of some resources for learning southeast Asian languages. So we have some foreign language abilities between the 2 of us.
My son showed interest in learning Indonesian when he was 6 years old, so his Dad found some resources on a Northern Illinois University website called www.SEAsite.EDU that helped with teaching a language he did not know. So my son knows some Indonesian which will come in handy when he heads out on his adventures to save Orangutans when he is older. Dora books and videos were nice introductions to Spanish for the children. Now they like to watch their favorite videos in Spanish, French and Scooby Doo has a Portuguese version. The children have seen their favorite videos so much that they have them memorized, so this is a great way for a young mind to learn a new language. I figure as they get older, we can add subtitles to this too. As they move into their preteen and teenage years, we have plans to do some oversea travelling, so I'm sure this will help dramatically with their foreign language development.
With the amount of free time we have available, there are so many opportunities for learning. I am so happy we have chosen this direction for our children. I can hear Scooby Doo playing in Portuguese in the background as I type this. :)
Thursday, January 2, 2014
10 Signs that there may be an unschooler in your house...
1. When your proud 7 year old comes up to you and says "Look mom, I made a periscope" using cardboard, tape and a spoon and you have to quickly go Google it so that you don't feel like an idiot, you might be a Mom of an unschooler.
2. When you ask your 7 year old boy if he wants to take a science quiz on-line and he gets 10 answers correct in a row when you pick different answers, you might be a Mom of an unschooler.
3. When you go to a Science experiment at a local Science Museum and your 7 year old boy is raising his hand to all questions and getting the answers correct when you have no clue what the answers are, you might be a Dad of an unschooler.
4. When you suddenly have a deep knowledge of mummies, but you had no interest or knowledge of it until your child saw a demonstration on how to prepare a mummy at the age of five at The Children's Museum, you may be the mom of an unschooler.
5. When you start feeling guilty about using anything with palm oil because after your 6 year old became obsessed with orangutans, you learned that they were cutting down rain forest in Indonesia for palm oil plantations and removing the orangutans natural habitats, you may have an unschooler on your hands. Nutella has palm oil. :(
6. When your son's goal is to play a contrabass recorder and prior to 2 months ago when you spontaneously signed your child up for a recorder class, you had no idea that something like this existed, you may have an unschooler.
7. If your 7 year old son has been in The Nutcracker 3 times and loves ballet and has the desire to play the role of The Nutcracker and is completely unaware that being a male ballet dancer is not mainstream, you may have an unschooler.
8. When your child's friends span a 10 year or more age range, you may have an unschooler.
9. When your child does not recognize that racial differences can cause tension with some people, but accepts everyone as a possible friend without judgment, you may have an unschooler.
10. When your oldest child sees playtime as teaching his younger sister to read and do math, you may be in an unschooling household.
2. When you ask your 7 year old boy if he wants to take a science quiz on-line and he gets 10 answers correct in a row when you pick different answers, you might be a Mom of an unschooler.
3. When you go to a Science experiment at a local Science Museum and your 7 year old boy is raising his hand to all questions and getting the answers correct when you have no clue what the answers are, you might be a Dad of an unschooler.
4. When you suddenly have a deep knowledge of mummies, but you had no interest or knowledge of it until your child saw a demonstration on how to prepare a mummy at the age of five at The Children's Museum, you may be the mom of an unschooler.
5. When you start feeling guilty about using anything with palm oil because after your 6 year old became obsessed with orangutans, you learned that they were cutting down rain forest in Indonesia for palm oil plantations and removing the orangutans natural habitats, you may have an unschooler on your hands. Nutella has palm oil. :(
6. When your son's goal is to play a contrabass recorder and prior to 2 months ago when you spontaneously signed your child up for a recorder class, you had no idea that something like this existed, you may have an unschooler.
7. If your 7 year old son has been in The Nutcracker 3 times and loves ballet and has the desire to play the role of The Nutcracker and is completely unaware that being a male ballet dancer is not mainstream, you may have an unschooler.
8. When your child's friends span a 10 year or more age range, you may have an unschooler.
9. When your child does not recognize that racial differences can cause tension with some people, but accepts everyone as a possible friend without judgment, you may have an unschooler.
10. When your oldest child sees playtime as teaching his younger sister to read and do math, you may be in an unschooling household.
Cursive or no Cursive
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!
Should our children learn cursive? My thoughts are yes unless you want a generation of people walking around who can't read half the business signs or writing on cards and historical documents. When I heard that they were no longer teaching cursive writing in school, it seemed a bit ridiculous to me. It does not take long to teach and it is necessary to know. True, a lot of work is done on-line now, but there is cursive font.
Now that you know my blunt feelings about this, we will move along. My son likes to try to read all the signs now since he is starting to read a little better. He is 7 years old and he was not one of those reading 3 year old geniuses nor is he one who will not read until the age of 10 which is ok too. He is somewhere in the middle. We were driving along and he was trying to read the Walgreen's sign and I never really thought about it, but the sign is written in cursive among many other signs and he could not read it, so I asked him if he'd like to read and write cursive and he enthusiastically said, "SURE!" so with unschooling being child lead learning, cursive seemed like a good holiday project since there were not homeschool activities going on over the holidays.
I thought about getting workbooks on cursive writing. I attended public school as a child, but I just happened to be in a generation where they felt cursive writing was necessary to be productive in this culture and world of ours, so I know how to do it. Because of that, I just grabbed some big line paper I received from another nice homeschool mom with teenagers and I write each letter on the line for him and he then can copy it so that he too can learn the cursive letters. After checking his work, if I discover there are letters he is not quite doing correctly, I just include them on the next sheet of paper along with some new letters. He is doing a great job. Once we cover all the letters, I'll teach him to write our family names and then go from there and he can choose the words he wants to write in cursive.
One of the perks of unschooling is that children can learn things when they show interest in learning them rather than waiting until the school decides it is the appropriate time which may be sooner or later than what an individual child wants to learn a subject or skill. If there are some lonely schools out there who still are rebellious and teach cursive writing, they do not do this until 3rd grade when a child is probably between 8 to 10 years old. However, my 7 year old is ready to learn it now and he seems to be doing it well, so if unschooling is an approach you are happy with, just pay close attention to your child and what they are showing interest in at the time. I would not have thought to teach my son cursive at this time if he was not struggling with reading the Walgreen's sign.
It really is amazing how many signs and cards and documents are written in cursive. You will be surprised if you really pay attention to this. So by not learning it, there will be a generation of children who are more dependent and a little lost when trying to do basic reading. So my thoughts are, teach your child cursive even if they are attending public or private schools and it is not covered, teach it at home. It is a necessary skill.
Should our children learn cursive? My thoughts are yes unless you want a generation of people walking around who can't read half the business signs or writing on cards and historical documents. When I heard that they were no longer teaching cursive writing in school, it seemed a bit ridiculous to me. It does not take long to teach and it is necessary to know. True, a lot of work is done on-line now, but there is cursive font.
Now that you know my blunt feelings about this, we will move along. My son likes to try to read all the signs now since he is starting to read a little better. He is 7 years old and he was not one of those reading 3 year old geniuses nor is he one who will not read until the age of 10 which is ok too. He is somewhere in the middle. We were driving along and he was trying to read the Walgreen's sign and I never really thought about it, but the sign is written in cursive among many other signs and he could not read it, so I asked him if he'd like to read and write cursive and he enthusiastically said, "SURE!" so with unschooling being child lead learning, cursive seemed like a good holiday project since there were not homeschool activities going on over the holidays.
I thought about getting workbooks on cursive writing. I attended public school as a child, but I just happened to be in a generation where they felt cursive writing was necessary to be productive in this culture and world of ours, so I know how to do it. Because of that, I just grabbed some big line paper I received from another nice homeschool mom with teenagers and I write each letter on the line for him and he then can copy it so that he too can learn the cursive letters. After checking his work, if I discover there are letters he is not quite doing correctly, I just include them on the next sheet of paper along with some new letters. He is doing a great job. Once we cover all the letters, I'll teach him to write our family names and then go from there and he can choose the words he wants to write in cursive.
One of the perks of unschooling is that children can learn things when they show interest in learning them rather than waiting until the school decides it is the appropriate time which may be sooner or later than what an individual child wants to learn a subject or skill. If there are some lonely schools out there who still are rebellious and teach cursive writing, they do not do this until 3rd grade when a child is probably between 8 to 10 years old. However, my 7 year old is ready to learn it now and he seems to be doing it well, so if unschooling is an approach you are happy with, just pay close attention to your child and what they are showing interest in at the time. I would not have thought to teach my son cursive at this time if he was not struggling with reading the Walgreen's sign.
It really is amazing how many signs and cards and documents are written in cursive. You will be surprised if you really pay attention to this. So by not learning it, there will be a generation of children who are more dependent and a little lost when trying to do basic reading. So my thoughts are, teach your child cursive even if they are attending public or private schools and it is not covered, teach it at home. It is a necessary skill.
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