Keeping Records

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 live in a very relaxed homeschooling state where we are only required to keep attendance records for 180 days, so we have very little required of us and we are only required to keep these records in case someone checks on it, which rarely happens unless someone would report us to authorities for not sending our children to school and I do not see why anyone would do this, so I doubt we would have to keep any records, but I do keep records for myself and I thought I'd share these examples for others who are unsure what to do.  If we do decide to unschool through high school, we would need to be able to create transcripts for college  requirements and I figure it would be helpful to get into the habit of keeping good records now so that I don't feel stressed in a few years when I have no system of record keeping in place.  I keep an attendance record, activity log, book and website log, and photo scrap books.

1.)  I keep an attendance log and under each date, I keep track of the subjects and the estimated amount of time spent on each subject.  I do not do lesson plans and our schooling is very spontaneous, but it is interesting how most subjects are still covered naturally throughout a period of a week.

Attendance Record Example:

Day 1 7/1/13

2.5 hours Health and PE (nutrition, yoga)

2 hours History/Geography/social studies (WWI, WWII, Revolutionary War, Mummies, lakes, ponds, rivers, creeks)

2 hours Science (Weather, Cougars, Jungle Animals)

Day 2 7/2/13

2 hours Science (Cougars, Lions, animal care (chickens), Orangutans, Child Development)

1.5 hours Health and PE (Nutrition, food preservation)

2.5 hours Language Arts (Listening skills, Reading Comprehension, Phonics)

Day 3 7/3/13

2.5 hours History/Geography/Social Studies (poaching, history of kites, Scotland, castles, Mexico, China, Independence Day)

2 hours Science (cougars, science of flying kites)

2 hours Language Arts (listening skills)

1.5 hours health/PE (nutrition, hiking, swinging, nature)

.5 hour Music

Day 4 7/4/13

1.5 hours Math (geometry)

.5  hour Foreign Language (Indonesian)

2 hours   Health/PE (Nutrition, hiking)

1.5 hours Science (aquatic science)

 

2.)  I have also learned that it is good to keep an activity log for college entrance, so I decided to also start doing this at an elementary level. 

Activity Log Example:

 

Children’s Zoo

Toledo Zoo

Science Central

Soccer

Urban Forestry Class

Tiger and Wolf Cub Scouts

Weekly Park Days

Story time

Cedar Point

Indianapolis Children’s Museum

Science Central classes

Bicentennial Train

Recorder class through Trinity Episcopal Church

New American Youth Ballet

Parks and Recreation TBall

Little League TBall

 

3.)  I also keep a resource log that includes on-line education sites we use and books.  For college entrance, they often will require identifiable information used for education, so I figure it would help to get into a habit of keeping track of this information at an elementary level also to get into good routines.

School book and Website Log:

 

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmannm, 1983

www.seasite.edu Indonesian module

www.starfall.com

Human Body by Steve Parker, 1993

www.switcheroozoo.com

Wikapedia

You Tube

Kumon Workbooks (preschool, kindergarten)

BrainQuest Workbooks (preschool, kindergarten)

www.teachyourmonstertoread.com

Bob Books

www.sheppardsoftware.com

4.)  I also keep a photo book with different activities that we participate in relation to schooling.  My plan is to keep one for each child for elementary school age, junior high age, and high school age.  Many unschoolers do not acknowledge grade level, but I just go by my child's age and think about what grade they would be attending if they were attending school. 

None of these records are necessary, but this is what I found the most helpful for us.  I figure by sharing these examples, it may give you ideas for your record keeping if you are unsure what to do.  Hopefully this helps for anyone who may have questions about record keeping.  If you are starting the homeschooling journey, it is important to check on what is required by your state or country.  Some states in the United States require testing and having a licensed teacher sign off on school work or may have curriculum requirements while other states have no requirements for homeschooling.  So be sure you educate yourself on what is required in your state to avoid problematic issues for your family. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time away!

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!

One comment I often get from non-homeschooling individuals is that they need a break from their child and cannot imagine spending the entire day with them.  People often say that they need space from their children to help improve their relationship.  There have been times when I have thought about this on days when I just need a break or time alone and I think, maybe we should send them to school, but that's usually just a moment that soon passes.  I never have an entire day where I think, I just need a break for an entire day from my children for 45 hours a week.  They are really pleasant to be around and they are a part of me.  My thoughts are basically, if I cannot handle being around my children, then how can I stand myself?  I of course do not share this information with people who make this comment, but I guess they may know my thought process now if they read my blog.  I love being around my kids.  They have great personalities, they're funny, they're creative, they're inspiring and intelligent and I learn so much from them.  It would be sad to think that some people wish away the childhood of their children, because it is not very long and I like to cherish every moment that I can.  Like anyone, I do need alone time from time to time, but it is not hard to do.  It's just a process of setting healthy boundaries with others that some people may find challenging.

During a day, we all have time to ourselves from time to time and we all have our solitary activities that we enjoy doing.  My oldest son loves playing with his super heroes and Star Wars guys.  He will do this for hours where he will play out different scenes with his action figures.  It is his alone time and how he has space for himself where no one bothers him.  My daughter loves to color and do art and this is what she will often do when she needs alone time.  She also enjoys playing with her small toys and dolls.  She also loves looking at her books.  My baby boy loves cars.  He will sit and line up his cars and trains and drive them around and create parking lots and roads with all of his little vehicles and he will spend hours doing this at times and then he will go outside and play with the little cars he can ride around and push with his feet and do basically the same thing on a larger scale.  This is his alone time.  I will often get on the Internet, do journal writing, yoga, blogging or walk the dog to get alone time, or sometimes just cleaning up a room can seem relaxing if no one is in it but me.  Sometimes I have to tell the children several times that I need alone time, but eventually they get it and give me space and go do their own thing.  We do not need constant interaction and then when we are ready to interact again, it can be stronger than if we are interacting when deep down we really need some personal space.  So they are learning how to set healthy boundaries through this.  They are learning how others need space and how they also need time to themselves to focus on loving themselves without constant interaction with others.  They do not have to physically be away from each other or from me to feel like they have their own time and space.  My husband is a musician and his private time will involve drumming, playing guitar, or listening to music on the computer.  He will often need some alone time in the evening after working during the day, but still takes time for the children also. 

The tricks to having alone time and not feeling overwhelmed by homeschooling multiple children is pretty simple and here are some steps to take if this is challenging for you or someone you know.

1. Encourage children to find their passions and do activities related to these passions.  For example, my oldest son is passionate about super heroes, my daughter is passionate about art and creating, and baby boy is passionate about cars.  These are their favorite things to do and their main interests.  These are activities that can help them find peace and balance in their lives by having something to focus on while they are alone without unhealthy, addictive distractions such as TV and video games even though these distractions are fine in moderation.

2. Compliment children a lot on individual talents, interests and qualities.  Respect their differences and do not expect them to just do busy work that they could care less about. This will just build up resentments and learned helplessness and cause them to strive for attention from you and therefore give you no alone time, space or sanity as their parent while they are awake or physically present.

3. Remember what makes you who you are and what your passions are.  Remember what makes you happy and peaceful and content and do the things you love regularly with or without the children. 

4. If you need time alone and do not feel like entertaining children, educating them and parenting them every waking hour of your life, tell them you need this time alone.  If they do not respond appropriately and still cling after you tell them, just tell them again.  They will eventually understand and go find things to make them happy and entertain themselves if they see that you need space and they will also learn to respect another person's boundaries, so it can be a wonderful teaching moment for your family.

5. After alone time is over, make sure you have positive interactions with all the children and let them know that they are loved and the need for alone time was nothing against them personally, but just something you needed for yourself. 

By using this approach, you don't need to have your children out of the house 45 hours a week for you to be able to stand these precious beings who were created from your body.  It's possible for all of you to be under one roof 24/7 and have mainly peaceful loving interactions while still having alone time and space to appreciate the stillness of the world.  This is one of the beauties of unschooling, there are no strict schedules to follow and there are no deadlines to meet.  It is simply a time to be with these beautiful little children who miraculously appeared in your life and to have the opportunity to embrace close, loving moments with them and peaceful distances under the same roof as they play happily with their inspirations.  There is no need for an escape route.  Life is short, embrace and cherish each special moment rather than avoiding it with distractions.  Unschooling can be a wonderful beginning to a lifetime of contentment and healthy relationships. 

Unschooling math

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 have had some people ask me about how we handle math since we are using more of a child lead, interest based, unschoolng approach without structure and I wonder how they wouldn't do math.  Math is everywhere and we use it everyday with counting, telling time, keeping track of what day it is, measuring for cooking,  logical thinking, figuring a budget, building something, planning your day, looking at nature, math is everywhere.  Like many new homeschool moms, I was trying to do somewhat of a school at home approach initially where I would pick up workbooks so my son could compute 20 math problems of adding or subtracting or writing down his numbers.  He would do the workbook pages and get everything right and then I'd ask him, "what's 3+2?" and he would have no idea and I'd say, "What's 7+1?" and he would still have no clue even though he just computed a page of math problems similar to these questions.  He was doing busy work and he was not learning anything.  It was a complete waste of his time and mine.  As time progressed, I started learning more about unschooling and came across the book "Free Range Learning:  How Homeschooling Changes Everything" by Laura Grace Weldon and this was a very thorough book that included many longitudinal studies with very interesting results.  One of the studies pertained to how children learn math and it indicated that children do not need to learn formal math until 7th grade and the reason is because their brains are not developed enough to thoroughly understand math facts.  Therefore, what we would normally learn over a period of 8 years, a child could learn in a couple months and instead focus on applicable math during the elementary age as I described above with money, counting, telling time, calendars, cooking, thinking, building, etc.  This made so much sense to me, so this is what we are doing.

I taught my son to count initially by painting our finger nails and counting while it dried.  We would always count to 200.  Counting money really helped with adding and multiplying and subtracting. My son decided that he wanted to get a pet Macaw someday, so I told him he needs to count his money and he did so daily for a while.  The next step will probably involve opening a savings account for him and teaching him how to keep track of the balance.  He also helps me with cooking a lot and he can tell me which measuring cup is which and he can tell the difference between the measuring spoons just by looking at them.  He is starting to understand the concept of fractions by using measuring cups.  Today is October 16th and he asked me how many days until Halloween, so I asked him what 31-16 is and he told me it was 15.  These are just applicable day to day math challenges.

My husband loves research and did a huge research paper in grad school, so he started a research project with my son.  We obtained five hens on April fools day and now they are laying eggs like crazy, so my husband came up with the idea to record how many eggs they lay each day and this will be compared to the outdoor temperature.  I think they are planning on doing this study for a few months to a year.  So through this, my 7 year old son will learn about statistics, how to do a research study and chicken egg production. 

There are also math computer games that can be an option.  I have introduced some of them to my son, but he does not seem like he's quite ready for them yet because he does not request to play with them.  www.coolmath-games.com is one of them.  www.starfall.com also has a math section that my son enjoys playing around with.  As my son becomes more familiar with math facts and more confident with his ability, I'm sure we will find more math games for him to play with and I will be sure to share these as my children grow and learn.

So basically, time, money, calendars, cooking, building, measuring and math games on the computer are great sources of math.  As we get into the upper level math arena and the children are preparing for test such as the SAT and college entrance exams, we may explore other math resources, but for preschool and lower elementary age, these ideas work great in our unschooling family.  I also got a calculator for my son to play around with.  He will compute math problems in his head and check his answer on the calculator.  Not all parents and teachers agree with this, but it is a lot of fun for my son and learning should be fun, so I think having a calculator to play around with is a great way to encourage math in a young mind.

Monday: A Day 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!

Today I am going to share what this Monday looked like in our unschooling family.  Not everyday is filled with constant stimulation and intense learning.  Some days are maybe setting the children up for new ideas in the future by introducing new concepts while other days, there are a lot of  'ahha' moments.  Well, today was one of those laid back type of days.  My three children spent their morning watching PBS and they watched Sid the Science Kid where they focused on where water comes from in relation to our sinks, Word World, Barney, Sesame Street, and Curious George.  Even though my three children are 2, 4 and 7 and at different intellectual levels based on age, they all enjoy watching these simple shows together. My 7 year old son is learning to read and reads at a 1st or 2nd grade level, my daughter is also learning to read and working on her letters and is reading at a pre-school or kindergarten level and baby boy is learning his letters and has his colors down pretty well, so they can all relate to Word World.  Barney and Sesame Street are a little bit more at baby boys level, but the others enjoy watching it with him and who doesn't love Curious George?   I really don't mind watching that one.  My son said that Sesame Street was about flooding and the flow of water and Curious George was about making instruments.  We very rarely watch TV, so today was a rare one, but everyone needs a laid back TV day from time to time.

The TV day was followed by lunch and a park day where the children played with friends and met some new ones.  I forgot it was Columbus Day, so the public schools were set free, so the park was a little busier and more chaotic than what we prefer, but the children need to be around the masses and not just in their little homeschooling, laid back, relaxed children crowd, so I don't mind having park days like this every once in a while.  I don't want my children to be overly sheltered.  Of course my daughter found a friend who happily taught her how to be bratty and disrespectful, so she got a lesson on proper social skills when she tried to use the new skills she learned with me, but she handled it well. 

After park day, we picked up some dinner and then headed over to my son's ballet class.  My son has been in ballet for 3 years, so this would be his 4th and I do not really feel like he is learning much about ballet, but maybe he is and he just doesn't know how to tell us about what he has learned yet.  He was in the Nutcracker twice as a Cannon Soldier and he said that he wants to be in it again this year, so we are exploring this possibility.  Today was his first ballet class for this season because his soccer sessions just ended last week and my son really wanted to do ballet again.  I thought we were going to take the year off from ballet, but I don't want to prevent him from doing something he enjoys, so I agreed to it.  Once I double check to make sure the performance for the Nutcracker and the performance for his recorder class are not the same day, I will allow him to do both.  So we may have a busy holiday season this year.  While he did his ballet class, the younger children, helped one of the other families make ghosts out of suckers and Kleenex. 

We then settled in for the night.  My daughter wanted to play Scooby Doo, my 7 year old son worked on making musical instruments out of buckets which was inspired by watching Curious George earlier and baby boy wanted to watch Elmo's Potty Time.  I think he's tired of wearing diapers, so he is working hard at learning to use the potty properly.  Then my 7 year old son had the opportunity to help his Dad unclog one of our drains in the bathroom and it was interesting how this was connected to Sid the Science Kid and Sesame Street that he watched earlier.  Some days just seem to make sense once it's said and done as my son shows me his latest musical instrument of shaking a Dr. Pepper bottle filled with water.  Then we all became involved in the unschooling band playing the instruments my son created.  After that, baby boy drank the water in the Dr. Pepper bottle.  I love to see everything tied together at the end of an unschooling day.  :)

Free on-line learning sites

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 are not a big tech family and the kids do not have any video game players and they do not spend a lot of time on the computer.  However, there are times when my son request to do some on-line learning independently and I figure this will help give him some practice for when he starts some on-line college classes in a few years, so I figure some on-line learning sites could be helpful for him.  I am going to include sites that he enjoys as time goes on through this blog post, so I will be adding sites as I go and if you have any suggestions of sites he may like, please share them with me.  Thank you!

Starfall is a great learning to read and basic math site geared towards Pre-K to 2nd grade.  My son has spent a lot of time playing with Starfall over the last couple years and really enjoyed it.  www.starfall.com


My son loves Teach Your Monster to Read.  He doesn't even realize that it is getting harder as he goes.  He will often spend one or two hours playing on this and my four year old daughter will often watch him, so she will be learning basic reading too.  Once he has reading down well, he will probably no longer have interest in this site, but for now, it works great for my seven year old boy.
http://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/

Travel Homeschooling

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!

Before my husband and I had children, we enjoyed traveling and we envisioned a future full of travel with the family we created together.  We even talked about crazy ideas of performing music and touring as we traveled from place to place.  I guess you never know what might happen.  One of the perks of unschooling is that you can choose to teach your children in ways that they would find memorable rather than having them learn by memorization of facts that would likely be forgotten once they completed the required testing, so part of the approach we would like to use is incorporating travel into their education.  Not only will they be learning about geography, cultures, maps, modes of transportation, but they will also be learning about history, science, math, literature, foreign languages, culinary arts, psychology, anthropology, etc. along with having a lot of fun and family time.  The list goes on and on.  Travel is the perfect way to promote open mindedness and wisdom, so this is a big plan for our future.  I am going to share some of our ideas and perhaps that will help motivate others to also incorporate travel in their homeschooling if they are not already doing so.

We have not really started our travel homeschooling yet, but have done trips to Southeast and Midwest United States with the children so they are aware that there are places more than 20 miles from our home. Although, my daughter did not remember the traveling part and at times will say, "mom, can we go to Disney World today and get me a new toy?"  She must have forgotten about the 20 hour drive that occurred before we arrived at Disney World. I would consider these trips more like vacations though and not really travel homeschooling.  The travel homeschooling I have in mind for our future will include month long trips where we will start with the United States and then Canada and possibly Europe and who knows where from that point.  My son is currently obsessed with Indonesia and Africa, so you never know where we may drift once we get started.  He also said that he wants to go to Chile and look for chinchorro mummies. I will have to admit, I do not think I would be looking forward to that trip, not because of Chile, I'm sure it is beautiful, but the mummy part I could do without and I would hope we would not find any mummies while there.  That may give me nightmares.

The first trip I would like to do with the children in 2016 is Southwest United States. Our first stop would be St. Charles, Missouri where we would go to the Louis and Clark Boathouse and Nature Center.  We would probably stay there for a couple days.  My husband went to a training in St. Louis, Missouri and discovered the town of St. Charles while he was there and I thought it sounded like a great place to stay for a while during our cross country adventure.  We would need a nice stop in Northern Texas, but I have not found anything interesting up to this point.  Maybe a dude ranch or something would be interesting.  Do those still exist?  Well, anyway, my husband would like to attend a Flamenco music festival in New Mexico if we can pull it off and we would like to go to Sedona, Arizona and the Grand Canyon of course.  We would then head to the San Diego area and go to some beaches and visit some friends and relatives.  We would probably head back further north and go through Nevada and Colorado and then head home after that.  I think this would be a great educational and exciting trip.  It would be a first for my husband and my children to go out west and I have never been to Sedona that I am aware of and I have not been to St. Charles, Missouri.  So we will see where our adventures take us on this first trip.  I'll print out maps of the United States for the children and let them color the states we have been in once we start the travel homeschooling.

The second trip I have planned is Northwest United States in 2017.  We would initially head up to Wisconsin Dells and spend a couple days and then head into Minnesota.  It looks like there are some interesting waterfalls in that area that I have not seen, so that may be interesting to explore.  We would then head up to Mount Rushmore so the children can witness a piece of our history and see the great stone faces.  I remember doing this trip with my parents a few times and I always enjoyed it.  From there, we would head towards Yellowstone National Park to see the geysers and hope that the super volcano does not erupt while we are there.  That would be our luck, yikes!  We would need to visit Preston, Idaho where Napoleon Dynamite was filmed and then head to Crater Lake, Oregon.  We may stop by the redwood forests in Northern California and maybe visit San Francisco if there is enough interests in doing so.  We may visit Glazier National Park on the way home and I am sure there are some other interesting places we can explore that I am not yet aware of as we head back to the northern Midwest United States.  This trip would be a little more extensive than the 2016 trip and this is the one I am really looking forward to experiencing.  It will be such an expansive learning experience for all of us.  I have been to many of these areas, but this was when I was a child.  I am sure it would be a completely different experience at this point in my life.

The third travel homeschooling trip would be Northeast United States and Canada in 2018.  We would start with the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  I remember going there with my parents several times and it was always awe inspiring.  I would love to share this experience with my own family.  We would then travel up through Canada.  My husband would like to go to Montreal.  It would be great to hear people speaking French and it may inspire the children to learn the language.  We would then head down through Northeastern United States through Maine and some of the smaller states along with New York.  Maybe we could even go to New York City and catch a Broadway show and visit the Statue of Liberty if we do not make it there before this time, which I could see happening.  I love New York City.  We could then make our way into Washington DC and visit educational sites in that area and then head back through Pennsylvania, visit Hershey and Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water.  My husband and I have been wanting to see this ever since we purchased our house because our home was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.  We could end the trip with a fun day at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Oh and head home after that.  I am also really looking forward to this trip.

Other trips that we may do would include Southern Europe and then Northern Europe beginning in maybe 2020.  I just look forward to starting our traveling goals and I hope we are able to do this as planned.  Most people use the challenge of funding trips, but I figure, if it is meant to happen, so will the funds.  My husband has been playing solo guitar and may be able to set up gigs along the way and I have some ideas of doing something with music also along with possibly doing some photography and writing.  You never know, my children may have talents that can help fund the trips also at that point.  So this is our plan.  Hopefully it also encourages others to incorporate travel in their educational goals.  Unschooling is the ultimate freedom for raising children and I am so happy we discovered this as a means to educate our precious children. I am honored that we have the opportunity to provide this experience for them and I am hoping it will inspire others to do the same along the way.

Socialization

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!

One of the biggest concerns I hear about homeschooling in general is concerns about if my child will be appropriately socialized or will they be this ultra shy, introverted, awkward individual who will surely never be able to adapt to the stressors of the real world.  There are homeschoolers where children do not socialize much and they keep to themselves, but homeschooling is almost mainstream now and it is actually an extremely social experience if you allow it to be so.  This has actually been the most social I have been in my life so far since I made the decision to jump into homeschooling.  So I am going to share today about how my kids socialize and enjoy being around others and this may give some who are interested in homeschooling, but fear that their child will not be able to socialize an idea of how it works. 

On Mondays, we spend an hour at the park with other children, mainly homeschoolers and the children have free play and make new friends by doing this.  So this week, on Monday, we went to the park and there were a few people there I knew and some that I did not know, but I assume they were mainly other homeschoolers.  I announce  park play dates on a new local homeschool Facebook group I started about a month ago that now has 75 families that are part of it.  I announce park play dates on that group, so I won't necessarily know everyone who attends, but at the last park play date on Monday, there were probably 20 or 30 children playing.  After the children play at their park play date, my son goes to recorder lessons at an old church with other children and a very nice teacher.  He appreciates the independence and goes to this class on his own while we wait for him in the nursery where the younger two children can play.  We then grab dinner after recorder class and then head to soccer where he is involved in a soccer team for an hour through one of the local colleges.  There are probably at least 20 children on his team, but the entire event is for k-4th grade and there are probably around 500 children all together.  He has several friends who do this with him who he has met through various activities he's been involved with.

Tuesdays, we usually go to the library, but skipped that this week.  Sometimes we meet up with people we know at the library, but other times the children will make new friends.  However, this week, we went shopping for Halloween costumes instead because the children look forward to this all year.  Then my daughter has a ballet class where she is in a preschool ballet class with about ten other little girls and a very nice teacher.  The boys enjoy watching her through the window as she does her class.  My oldest son was in ballet for three years by his choice and had the opportunity to be in the Nutcracker twice.  We decided to have him take a break from ballet this year and explore some new things.  Once a month, my son will also be attending a science class on Tuesdays for 3 hours where they do various experiments and hands on activities.  My daughter will also start these classes once she is five years old.

Wednesdays are usually our stay at home day unless there is a random field trip or event scheduled, but the last couple Wednesdays seem to be play date day.  Last Wednesday, a family with three children came over while this Wednesday a family with two boys came over to play.  They usually have 2-4 hours of free play with other children when we have play dates.  After the children left, my oldest son and daughter then played together for several hours.  They enjoy each other and are very good at sharing and incorporating their different interests in their play.  They both really like Scooby Doo, so I think that became the theme today.  When children come over to play, they play various free play activities often outside and there is often some chicken education involved.  Today, the little boy who came over was excited when two hens laid eggs while he was here and he was able to collect the eggs from the nesting box.  I then usually send a carton of eggs home with the families since we are averaging about three dozen eggs a week at this point in our life with our five hens.  Even though we spend the day at home on Wednesdays, there is a Lego League that meets at our local library and the person who began this program organizes field trips throughout the year.  So this is an option for us also.

Thursdays are our stay home and clean the house day, but if my daughter gets up early enough, we have the option of going to preschool story time at the library where she would have the opportunity to play and socialize with other preschoolers.  We recently decided to take a break from Cub Scouts on Thursdays because it seemed like there was too much socializing and we felt like we needed a day at home to just do things around the house.  Up until last week, my son was also going to Cub Scouts on Thursdays with a group of about ten little boys his age.  He is 2nd grade age level.  We may get involved with Cub Scouts again in the winter/spring, but for now, we are taking a break from this activity because we were feeling a little too socialized. 

Fridays are our activity day.  We usually go to a zoo or museum and one Friday a month, my son is involved in a nature class and the children will be starting 4-H once a month during the winter and spring with a fair in the summer where they will be involved in a club with other homeschool children.  Sometimes we will go out of town to museums and activities on Fridays and sometimes we will do something local and I always invite other homeschool families to join us on these adventures if they are interested.  Whatever we do, it is usually something very educational and covers either history or science or a mix of subjects.  This week we are going to learn the history of rail roads and will explore the bicentennial train and I know of a few people that we know who will be participating in this event.  We may be part of a large tour group.

So this is just an example of how my children socialize during our unschooling week.  It is best to be aware of resources in your community that will help the kids explore their interests and meet new friends.  Facebook is a very good resource for homeschoolers to exchange ideas, set up play dates and exchange resources.  The children have a lot of friends, but my seven year old son has developed social skills to the point where everyone is not his friend, but he is selective about who he chooses to spend his time with.  He seems to be a pretty good judge of character, so I give him the freedom he needs to choose his friendships.  My daughter thinks everyone is her friend at this point, but she is only four.  Baby boy just thinks everyone is funny.  He doesn't really have friends yet.  So maybe some homeschoolers are introverted little children who never leave the house and are frightened of the outside world., but this is not the case with my family.  We are very social and it seems like we meet a few new people weekly.  It is a very social experience and there have been studies conducted indicating that homeschool children actually have better social skills than children who spend their day in a classroom.  So if you are thinking about homeschooling and are afraid there will be no social outlets for your children, there is no need to worry about this.  I remember having this fear when I first started and now I just laugh about it after we have become so social over the last couple years.  The opportunities are available as long as you take advantage of them.