Homeschooling philosophy experiments...

We started the week with a walk on Sunday. Heather had a blast tromping through the "deeper" snow in the ditch.




In addition to getting some exercise, we spend time observing nature as we go along. We fit many subjects into our walks; weather, geography, earth science, astronomy, nature study. We definitely have an unschooling bent to our science and social studies.
So this week I experimented in bringing an unschooling bent to math. This is a good time to experiment. Holly is good at math and has kindergarten math down, as well as much of 1st grade. Instead of mandating math time I thought I would see how we did if I took natural opportunities for math. I didn't necessarily think this would work. So imagine my surprise when the first day Holly started measuring her book shelf with a ruler and asked me to help her figure out how to add 12+12+6. We then proceeded to measure the rest of the book shelf and figure out all the dimensions. Day 2 she sat down with her mathbook and did some workbook pages. On one page she didn't understand the directions and just started copying numbers into the little squares. This initially bothered me until I realized she had done 30 problems, writing well formed little numbers in the boxes. For Holly to write 30 numbers in one sitting correctly is a feat in itself. (Writing output has limited her advancement in math curriculum recently)




Yesterday Holly decided to figure out how tall she was in Duplo blocks. When she started counting her tower block by block I suggested she think of a faster way. She knew just what to do and began grouping by 10's. She found she was 62 duplo blocks tall. Later I heard them measuring Heather and Holly informing her she was 51 duplos tall. They left the blocks out and she did her grouping correctly. I checked it later with a calculator (a duplo = 0.75 inches). They had Heather's height right!
I was very happy with the results of my experiment. My homeschooling philosophy is still in development, and likely always will be. But as I move toward more "official" schooling I hope to have a coherent plan in place. Right now, it looks like it is going to be a little bit classical, a little bit unschooling, definitely a little bit country, and maybe just a tiny bit rock 'n' roll. (Is anyone else out there old enough to remember Donny and Marie?)

Linked to Homegrown Learners Collage Friday