More Experiments in Unschooling

I have decided to unschool "for the rest of the school year." That sounds funny to me since unschoolers don't technically have a school year. But i plan to reevaluate this summer. I decided to keep track in a notebook of some of the learning we have been discovering. There has been so much I can't write it all down.

I will share about Wednesday. The morning started by the girls making their own scrambled eggs. They counted out and cracked all the eggs themselves. Holly did most of the stirring in the skillet. After breakfast they were being goofy and they each gave me 2 pennies (from our spare change box) to pay for breakfast. I explained to them that as the proprietor I had to pay my staff so each of "the cooks" were paid 1 penny in return.




After breakfast they went off and played all morning. I was doing housework while watching a very interesting documentary series. I entertained the notion of checking on them, since no recordable learning was occurring. But I wisely chose to be patient; learning would come. (And I am sure they were learning while playing)

As we were eating our leftover spaghetti at lunch Holly began talking about the label on the Parmesan cheese bottle. And we were off! Reading words; learning about abbreviations; comparing volumes and serving sizes; adding, multiplying, and subtracting; even fractions, with a little bit of food science thrown in too. We studied the spaghetti package and sauce jar as well. But the lesson didn't end there. At dinner we had to continue with all the bottles on the table, which led to a desire to break out the BOB books. My 3 y/o read books with the assistance of her big sister (and an occasional prompt from mom) while I cleared the table and did the dishes. Heather now loves working on reading BOB books, and Holly enjoys practicing her reading by helping.




They also decided to spend time Wednesday afternoon setting up their magnetic calendar for April. So we worked on calendar skills and number recognition, as well as discussing birthdays (we have several in April) and April weather in different places. Adding and subtracting days between birthdays and ages were also worked into the learning experience.

All of these learning times were initiated by the girls. I just had to pounce on the interest. I am finding that these subjects are coming up every day. Today we counted coins, read more books, discussed geography, and learned about kodiak bears. Tomorrow is Saturday, but with unschooling it will still be a learning day. We even do math on Sunday.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse at our day. I will be linking up with:

Homegrown Learners Collage Friday

Metamorphosis Part 3: How we are doing school now...

As I look back at this week and the last several weeks I see a progression of how we are "doing school". I shared in my last 2 posts about how my homeschooling philosophy is developing.

This past summer I printed out our local school districts curriculum targets for K. (Dad is not yet committed to this homeschooling thing) I read reviews and carefully chose curriculum. Holly had asked to "do school" 2 to 3 days a week in the summer so we even started some of our books.

When we started kindergarten in the fall Holly immediately became resistant to handwriting. She had taught herself to write capitals but she didn't want anything to do with lower case. She also balked at phonics. Although she was more compliant when I replaced the boring primer with some garage sale workbooks. But she loved math. She did math with delight. She was half way through 1st grade math by December.

In January she suddenly became interested in handwriting. She pulled out a handwriting book I had set aside and worked through all the lowercase letters in a couple weeks. At this time she disliked doing any math in her workbook and she whined about doing phonics workbooks as well.

At the end of February she was officially 5 1/2 years old. I started to look at the big picture. She had met most of the K targets already. Although she isn't a fluent reader, her handwriting and math skills are well into later 1st grade level. But she often resisted school time. She made the most progress when it was her choice. So I decided to experiment.

I haven't been making her work in specific curriculum for school. I have read the curriculum so I know in my head some of the things she needs to progress. For example, in math she is learning place value and adding and subtracting 2 and 1 digit numbers. I have been delighted to see how often this actually comes up in real life, if I pay attention. I try to make sure we do some reading, writing, and math every day. This is not a problem. Reading and writing and math come up naturally every day, even Sunday.

Yesterday I had to work and we had a dentist appointment. I was not thinking about school. But I discovered lots of learning went on.





The girls were running out of their special toothpaste. So Holly took it upon herself to write it on my grocery list (whiteboard on the fridge). She copied the brand name, Toms, and told me she wrote "toothpaste". We had a fun little lesson in how to spell toothpaste. Diagraphs, long vowels, and compound words just happen to be things she is working on.

At the dentist office we counted our teeth, adding the top and bottom teeth together.

That evening I decided to pull up Starfall, an internet phonics program. I am realizing that Heather has a lot of reading skills. They both played with this for a while.

Holly decided to bake cookies. I was brave and let her do as much of it herself as possible. She cracked her egg perfectly. I dug out the recipe (I have it memorized). She practiced reading, and learned about fractions and measurement. She did 90% of the work and they turned out great!

So learning happens all the time. But I do have to be aware to truly capitalize on those opportunities.

Coming soon...thoughts on relaxed homeschooling and unschooling

Linked to Homegrown Learners Collage Friday

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

A wintry week

Mom had a break, we had snow and we tried something new. All in all it has been a good week.





* The girls had a sleepover at their aunts. They had a great time, all 4 of them even had pink jammies! So mom and dad got to go out to dinner alone and have a brief "staycation"

* Tuesday afternoon I thought I would go see what was absorbing so much of the girls attention. I found them in the upstairs hallway organizing their books by letter of the alphabet. I laughed at the lone "R", a "Residential Garage Door" catalog that somehow slipped into their book pile.

* The girls started phonics notebooks. Holly's is based on word families. Heather's is on letters of the alphabet. Holly has been becoming frustrated with her previously loved phonics program. I felt that a little break was in order. So we are learning and reinforcing skills from a different, fun approach for a few weeks. We have had similar "stuck points" in both math and handwriting. In both cases after a little break we have experienced exponential growth in each area. I hope to write a separate post about our new notebooking experience soon.






We had rain and sleet all Tuesday morning, which later changed to snow. We didn't have a lot of accumulation. But it did look pretty. It was excellent "snowman" snow. So finally on Thursday I took the girls outside. This is their first snowman. He is a little short, but the snow wasn't very deep. They also made snow angels. Shallow "snowman" snow is not the best snow angel snow, but they came out okay. We threw in a little nature study. We found animal tracks. We did a little science and talked about the ice that was falling on our heads from the trees since it was 33 degrees out.

I am thankful I have my girls at home. They have time to come up with creative independent activities. I can tailor their education to the ebb and flow of their learning. And we can take time to play in the snow.

Linking up with Homegrown Learners