Update on the unschooling experiment

I had decided to unschool for the rest of Holly's K year. I don't think I actually did. As I have read more about unschooling I have discovered varying thoughts on what unschooling is. It seems for much of the general homeschool world "unschooling" means not using planned, scheduled curriculum, but learning through opportunities in everyday life and according to a child's interests. But a large segment of the unschooling world only considers the strict philosophy of completely child led learning to be unschooling. So if you are teaching anything to your child that they have not requested to learn you are not unschooling, even if they are willingly and happily participating.

I am incapable of following the strict definition of unschooling. I love to teach, I love to share new information I am discovering. I love to open people's eyes to new ideas. And I really appreciate when others teach and share new ideas with me. Strict unschooling would require withholding part of my personality from my children.

I am not sure who really "owns" the term unschooling. I believe it was coined by John Holt. But I have not yet read enough of him to decide what he would have the term mean. However in order to be clear, I guess I can't really call myself an unschooler.

I think I can safely call my prevailing educational bent "interest led learning". This sometimes involves pouncing. For example yesterday, I said "Get in the car Babe" to my girls. Heather pointed out that I should have said "Babes". So I started a fun conversation about plurals. The girls had fun and were learning, because I had pounced on an opportunity to teach some basics of grammar. Other times I have to stop and engage. Today Holly said she wanted to learn about flamingoes. So I took a break from cleaning the kitchen and we took out the animal books. We also plan to look for more flamingo books at the library next week. This then led to reading about other animals, and practicing writing the names of animals.

While my educational philosophy is still in a state of metamorphosis, it is beginning to form into something like this:

There are many things I think it would be useful for my girls to learn. But it is best for them to learn these things when they are interested and open to receiving the information. There is no rush. There will be things my girls want to learn I have never considered. I need to listen and be open to helping them pursue those interests. Many times pursuing their interest will cover those "useful" things on my list. But more importantly, those interests can take us on wonderful unexpected learning adventures together.

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

Thoughts on relaxed homeschooling/unschooling.

I have intended to write this post for a while. I have been doing lots of research on unschooling and education in general. But I don't feel that my thoughts have yet come to a coherent conclusion, or even a pausing point. However as I read and grow through this search I keep thinking of lots of stories, stories from my life that have shaped my educational paradigm, stories that demonstrate the truth of principIes I have been discovering.

So instead of sharing incoherent opinions, I thought I would share a series of stories. Stories that are not just about an event in my life, but are also about a principle. These principles are influencing the metamorphosis of my educational philosophy.

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