Unschooling and teens....

An article about teen unschooling by a young adult who unschooled :

Four Reasons to Quit School and Become a Teenage Homeschooler

"If you've spent your entire life in school (as most teenagers have), it's hard to imagine life without classes, grades, and curriculum. So when you try to imagine how homeschoolers learn, it's easy to think that they simply do "school" at "home."

While some traditionally-minded homeschoolers certainly feel compelled to pore over state-mandated textbooks in the comfort (and loneliness) of their houses, there are also many teenage self-directed learners who create their own curriculums based on their passions, interests, and goals. You're more likely to find these teens interning for a cool company, road-tripping with friends, or building a garden than doing textbook problem sets at home.

Some homeschoolers are so adamant about self-directed learning that they use an entirely different word to describe their approach: unschooling. The unschooling philosophy is simple: do what you love, and the learning (and eventually, money) will follow."

A Science post

At the Unschooling Catholics email list, we were asked a question:

"I'm having trouble letting go of the traditional high school Science sequence. What have your kids done for Science and did they have any trouble with college acceptance if they did not complete the traditional Science sequence? "

A response...and please feel free to share your ideas, too!


"I found even in high school that it was best to go with passions and interests. University is always something we kind of expect and so all by sons have gone or are studying for degrees, the youngest Unschooler starting university a year early this year at age 17.

Now some of mine have been Science "mad" and so we naturally sought Science resources for them eg volunteer work at a Science museum, applied for  and studied in a program for gifted Science  high school students at a university, I organised a weekly lab session for homeschoolers at a Scienceworks  venue, buying books and reading on Science, buying a Chemistry set and setting up a mini lab in the laundry away from toddlers, investigating Science courses like Open Uni and Unilearn ( online/external mode and I think the US has online courses, community college)...you get the idea!

Others were not really into Science so I just strewed resources and articles and experiments and outings and nature study and cooking and life and wrote it down on our transcript/report as General Science.

The kids who want and need Science follow the interest and need; others follow Science in life. And like everything this all comes down to the unschool idea of passion and motivation. 

One of mine was keen on Latin for example so for a year or so he had a Latin tutor. That would never have worked for another son but for him there was no pushing and no mum micro managing because it was what he wanted.

The same could apply for the field of Science.

Some good resources are the book And the Skylark Sings with Me by David Albert - one of his daughters became interested in Science and did correspondence Science college courses. 

Also good ideas in The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn and examples of real life teens following interests and including Science at al in Real Lives: Eleven teenagers who don't go to school, also by Llewellyn. 

And Cafi Cohen's And What About College? 

is good just for the appendix on how to log life as learning and count hours as credits for transcripts!

MacBeth always has great Science resources on her blog - here is one with some suggestions! 

If I could tell a new homeschool mum one thing.....

If I could tell a new homeschool mum one thing, it would be… to give it ( whatever it is) Time.

Time. The biggest secret in homeschooling/unschooling.

Time for a child to mature, so that the boy who hates writing at age six
(“why do I have to do this”) is just given time to mature, no pressure to write, just sharing books together until one day he finds his voice and writes and blogs.

Time for the shared experiences to be shared, to shape the child, to allow him to explore, think, play, be a child…so that he chooses, as a teen, to study ancient languages at a university winter school and needs no nagging about homework. He has had time to find out what he likes and how he learns.

Time to spend with family and friends, exploring persona (today it’s Batman, tomorrow it is a Roman soldier), learning how to interact with others, to control temper, to think of others, to learn about self.

Time to read and read together without school schedules and have-tos.

Time for that stubborn toddler to grow into a self disciplined, determined young man. Time for that  very sensitive child to grow into a young man who thinks deeply and spiritually.

Time to cook, to do crafts, to play games, to climb trees, to visit and re-visit museums and libraries, to learn.

And time for mum to realise that things that seem major and  crisis making and overwhelming now will pass.

Time has been my homeschooling secret. Regardless of circumstances and living situations, I have learned to give myself and my kids time.

An oldie but a goodie!

What is unschooling? By Earl Stevens

"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child." - George Bernard Shaw   It is very satisfying for parents to see their children in pursuit of knowledge. It is natural and healthy for the children, and in the first few years of life, the pursuit goes on during every waking hour. But after a few short years, most kids go to school. The schools also want to see children in pursuit of knowledge, but the schools want them to pursue mainly the school'sknowledge and devote twelve years of life to doing so. In his acceptance speech for the New York City Teacher of the Year award (1990), John Gatto said, "Schools were designed by Horace Mann ... and others to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population." In the interests of managing each generation of children, the public school curriculum has become a hopelessly flawed attempt to define education and to find a way of delivering that definition to vast numbers of children. The traditional curriculum is based on the assumption that children must be pursued by knowledge because they will never pursue it themselves. It was no doubt noticed that, when given a choice, most children prefer not to do school work. Since, in a school, knowledge is defined as schoolwork, it is easy for educators to conclude that children don't like to acquire knowledge. Thus schooling came to be a method of controlling children and forcing them to do whatever educators decided was beneficial for them. Most children don't like textbooks, workbooks, quizzes, rote memorization, subject schedules, and lengthy periods of physical inactivity. One can discover this - even with polite and cooperative children - by asking them if they would like to add more time to their daily schedule. I feel certain that most will decline the offer.
The work of a schoolteacher is not the same as that of a homeschooling parent. In most schools, a teacher is hired to deliver a ready-made, standardized, year-long curriculum to 25 or more age-segregated children who are confined in a building all day. The teacher must use a standard curriculum - not because it is the best approach for encouraging an individual child to learn the things that need to be known - but because it is a convenient way to handle and track large numbers of children. The school curriculum is understandable only in the context of bringing administrative order out of daily chaos, of giving direction to frustrated children and unpredictable teachers. It is a system that staggers ever onward but never upward, and every morning we read about the results in our newspapers.	Children pursue life, and in doing so, pursue knowledge.
But despite the differences between the school environment and the home, many parents begin homeschooling under the impression that it can be pursued only by following some variation of the traditional public school curriculum in the home. Preoccupied with the idea of "equivalent education", state and local education officials assume that we must share their educational goals and that we homeschool simply because we don't want our children to be inside their buildings. Textbook and curriculum publishing companies go to great lengths to assure us that we must buy their products if we expect our children to be properly educated. As if this were not enough, there are national, state, and local support organizations that have practically adopted the use of the traditional curriculum and the school-in-the-home image of homeschooling as a de facto membership requirement. In the midst of all this, it can be difficult for a new homeschooling family to think that an alternative approach is possible.One alternative approach is "unschooling", also known as "natural learning", "experience-based learning", or "independent learning". Several weeks ago, when our homeschooling support group announced a gathering to discuss unschooling, we thought a dozen or so people might attend, but more than 100 adults and children showed up. For three hours, parents and some of the children took turns talking about their homeschooling experiences and about unschooling. Many people said afterward that they left the meeting feeling reinforced and exhilarated - not because anybody told them what to do or gave them a magic formula - but because they grew more secure in making these decisions for themselves. Sharing ideas about this topic left them feeling empowered. Before I talk about what I think unschooling is, I must talk about what it isn't. Unschooling isn't a recipe, and therefore it can't be explained in recipe terms. It is impossible to give unschooling directions for people to follow so that it can be tried for a week or so to see if it works. Unschooling isn't a method, it is a way of looking at children and at life. It is based on trust that parents and children will find the paths that work best for them - without depending on educational institutions, publishing companies, or experts to tell them what to do. Unschooling does not mean that parents can never teach anything to their children, or that children should learn about life entirely on their own without the help and guidance of their parents. Unschooling does not mean that parents give up active participation in the education and development of their children and simply hope that something good will happen. Finally, since many unschooling families have definite plans for college, unschooling does not even mean that children will never take a course in any kind of a school. Then what is unschooling? I can't speak for every person who uses the term, but I can talk about my own experiences. Our son has never had an academic lesson, has never been told to read or to learn mathematics, science, or history. Nobody has told him about phonics. He has never taken a test or been asked to study or memorize anything. When people ask, "What do you do?" My answer is that we follow our interests - and our interests inevitably lead to science, literature, history, mathematics, music - all the things that have interested people before anybody thought of them as "subjects". A large component of unschooling is grounded in doing real things, not because we hope they will be good for us, but because they are intrinsically fascinating. There is an energy that comes from this that you can't buy with a curriculum. Children do real things all day long, and in a trusting and supportive home environment, "doing real things" invariably brings about healthy mental development and valuable knowledge. It is natural for children to read, write, play with numbers, learn about society, find out about the past, think, wonder and do all those things that society so unsuccessfully attempts to force upon them in the context of schooling. While few of us get out of bed in the morning in the mood for a "learning experience", I hope that all of us get up feeling in the mood for life. Children always do so - unless they are ill or life has been made overly stressful or confusing for them. Sometimes the problem for the parent is that it can be difficult to determine if anything important is actually going on. It is a little like watching a garden grow. No matter how closely we examine the garden, it is difficult to verify that anything is happening at that particular moment. But as the season progresses, we can see that much has happened, quietly and naturally. Children pursue life, and in doing so, pursue knowledge. They need adults to trust in the inevitability of this very natural process, and to offer what assistance they can. Parents come to our unschooling discussions with many questions about fulfilling state requirements. They ask: "How do unschoolers explain themselves to the state when they fill out the paperwork every year?", "If you don't use a curriculum, what do you say?" and "What about required record-keeping?" To my knowledge, unschoolers have had no problems with our state department of education over matters of this kind. This is a time when even many public school educators are moving away from the traditional curriculum, and are seeking alternatives to fragmented learning and drudgery. When I fill out the paperwork required for homeschooling in our state, I briefly describe, in the space provided, what we are currently doing, and the general intent of what we plan to do for the coming year. I don't include long lists of books or describe any of the step-by-step skills associated with a curriculum. For example, under English/Language Arts, I mentioned that our son's favorite "subject" is the English language. I said a few words about our family library. I mentioned that our son reads a great deal and uses our computer for whatever writing he happens to do. I concluded that, "Since he already does so well on his own, we have decided not to introduce language skills as a subject to be studied. It seems to make more sense for us to leave him to his own continuing success." Unschooling is a unique opportunity for each family to do whatever makes sense for the growth and development of their children. If we have a reason for using a curriculum and traditional school materials, we are free to use them. They are not a universally necessary or required component of unschooling, either educationally or legally. Allowing curriculums, textbooks, and tests to be the defining, driving force behind the education of a child is a hindrance in the home as much as in the school - not only because it interferes with learning, but because it interferes with trust. As I have mentioned, even educators are beginning to question the pre-planned, year-long curriculum as an out-dated, 19th century educational system. There is no reason that families should be less flexible and innovative than schools. Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller's mentor and friend, said: I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less "showily". Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences. Unschooling provides a unique opportunity to step away from systems and methods, and to develop independent ideas out of actual experiences, where the child is truly in pursuit of knowledge, not the other way around.

Learning through play

National guidelines in Australia support the importance of play in learning. 

"The guidelines recognise the importance of play, particularly in the way it develops creativity, teaches sociability, negotiating and linguistic skills, and stresses that learning is not limited to a time or place." Guidelines Recognize The Importance of Play, The Melbourne Age

Something we unschoolers knew all along. 

Creativity - our cooking, our free arts and crafts, our Lego, our dress ups, our imaginary play, our forts and cubbies and cars and dolls and music and...

Sociability - getting along with each other day after day, park days, play dates, church, parihs activities....

Negotiating skills - whose turn is it to sit in the front of the car or to have a go at the Playstation or...

Linguistic skills  - we talk, we read, we watch movies, we talk some more, we write,we journal, we are on facebook and blogs and twitter, we learn prayers and poems and languages, we sing, we play games...

Learning is not limited to a time - stories and looking up links on Google at bedtime and watching just-anther-episode  - oh, it's midnight already?

Learning is not limited to a place - writing journals while having ice creams at McDonalds and mum feeds the baby, working on a Maths sheet or reading a religion book in the car on the way to skating, sitting on the sofa to read and use the laptop or lying in the grass outside with that book and play cards and throw balls and everything else....

Learning through play.

What do unschoolers do all day?

A great post, discussing principles. 

Principles?   

1. We focus on exposure, not mastery.

2. We focus on strengths and potential, not weaknesses.

3. We focus on modeling.

4. We focus on relationships.

5. We focus on time, not content.

6. We focus on our conviction and faith in the path we’ve chosen. 

The Importance of Play

I was reading an interesting blog post for work on the importance of play and on traditional games for children. Not just for nostalgia but for what is learned and shared during these games.

For work? I am the Coordinator/Director ( in other words, Nominated Supervisor and Educational Leader) at an Out Of School Hours Centre...before and after school care.

So much of what we do at OOSH resembles my unschooling household.

So much of what we do and did in unschooling was play, new forms of play and traditional forms of play. Play for all ages.

And why is this play important? Read the whole blog post but this excerpt gives a glimpse:

I think there is something important about these traditional games that cannot simply be dismissed as rose-tinted, sepia-toned nostalgia. And I think the time is right to revisit these games and breathe new life into them.

There is something wonderfully pared down and self-reliant about many traditional games. They rarely need equipment. Many can be played almost anywhere, and can cope with a wide range of ages, abilities and numbers of players (I once saw two siblings play hide-and-seek for about fifteen minutes in a five-metres-by-five leisure centre reception area.) And the rules can be endlessly adapted – just as long as a sense of fair play is respected.

Outdoor games also provide children with valuable rehearsals for everyday life. Think about all the tasks that are involved in a game of tag, for instance. Players have to decide who is ‘it’. They have to agree safe spots, and how ‘time out’ works. And they have to sort out disputes about whether or not someone was tagged. The physicality of tag, and indeed many traditional games, demands accurate risk management. When chasing or catching, players have to try to make sure they don’t hurt each other too much, and it’s not a great idea to collide with any non-participants who happen to stray into the area. That is a pretty impressive list of physical, interpersonal and social skills. Traditional Outdoor Games: Tim Gill

Toddlers and unschooling

Toddler unschooling. A discussion on our Unschooling Catholics email list.


Isn't it just living life with toddlers? Yes.


But.... we all need new ideas. And it is often counter cultural to be living with toddlers without plans for preschool or  school or even school at home. How will they learn?


As John Holt pointed out many times, children are natural learners. if we don't squash their interests. And if we share our lives with them, share the big wide world.

So here is a link on  Toddler Unschooling.... ..with many micro links contained within. With a reference to this book ( see image), one I found helpful as a young mother of young children. 


Enjoy. 


And share your ideas!  

What is unschooling?

From our Unschooling Catholics email list...

Susan : I thought it might be good to address that idea about the difference between relaxed, eclectic, etc.  The labels can always cause some issues, but we need words to try to have a dialogue, so we work with what we have and hope
to gain understanding.

I have seen many dismiss unschooling, even saying they have 'tried' it for a month, a year, during a challenging time when they couldn't manage curriculum, etc.  But I think a primary difference between unschooling and other 'styles' comes from a complete shift in one's way of thinking. I recently had a friend say that she had 'homeschooled' her children one day when it was a snow day.  I told her that it was more a shift in lifestyle and doing a workbook one day with your dc doesn't give the flavor of what you might do.  I think the same about unschooling...it can't be merely dabbled in.  It involves a willingness to change into a different type of lifestyle even than 'relaxed' or 'eclectic'.  The journey gets turbulent at times (well, it has for me).  On the ouside, it may look any different way...busy, hectic, slow paced, relaxed, high pressure, highly structured or loosely structured.  The key differences are on the inside.

I know that despite the fact that I read some John Holt  when I first decided to educate dc outside the school setting, it took a lot of introspection to see the many ways I still had an agenda for my dc.  I still wanted to pour knowledge and information into them; I still wanted to have them love and learn form the great opportunities I would provide.  I still wanted them to know their math, how to read well, spell, etc.  And I admit I even hoped they might excel 'early'. 

For me, it was a real journey of self discovery in examing all the things about school and how they had permeated my thinking.  And a real journey in observing dc and their learning.  A real journey of faith...do I trust God to inspire them?  Do I  trust the diverse gifts given by God can be 'enough', even if they don't follow "what your whatever grader needs to kow"?  Can I trust myself enough to really be present with my dc?  To accept, and love them on their own life journey. Do I have it in me to actually *be* the example of  someone they ought to emulate?

And it is a challenge to be this in a society that measures and looks at results, expectations what have you been 'doing'?  Sometimes I don't know - we live, we love, we laugh and enjoy.  Sometimes we work through conflict and difficulty,  Life brings us so many experiences, and it is all worthwhile.

We are fortunate here to have some members who have lived and experienced this for years.  And have felt a desire to provide a place to converse openly with others.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Leonie: I think unschooling implies attentiveness - to the child and her needs, to the family and the season of family life.....I think the time spent in planning lessons in more conventional homeschooling becomes time spent with the child and in attentiveness. And sometimes it means time spent on one's own passions - modeling the following of a passion  and thus that learning happens all the time, throughout life.

 

I said once that not everyone has to unschool or unschool in the same way. I stand by that. :-) I think there is a definition of pure unschooling ( perhaps Rue Kream's book Parenting a Free Child has such a definition) and then there are definitions like Suzie Andres' one ( in Homeschooling With Gentleness: A Catholic Discovers Unschooling).

 

I think we find our own paths and sometimes the paths meet with ideas from Charlotte Mason . Sometimes the paths meet or we re-trace our steps.

 

Family life, and thus unschooling, for me is never a recipe or a straight flow - it is the ebb and flow, the changing seasons. :-)

 

I think, for me, unschooling also means questioning my paradigms so, I really question why we might behave one way in parenting or why we might want a maths book ( or whatever). 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Susan: As usual, wise words from Leonie!  I agree that unschooling is not for everyone.  And for those who go this route, I almost wonder if it makes an unschooling family as unique as a snowflake.  Each family constellation made up of unique individuals, and each family group with its own ebbs and flows. (I sometimes wonder if that’s why I find it challenging to find unschooling families irl.  I know of a few in this area, and we are all very different enough that we don’t cross paths often – though it is always lively and fun when that happens.)

I do think that while John Holt coined the term and wrote prolifically, some ideas cross over into others thinking and being with children, discovering how they learn, respecting dc as Jesus did… “ A little child shall lead…”  And many of the ideas that affirm unschooling for me can be found in the writings of many saints.  Also, the historical perspective comes into play…school ‘systems are such a tiny blip on the radar of history, and schools systems in industrialized societies even smaller.  Learning has occurred throughout human history, and our faith informs us that right relationships, loving God in the first place and others – that has a higher importance. 

Sharing with family

A question that often gets asked on our Unschooling Catholics email list is...what do I tell grandparents? Cousins? Relatives? How do I explain this to my parish priest when Father asks? What do we share about unschooling at family gatherings, especially if everyone seems a bit anti?


I have found that the best approach is just to share all the marvellous things we do...and then gradually ask questions about the other's life and the topic is safely steered. If someone is particularly interested, I will share our learning is life, life is learning approach.

Ultimately, I think the proof is in the pudding.


In the meantime, Julie from Bravewriter has shared  tips in her post on /When they don't get it ....

Learning at home in the school of life

What a great description of unschooling. "Learning at home in the school of life."

From a newspaper article in an Australian newspaper . “When you home-educate, especially using the natural learning method as we do, learning becomes so much part of your lifestyle, you don’t even realise you’re doing it. You’re just having conversations,” says Wight.

Homeschooling as Life

" My primary discovery in my relationship with Dotty was that homeschool is a LIFE lived—richly, fully, with crafts, activities, face paint, the arts, books, and lots of cozy eating times with the people you love."

So says Julie, from Bravewriter.

And so say I.

Homeschooling is living a rich life, wherever and however we live. As someone who has lived in small and large spaces, rural and city, and often on a limited time and money budget…this rich life is the one constant.

Go and read Julie's blog post.

Blogging an unschooling morning..

Friday morning here.

I was set to work outside the home one to six in the afternoon so there popped up a free morning ....which is rare. 

My alarm was set for early so I could go to mass at Tyburn convent with the Benedictine nuns. Ah, peace..

Came home, kids were exercising, showering, Facebooking...

I did a few chores and chatted to my twenty year old about stoicism.

And then my sixteen year old started making pancakes for breakfast.

With that smell in the air I did a Taebo workout ..Cardio Scilpt. Go Billy Blanks!

And then made and had some pancakes myself. 

We talked about our plans for today and for the weekend ( youngest son and I taking a bus to Canberra to stay with an older son who works there in Parliament and going to the Renaissance Exhibition at the Art Gallery).

 Kids reading (those old Donna Parker books that I was addicted to as a girl, Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy INight, finishing off Dante's Divine Comedy, a book on Stoic Philosophy, a book on Catholic Bioethics by our Bishop, A Wrinkle in Time as its the 50th anniversary of that book!).

 I went into laundry, emails, talking, planning on doing banking for Kumon and taking whoever wants to come to the shops with me, reading Ten Habits of Happy Mothers.

And we  looked at the saint book for today.. Sts Fabian and Sebastian.

 And two sons started a game on Playstation 3.

That's our unschool  morning .

Anyone else?

No curriculum

A great read. On why you don't need a curriculum.

You don't, you know..

From Linda Dobson:

A curriculum is a course of study. It might help if you think of it as a highly planned tour through learning. If, in your exploration of do-it-yourself education reform, you feel more comfortable using such a tour guide, then by all means use a tour guide! There are many sources of lists and general outlines of what someone somewhere has deemed that children should know and in what order they should learn these things. You can use the information to see where your child is and where your child will go.

Traveling the Learning Path Independently

But what if, in your learning journey, you begin with no particular place to go? What if, instead of being a professionally planned excursion complete with an itinerary some travel agency thought would be worthwhile, your family’s trip becomes more like a jaunt on a beautiful spring afternoon, taken not to get anywhere in particular but only to enjoy being free to enjoy? Instead of getting on a bus with forty strangers, you might decide to walk, or ride a bike, horse, or four-wheeler, or drive around in circles stopping at inviting places along the way. You may not see every classic site that those on the guided tour witness, but if they are among the places that interest you, you will visit some. You will also have under your belt experiences of value to you personally. For example, let’s say you’ve tried fly fishing a time or two and enjoyed it, so for you, a visit to that funky little fly fishing museum is in order. While there you pick up ideas for new flies to make, talk with the proprietor about a few streams to try, and take home a couple of specialty books you’ve never seen elsewhere in order to learn even more at home. Had you traveled with that professional tour, you might not even know the museum exists because it wasn’t on the itinerary.

Learning Happens Within

You see, learning happens whether or not it is directed from without. I would say that more learning (and remembering) occurs when you follow your interest to a meaningful destination than happens among those strangers who take the much more traveled route. This is why curriculum is not the necessity that the educational bureaucracy makes it out to be. John Gatto said, “You can be trained from outside, but only educated from within; one is a habit of memory and reaction, the other a matter of seizing the initiative.” (emphasis added).

You don’t necessarily require a curriculum at home, because you’re addressing education instead of training.

I can’t prove it at this point, because it hasn’t yet been done, but I would bet that children who are guided by education mind, whose “learning time” was filled with activities like those in The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas: 500+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities, as well as the subsequent explorations these activities would engender because their time is their own, would wind up as educated people.

Adapted from The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas: 500+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities by Linda Dobson

I don't have time to do record keeping!

I don't have time to record learning!

Neither do I. 

We are too busy living and  learning, to record that unschooling living and learning.

Yet I need to keep records for the state.

My solution? Download the objectives, the outcomes, the syllabus for the required courses of study. Keep in a file.

And keep an (almost) daily log. Brief. To the point. Curriculum areas and  children assigned via initials. 

Example?

A. (Anthony in other words)
21/11/11
*Games Day with other homeschoolers (M, T, PD....Maths, Technology, Personal Development)
*Kumon Maths (M)
*Chores and life skills (PD, WE...Work Education)
*Work at Kumon Centre (WE) 
*Make a custard tart for the Presentation of Our Lady and read about the history of the solemnity (H, FT...History, Food and Technology)
* Reading Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold (H,E...English)
*5BX Fitness (PE..Phys Ed)

23/11/11
*Read Catholic Apologetics by Fr Laux (E, H, PD)
* Read and discuss The Christian Gentleman..values, social mores of different times and cultures (PD, E, H)
*Kumon Maths (M)
*Practice piano and guitar (Mu...Music)
*Drama class (D..Drama)
*Watch Breaking Dawn and discuss movie, characters, the plot, the techniques, values and emotions (E, PD, F&T...Film and Technology)

If the activity pertains to several I would write their initials at the beginning (A,T, N) or use my generic grouping (OK or YK...Older Kids or Younger Kids)

Very, very simple. In journals or exercise books or on the computer or a blog.

And if you want more simple record keeping ideas, see the bookAnd What About Colleg? by Cafi Cohen. 

A few unschooling ideas

We are often asked what it is that unschoolers do all day.

Our usual glib answer...we live and learn...just doesn't cut it when someone is looking for the nitty gritty. The how to begin. The how to recharge or get out of a rut.

Check out this great, well, checklist if homeschooling. A virtual cornucopia of ideas.

The ABCs of Unschooling by Mary Gold.

I love...X: x-rays, xylophones, X marks the spot on a pirate map

Y: yoga, yodeling, yarn dolls, yo-yo's, Yahtzee

Z: zoos, zithers, Zoom

A Day in the Life

Would you like to share a day in your unschooling life? Not a Typical Day. But just a day.

Today?

Here is a day from last week....

Three older sons are home for study week for university. I and one son get up

 early to workout then others start waking up. My second son Greg, a postulant for the

Conventual Franciscans and in Chicago for postulancy and novitiate for two

years, phoned to talk so we all take turns chatting. It's getting cold there...

And summer is starting here! Contrasts!

We talk a lot about the movie Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson, the 1920s art

and literature references. Kids get breakfasts and do workouts and as Anthony,

our high school age unschooler, eats some fruit cake and cheese for breakfast I

remark that the cake was marked down at our local independent grocer. He says he

will walk down now and get another at that price (99c!) and count the walk as

fitness for today.

I start in on work for my Kumon Education Centre and also discuss food and

 recipes as the older ones are doing a cook off with friends from university. They look

through our cook books for ideas.

I keep up my work while chatting. Anthony comes back from the store and we talk

 about Blessed John Scotus ( tomorrow! A Franciscan! A philosopher! The doctrine

of the Immaculate Conception) and Marie Curie ( would be her 144th birthday

today).

I ask Anthony to sort the laundry and perhaps do some maths and Physics. He does

 the washing and maths and is sitting on the sofa about to look at his Saxon Physics text, leftover from hid older brothers, when his friend's dad arrives to take him to games at a friend's house. We

alternate houses for games on Mondays.

 I go to mass at university with one son who is dropping off an assignment. I visit the

 university library for philosophy books for my essay and find a book called Philosophy

 and Movies... I borrow this for Anthony as he, like all of us, love movies and we

can read and discuss the related philosophical discussion together.

 I rush some lunch at home and go to pick up Anthony and his friend to bring them

to work for me at Kumon. Three other sons arrange to meet me there. I discuss an

afternoon women's retreat with my friend when picking up the kids... Can we both

go?

We work at Kumon 2.30-8pm then some sons go to Theology on Tap ( George Wiegel)

 and some sons and two of my Kumon assistants and I got to 7 Eleven for our free

 slurpies because today is 7/11! We pick up a DVD from the rental on the way

home.

 Leftover for dinners, the kids watch a DVD, Anthony practices piano and begins

 writing for Nanowrimo as he and his friend and I were chatting about this in the

 car. I do work for the MI (Militia Of the Immaculate) and talk to others about

Wiegel when they get home from TOT.

 So that's Monday's Unschooling day!  

So..tell me more about strewing...

In our family, in our unschooling, how do learn?


We learn by strewing. We strew things for each other. We suggest. We share. 


So, let me strew some resources about strewing..



The thing that works with unschooling is to follow delight - and scatter it like a flower girl in front of the bride - not every petal will be crushed to release fragrance - but enough will. ...of course to follow delight, you have to admit to yourself that you feel delight ..  Nora Cannon...from Sandra Dodd's  Strewing Their Paths



What exactly is strewing and how do you do it? I think it is leaving material of interest around for our children to discover. Is there more to it?.....Strewing: Definition and Suggestion


A few months into our homeschooling adventure my 8 year old daughter spontaneously said "Our house is like a museum with really cool stuff in it!" This was the moment I decided it was going to be alright.....Your House as a Museum

Weekly Rhythm

I like to have a bit of a rhythm to our days and weeks.

Too much routine and I am bored...yawn...

Too little and I think we feel scattered and less connected.

So how does a rhythm work in unschooling? If we are not "doing school" how do we structure our days and weeks?

It varies.

You knew I was going to say that...

When my children were younger we had a routine of pretty much daily mass, ice skating or swimming or science centre on Monday afternoon..and mum would try to catch up on washing on Monday mornings! Wednesdays were Discovery Journal days..writing and drawing about our week, our maths discoveries, our Science discoveries, books, current affairs.. Doing the Days.  Thursdays we often did grocery shopping and went to the library and out for cofffee..or met with other Catholic homeschoolers. Friday was park day or nature/art day. Music lessons meant we played 'pick an envelope'..an envelope with ideas like do a maths game, write in your saints book, draw in your nature journal..to keep siblings occupied while others were in their piano lessons.

And all this fitted in around my work schedule and around babies and toddlers.

Now with an unschooling teen, and older sons still at home but at university, our rhythm still revolves around my work schedule and our outside things.

Mondays, Anthony has gaming day with two homeschooling friends. Often mass at Campion College with the older kids.They work with me at my Kumon Education Centre. Tuesdays have mostly been unstructured, so around my work we have had errands, library visit and in my mind... a good morning to try some more formal work. But this term Anthony has surfing lessons so he is out most of the day with other homeschoolers. And we all go to the mass and Novena to St Anthony in the evening. Wednesday, I teach catechism at a local school so that is a good day for religion! he has drama class, sometimes goes to debating  with his brothers at Campion, maybe guitar lesson and a friend for dinner.Junk mail delivery! Thursday Anthony helps me with work for Kumon, we go to mass, he may do some maths and Latin, he works at Kumon, we usually watch a DVD. Fridays can be ice skating or outing or hang around, mass in the Extraordinary Form, busing to piano lessons and coffee, youth group.

And that is how the weeks go...way too fast...but we work on flow...on doing...and on being.. For me, knowing the flow of activities throughout the day works better than having set times. Waking up flows into breakfast flows into getting dressed flows into brushing teeth, etc.

Like the blue willow tea set...cups in a row, beauty, but not perfect...little imperfections...like those little imperfections in our days, our order, our rhythms ...that make the unschooling week.

Unschooling and Special Needs

The question arose at our Unschooling Catholics email list...what about unschooling, child centered and interest centered, relaxed Homeschooling...what about unschooling children with special needs.

"One of the reasons I quit the path of cookie-cutter help was because I got to watch my (unschooler) friend's son, a boy much like my own, blossom in her care. With every difficulty or difference he presented, whether it was speech differences, sensory difficulties, or behavior issues, she arranged life to fit his needs. She also approached all this with a solid faith in him that he was the way he was supposed to be, and that he was on his own schedule. She sought appropriate help when needed, but it was out of a "what are his true needs" space."

From Sandra Dodd's unschooling website.

"If in school, 6 would not be able to sit for very long without making himself "known." He would not be able to sit still and play nice for the 6-7 hours that would be required of him. He would probably be diagnosed with ADHD and on meds, if I allowed that. He is not ADHD, but I have heard how this has happened many times from other homeschoolers with children who are not really and truly ADHD. 6 can add triple digit numbers in his head-as long as he can spin and move about the room and dispense his energy when he needs, he is just fine!"

From Life Without School Community blog.