dakotastormsand

I have been homeschooling my son Storm(8) for 3 yrs this year I have
found the amazing unschooling idea which to me is a god send for Storm.
He is just that kind of kid. He hates sitting down and being forced to
read and write he wants to do.The thing I need help with is this. My
hubby worked from home the other day and saw that our day had shifted
away from last years model of following the curric. and lots of work
pages/instruction and he said "you haven't done any school work!" He
now thinks we are doing our son a disservice keeping him home and that
he will be so far behind his peers. I am educating him on unschooling
but in the meantime are there activities/ideas/things I can do that are
unschooling friendly so when my hubby asks what we did there shows
some "educational pursuit"? I am new at this!:)I hope to get much
better and more confident before my other 2 are older...

Joyce Fetteroll

On Sep 28, 2008, at 1:59 AM, dakotastormsand wrote:

> I am educating him on unschooling
> but in the meantime are there activities/ideas/things I can do that
> are
> unschooling friendly so when my hubby asks what we did there shows
> some "educational pursuit"? I am new at this!:

The trick is to see the learning in what they're doing. Playing with
LEGOs isn't just playing with LEGOs. It's structural engineering.
It's 3D modeling. It's fractions. (How many smaller bricks can fit in
when you don't have any of the bigger bricks left?) (Others will have
some more ideas, I'm sure.)

Well, I shouldn't say trick. Real learning is messy. It bears no
resemblance to school learning. If you pay attention to how your
youngest are learning language it looks nothing like Spanish class!
And yet it works beautifully and painlessly. The same can't be said
about Spanish class ;-)

So by breaking real learning down into schoolish looking learning, it
does a disservice to real learning. Dumbing it down so to speak! It's
not a goal of unschooling to see how unschooling matches school. But
seeing how kids are learning what they might in school by playing
*can* be a way to soothe fears so a parent can absorb what's even
better about unschooling.

And it can help spouses. Spouses are often cut off from so much of
what goes on, they only get glimpses of the surface. He's worried
because he cares.

The thing that seems to have helped a lot of dads is getting them to
an unschooling conference so they can see older unschooled kids who
aren't slack jawed droolers useful only for the loading docks at Wal-
Mart ;-)

There's a list at the Radical Unschooler's Network:

http://familyrun.ning.com/events/event/listByType?type=conference
http://familyrun.ning.com/events/event/listByType?type=Conference

(Unfortunately the tags are case sensitive so the lists are on two
separate pages.)

Joyce

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Sandra Dodd

-=-The thing that seems to have helped a lot of dads is getting them to
an unschooling conference so they can see older unschooled kids who
aren't slack jawed droolers useful only for the loading docks at Wal-
Mart ;-)-=-

Ah.

Keith's oldest brother was the jock star of the family (didn't waste
ANY of his time with music or theatre or hobbies, got a degree with
Navy ROTC, went to the Navy, married into money (in addition to
saving his own with furious interest; that was his hobby), was
ignored out of the navy, went to work for a naval contractor, didn't
do fantastically well there, separated from his family, took a part-
time job at WalMart because he as renting a room from an elderly
person (one of a series of three over several years) and retired and
now works at WalMart.

If Marty were to go and work at WalMart (which he isn't planning to
do), he could probably do better in life than Keith's brother did,
and Keith's brother "did things right." His parents were proud of him.

This is not about WalMart. It's about prejudices and expectations
and the promise of the glory of staying on the assembly line.

If someone new to unschooling is trying to sort out what their fears
are, it might help enormously to make a list of friends and
relatives, their degrees and education and certifications and all
that, and what they're doing for a living now. I think everyone's
list will have people with 'degrees they don't use' (as they say,
which is tacky, but for the sake of this I'm using it) and some with
great jobs that needed no degree at all.



Sandra

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