Lee Roversi

'People warned me "oooh, you'll have three teens, watch out, it will be
horrible"
but so far, with Holly 12 and Kirby 17, it hasn't been horrible in any way
whatsoever.'

So says Sandra!
And I might add that I heard that phrase in several different ways more
times than I care to recount. And, even now, when, not with my children
(or, even more rudely, when I am with them) people still have some wild
comment when they hear that I have a 20 year old, a 17 year old and a 13
year old!

No one prepared me for just how tender, interesting, inspiring, and
marvelous it would be to be the mom of teens/young adults. The 'horror
stories' just don't seem to play themselves out here.

And, believe me, I am grateful each and every day and don't take it for
granted for a moment.

All you out there with little ones - treasure that time, too - and know
that with the path you have chosed, you, too, will be experiencing the
continued joy of 'older' children with whom you can share such great times.

In aloha,
Lee
NORTH COUNTRY FARMS
~an eco-tourism destination~
P.O. Box 723
Kilauea, Kauai, Hawaii 96754
808-828-1513phone & voice mail
808-828-0805fax
www.northcountryfarms.com

Mary

From: "Lee Roversi" <ncfarms@...>

<<So says Sandra!
And I might add that I heard that phrase in several different ways more
times than I care to recount. And, even now, when, not with my children
(or, even more rudely, when I am with them) people still have some wild
comment when they hear that I have a 20 year old, a 17 year old and a 13
year old!>>



Quite a while ago when Sandra inspired me, (or is it convinced?) to trust
Tara more, I let go of her curfew. (Tara's, not Sandra's) Well I haven't
regretted it at all. When I did it, quite a few people in my local groups
knew about it. Partly because I myself was a bit apprehensive and partly
because Tara was telling people too. For her it was more of a mom lost her
mind and will snap out of it soon kind of thought!!!

Well one woman has been asking me ever since how that's going for us. I mean
every time I see her, it's the first thing she mentions. Now it's been
awhile and things are going along well with that and I tell her every time I
see her. She's just not convinced that it could possibly be a good thing. I
get the feeling she's still waiting for Tara to stay out all weekend and end
up being on a video of Girls Gone Wild!!!

Some people just have a hard time seeing.


Mary B.
http://www.homeschoolingtshirts.com

aicitticia

This is the post that I feel so *warm* and *fuzzy* about...yet I
need elaboration ;). When I read about all of you unschooling moms
of older children (teens, etc.) I am trying to connect the
dots/years to get there. I have an almost 5 yr old and a 1 yr old
and am wondering how the early years for you "seasoned ;)
unschoolers" have played out. I can read accounts of the teen years
and even the "elementary" years for most of you and wonder on my
own....but, what about the early years. Can one of you please write
a book ;)??? I am at a crux (is this a word, did I make it up?)of
sorts. Do you all have any fun stories to share with us with young
children on your unschooling led stories of the early years? Please
and thank you :).
Ticia
(Who is treasuring the time as best as I know how :))))



> And, believe me, I am grateful each and every day and don't take
it for
> granted for a moment.
>
> All you out there with little ones - treasure that time, too - and
know
> that with the path you have chosed, you, too, will be experiencing
the
> continued joy of 'older' children with whom you can share such
great times.
>
> In aloha,
> Lee
> NORTH COUNTRY FARMS
> ~an eco-tourism destination~
> P.O. Box 723
> Kilauea, Kauai, Hawaii 96754
> 808-828-1513phone & voice mail
> 808-828-0805fax
> www.northcountryfarms.com

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/24/2003 3:30:04 AM Eastern Standard Time,
ticiamama@... writes:

> I can read accounts of the teen years
> and even the "elementary" years for most of you and wonder on my
> own....but, what about the early years. Can one of you please write
> a book ;)??? I am at a crux (is this a word, did I make it up?)of
> sorts. Do you all have any fun stories to share with us with young
> children on your unschooling led stories of the early years?

Sandra has some on her website. The typical days stories include some
families with younger kids and I have 2 things on there about my son when he was 6
and younger . Hope that helps!
Amy Kagey
Usborne Books make great holiday gifts!
<A HREF="http://www.ubah.com/ecommerce/default.asp?sid=Z0939&gid=1684902">my Usborne Books website!</A>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Danielle E. Conger

Well, I'm not a "seasoned" unschooler, but I can talk a bit about our days.
My little ones are Emily 6, Julia almost 5, and Sam 3.5.

My experience is very different from what Sandra describes; I was
absolutely homeschooling before my kids were school-aged. As an academic
who chose not to send my child to daycare, Montessori, etc., I was afraid
my oldest was missing out on learning opportunities by being at home. This
was, of course, a ridiculous fear in retrospect, considering that she was
exposed to incredibly rich environments just by living life with us--going
into lab with her father, meeting Nobel laureates, going to the library
with me, exploring the stacks with so many books and colors, etc.

But, convinced that she was missing out on something, I began buying
preschool books, reading them and implementing their suggestions in our
home. I set up our apartment in "zones"--fine motor, gross motor, dramatic
play, etc. I created a "print rich" environment by printing labels for
everything on the computer, laminating them and taping them to various
things throughout the apartment--toybox, wall, cabinet, door, desk, table,
yadda yadda. Talk about contrived! But you betcha I was homeschooling my 18
mo! What else could you call it?

I think in a world where children are going to preschool younger and
younger, kindergarten is moving to full-day in many areas and pre-k is the
norm, unschooling small children is very possible. It just looks like what
children used to be allowed and encouraged to do: play, pretend and just
be. Now, I personally was not unschooling then, I came to that more slowly.

By the time we moved to Albuquerque and my oldest was 2, I began unit
studies. This seemed an easy and natural way to expose her to all the
things she was "supposed" to be learning about. Easy in that it gave
organization and purpose to our play; natural in that it allowed for
different levels of learning, so my 18 mo daughter could learn alongside
her older sister. This is when I really began to read all about
homeschooling, realizing that I had been doing this all along and there was
an entire movement that involved the same choices I had been making. I
began to read more about unschooling because I was getting bored of the
unit studies and tired of filling in my little preschool curriculum squares.

Then we moved back east (now in the DC area), completely gutted our home,
my youngest learned to walk in this time, my two girls learned lots of
things, and life just happened without curriculum, however, relaxed it
might have been--there just wasn't time or space for it in our lives. My
oldest was 4 by that time--old enough for the pre-k program here. She's now
6 and has been unschooling for the past two years.

Dh stepped in this September and decided she needed a more structured
approach to reading that included daily practice. He convinced her this was
the way to go and left me holding the bag. ARGH! What a total disaster! At
first, she was amenable to it, things went smoothly. Then she was bored by
the books (they are boring!), so I went and bought some more interesting
books--Magic Tree House, early chapter books--then she was overwhelmed.
Then I was getting mad because she wasn't following through. Yeesh! It took
about a week before I threw up my hands and said, this isn't working and I
want no part of it! I didn't want a part of it to begin with and neither
did she! Told dh point blank that we were not doing it any more, he needed
to let go. He did, and Emily, thankfully, recovered quickly for the most
part (though I still see effects of those 2 months crop up now and then).
This was about the time I sought out this list, realizing that I was going
to need support to stand firm against moments like these in the future. :)

With three small children (boy did people used to groan when they saw me
coming! Talk about not helpful comments!), we just try to _do_ lots of
stuff. We go to museums, science centers, historical places. We read lots
of books. We play lots of games, which I'd like to do even more of now that
we can break out of the whole Candy Land scene. lol I bought 3 new board
games for Christmas and have started to teach the kids how to play
chess. My oldest has been asking for a while, so I finally just broke out
the old chess board instead of waiting for whatever reason. We make
costumes to play dress up. We work in the yard, garden and take care of our
fish in the pond.

I keep trying to find other young homeschoolers in our area, which is not
so easy. Tricia, I'd love to talk more about the kind of things you guys
do. Feel free to email me off-list.

--danielle

Betsy

**Can one of you please write a book ;)???**

Linda Dobson wrote one. I don't recall the title exactly, but something
like Homeschooling the Early Years. Her books aren't exclusively about
unschooling, but they are very unschooler-friendly.

Anna Kealoha (sp?) has a book about homelearning that has quite a bit of
information that is suitable for young ages. Maybe someone who has read
it more recently could comment. (Is her title Trust the Children?)

Is it that you don't know what to do with your five year old, or is it
the logistical issues of meeting the competing needs of both kids?

Park days are the big joy of my life. I realize it's snowy and rainy
where some of you live right now, but local moms can be good sources of
ideas. Some of them have walked in your shoes.

Betsy

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/24/2003 10:53:32 AM Mountain Standard Time,
danielle.conger@... writes:
-=-I think in a world where children are going to preschool younger and
younger, kindergarten is moving to full-day in many areas and pre-k is the
norm, unschooling small children is very possible.-=-
=========

In a city or region or social strata where... then yes.
"The World" (and Albuquerque, for example) is not much that way, and so when
a parent of pre-school-age children (by Albuquerque standards) tells me (in
Albuquerque) she's unschooling, I don't start the chess timer on her years as an
unschooler.

There are parents of children who fully intend to send their children to
school who "teach" them all kinds of stuff, label things, drill them with flash
cards, etc. If they intend to send kids to school, they're "enriching" or
"advancing." If they don't intend to send their kids to school and then at the
last minute they do send them, their claims of having "homeschooled for four
years" dissolve, in my mind.

<< We play lots of games, which I'd like to do even more of now that
we can break out of the whole Candy Land scene. lol I bought 3 new board
games for Christmas >>

Some of our best board games have come from thrift stores.

A couple of times I've bought a partial set (but for $2, hey....) and later
bought another partial, and the two made one with extra pieces!

Two easily available games (Toys R Us, maybe Walmart) are Mastermind for Kids
and Yahtzee. They can both be played other ways. Neither needs
words/reading. Both can be played simply or at a pretty serious level.

We have a revolving rack of poker chips (used) and when the kids were little
I would start a "secret" pattern of colors (several, maybe, in different
slots) and the kids would come and continue the patterns. I knew that was one of
the kinds of questions used on standardized tests (with series of numbers) but
I didn't tell THEM that.

Easiest patterns like red/blue/white can be done by babies, but with older
mathish kids you can do incremental stuff like blue, red, blue, red-red,
blue...and sometimes they went on up the pattern, and sometimes they came back down
making it symmetrical instead of just one direction onward, and that made sense
too.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

kayb85

When I read about all of you unschooling moms
> of older children (teens, etc.) I am trying to connect the
> dots/years to get there. I have an almost 5 yr old and a 1 yr old
> and am wondering how the early years for you "seasoned ;)
> unschoolers" have played out. I can read accounts of the teen years
> and even the "elementary" years for most of you and wonder on my
> own....but, what about the early years.

I'm not quite "seasoned" because I've only been unschooling a few
years and my oldest is only 10, but I would be happy to share some
examples of how learning has been happening in the last few days with
my little guys. Matt is 6 and Luke is 4.

Math:
Tonight it snowed, the first snow this year, and the kids wanted to
play in it. The boys have identical boots but in different sizes and
couldn't figure out who's boots were whose. So I got a permanent
marker and wrote an 11 on the back of one pair and a 13 on the
other. I told Matt, "Your boots are size 13. This is what a 13
looks like, so just look for this number when you want your boots."
I told Luke "Your boots are size 11. This is what an 11 looks like,
so just look for this number when you want your boots". They learned
what the numbers 11 and 13 look like, just because they needed to
keep their boots straight. (I didn't write their names on the boots
because someday Matt's boots will be Luke's.)

They played for awhile and then came in. I had hot chocolate waiting
for them and they sat down to watch a Christmas movie. When the
movie was over, Luke brought me two books to read to him. One was a
Berenstein bears book and the other was Bats on Parade. It is a book
about multiplication. One page has two rows of two, one page has
three rows of three, one page has four rows of four, all the way up
to ten rows of ten. Luke had me count the bats on almost every page,
and I realized that he was hearing me say, "11, 12, 13..." over and
over again. It's amazing to me how it works out that kids will find
what they need exactly when they need it. He had just learned what
the number 11 and 13 look like from his boots, and now he was hearing
me count using those numbers repeatedly. Not that he has never heard
those numbers before, but he reinforced them for himself quite nicely
tonight!

A few days ago Matt had 2 piles of something--I can't remember what
anymore. There were three things in each pile. He had said to
me, "Mom, three and three are six. I know because I have two piles
of three and I counted them all together." I hadn't said much at the
time except for "Yeah, you're right". But tonight when we were at
the three by three page, I said to Matt, "Hey, remember the other day
you had two piles of three and you told me that three and three are
six?" He said, "Oh, yeah!" And I said, "well, here they have three
and three and three!" He came over and looked and said, "Cool,
nine!". Then the boys started asking me all kinds of stuff,
like "What's five and five and five and five"? I'd say 20 and Matt
would repeat it. "So four five's are 20?" And they kept doing it over
and over and eventually got to really high numbers, like "What are 55
7's?" And I'd tell them the answer (frantically trying to figure it
out without letting them know I was frantic--I didn't want them to
see my math anxiety) and they'd be like, "Woah!" They thought it was
pretty cool that I could tell them what 55 rows of 7 were.

When we got to the 10 10's page, when I told Luke that 10 10's were
100, he dramatically sighed and said, "Oh, you made me fall over. I
can't believe it". Then he sat back up and giggled and we finished
the book.

Science and Math and some other stuff:

We went to Hershey, PA on Sunday (The town where they make the
chocolate). We don't live too far from there and it's one of Matt's
favorite places to go. We had been there just a few weeks ago for
the free tour. This time we were there for Christmas stuff they were
doing. Matt had seen a chocolate bar guy stuffed animal in the gift
shop that he wanted, so the night before we counted his change to see
if he had enough to buy him. (He did!) I showed him how many
quarters, nickels, and dimes he had to have in each pile in order to
make a dollar. I think that he's starting to understand now that a
quarter is more valuable than a dime, because he needed 10 dimes to
make a dollar but only needed 4 quarters. I told him he'd need a
little bit extra than the price on the tag because of tax, and I had
to explain to him what tax is. Luke was right there with us, and
kept asking what the different coins were called. Up until that
point all coins were just money.

We did all the stuff we had planned on doing. A trolley ride through
the town of Hershey with the guide telling the history of Milton
Hershey and the town of Hershey, with a funny guy hopping on and off
the trolley at different points dressed up like different things--a
chocolate factory worker, Milton Hershey's mom, and finally Santa who
gave out gifts to the kids. We also drove through "Sweet lights"
which was a pretty cool display of Christmas lights, and we bought
special glasses to wear that make Christmas lights look like
snowflakes.

He bought his Hershey bar guy and when we got home, he rigged him up
to the chair with string, hid behind the chair, and pulled on the
string to make him wave his hand like the mechanical hershey bar does
in chocolate world. He said it would be neat if he could hook
something to the string that would make it move by itself without him
having to pull on the string, so his mind is probably busy trying to
figure that out. He's very into levers and pulleys and does stuff
like this all the time. I'm looking into a trip to a children's
museum that I heard has a neat hands on lever and pulley area because
I think he'd really enjoy that. He also told him his theory about
how he thinks they made the wooden tokens that we needed to get onto
the trolley. His mind was really doing a lot of thinking in a lot of
different directions!

Writing:

We took the kids to chuckecheese for the first time this past summer
and our house hasn't been the same since! Luke has
become "Chuckecheese man". We have done SO many things revolving
around his fascination with Chuckecheese. Making homemade pizza,
touring Dominos, setting games up in the livingroom and pretending
they're chuckecheese games, setting a play kitchen set with play food
up in the kitchen. Well, Saturday evening we were all relaxing at
home. We had spent the afternoon shooting off a rocket in a field
near our house and playing on the swings and seesaws. Luke had
his "Chuckecheese" apron on and asked me to help him make Koolaid.
Someone also asked me to make warm vanilla milk, so I made that too.
Luke went around and got everyone's drink order and served it to them
on an old serving tray he had picked up at a flea market.

Matt decided that it would be neat if the Chuckecheese workers had
nametags. He found some blank nametag stickers I had and wrote Matt,
Luke, and Mom on the stickers. He already knew how to write those.
I showed him how to write Dad, so now he has another word that he can
write. :) He wanted to write Alisha, but then asked if Sister would
be easier to write. He ended up writing Sis. He put the nametags on
everyone's shirts as we drank our hot milk and koolaid.

Sheila

catherine aceto

Here's a day that I posted a month or so ago on Unschooling-Days..

When people ask how long we have been homeschooling, sometimes I think the answer is "always" and sometimes "never." It is interesting in PA, because you don't have to start school until you are 8, but most start kindergarten at 5. So, I guess now that she would be in kindergarten this year, I am officially (lol) unschooling.

Anyway, to add to the recent samples of days with little ones:

Jonathan (11 mos.) wakes up around 8:45 -- plays in the living room floor with various rattles and his rocking horse while I drink tea and read emails. I'm mostly not going to keep describing him in this -- just assume that he is playing with us and giggling and having diaper changes and playing peekaboo and nursing for a short time about every 1/2 hour or hour, lol. (Nursing (all food, actually) is "mum-mum" -- He signs "want" (hands open and closing) and says mum-mum. VERY cute).

Lydia (5, almost 6) wakes up at around 11:30. Jonathan and I go into bedroom and lie in bed with her, cuddling and talking about Scooby-Doo characters and why the Scooby-Doo computer game never had the museum director as the villian (the game changes clues from game to game -- 5 possible suspects, clues change from game to game, so that different suspects turn out to be the villian). Talk about random event generators, coin flips, and dice.

Lydia tries to guess what clue would differentiate a museum director. I think maybe a schedule book, but Lydia thinks that the information/ticket desk suspect might have that as well and maybe even the cook. I think a piece of letterhead that said "museum director" -- talked about what letterhead was and why people would want it ("can't you just write your name on it?" asked Lydia). Get bored with discussion without ever coming to conclusion.

Play "princess lydia characters" a kind of story-game in which we sort of act-out a mystery story about princess lydia finding someone who is kidnapped, inventing clues as we go along. This time, I am princess lydia, lydia is a flower fairy. Scooby-Doo is kidnapped. Story revolves on whether slimy substance left behind is "zoombie slime" (slippery) or "bugman slime" (sticky). Flower fairy demonstrates that slime is slippery so off to zombie mansion, after other clues and battles and villians, rescue Scooby-Doo.

Now around 12:30 -- decide to eat "breakfast" -- In the kitchen, Lydia picks up a copy of the New Yorker magazine off the table and says that she was trying to read it -- but she doesn't know what a letter was -- turns out to be a W, formed by superimposing 2 "V"s -- talk about artistic changes to letters and letter forms and legibility. She reads "new yorkier" -- new yorkier? I tell her New Yorker. Talk about New York (by which she means "Manhattan" which she loves - based on 3 visits). Talked about cover -- "why is he sitting in a corner ?" figures of speech, painting oneself into a corner.

I cook some already-made pierogies and onions (a kind of pasta dumpling filled with potatoes and cheese -- purchased from a school fundraiser for a friend). Lydia eats canned peaches and contemplates pierogies. (Jonathan eats canned peaches and pierogies and multi-grain cereal and breastmilk and anything that he can get his hands on). Lydia wants to try pierogies (as long as I removed all onions) and likes them. Lydia eats more pierogies. Questions how to get mashed potatoes into pierogie. Talk about how pierogies are made.

I checked emails and Lydia plays something in the hallway where she has her pretend stove/sink and cabinets set up (called the "Pretend Kitchen" in our house). Calls out to me -- " 2 + 7 = 9" doesn't it? I answer yes. She goes back to playing whatever she is playing.

Plumber arrives to fix second floor kitchen sink (We rent our 2nd and 3rd floors to grad students as separate apartments). Watch plumber fix sink. Think about tools, decided they are fun. Lydia decides that you need tools in order to "plumb" Talk about what the verb was for "plumber" did not come to any conclusion - Lydia not interested in us going downstairs to look it up. (Looked it up this morning -- it is "plumb"). Lydia goes around pointing out all the things that are nouns and describing them with adjectives (we've been watching the SchoolHouse Rock DVD -- brings back many happy childhood memories for me). We both sing the adjective song, much to the amusement of the plumber. Come back downstairs. I nurse the baby to sleep and Lydia sits beside me complaining of boredom. She decides she wanted to look at a website -- so we end up with an insects website, trying at her request to find some insects of which had never heard. Look at the giraffe beatle (which I recommend - boy is it weird looking). Discuss where "Madagascar" is and why we can't go there this afternoon to look for these beetles.

Lydia picks up one of J's rattles and notices that it is a gear. Discuss what kind of gear (a rack and pinion) - decide to give it to Jonathan to play with next time we played with her gear book (Book has a story-line about a junkyard robot making inventions with gear pieces to put together on the page in the book (has a motor that turns the central gear). When we play with it, Lydia is the "gear fairy" who magically makes the pieces appear and explains to me (princess lydia) how gears work).

Jonathan now asleep (around 3:00?) -- Read some books (magic schoolbus, I think) to Lydia. Pop popcorn and I eat popcorn and read old copies of Mothering Magazine that a friend uncluttered to me (uncluttered for her, that is!) and Lydia watches Bear in the Big Blue House DVD and eats popcorn and grapes and 3 Hershey kisses (all we could find in the candy cupboard). Write "kisses" on the grocery list. Cuddle with Lydia on couch and watch the last episode of Bear on DVD. Jonathan wakes up and finishes watching Bear with us.

Now around 4:00 -- play more "princess lydia." Start to get ready for playdate with friend at friends house. Lydia wears sparkly leotard, tutu skirt, and plastic heels with pink fluff on the front. We discuss whether to take her normal shoes -- decides to bring them in case she needs them.

Drive to playdate (about 40 minutes because of traffic). In the car, Lydia asks what 100 + 10 equals. I answer. But what does 100+20 equal. I answer. Well, what does 100 + 100 equal? 200, I answer. MOM! she says, that can't be right. 100+ 100 is 1,000. I try to explain why not. She is unconvinced. I remind her that she told me that 2 + 7 was 9. And that 200 + 700 = 900, then thousands, millions, billions. She likes the idea of adding billions. Repeats 2billion + 7 billion = 9 billion. Not at all clear that she "gets" the concept, but she likes the words. She counts by 5s (skipping quite a few as she goes). Hums schoolhouse rock songs to me, to see if I can guess them. We sing all the parts that we can remember together and decide that we need to put the songs on audio tape to play in the car. She plays peekaboo with her brother and makes up a long involved story sort of under her breath that I can barely hear.

Around 5 arrive at playdate. Lydia and friend (just turned 4) play in yard. Lydia shows off attempts at cartwheels and handstands. Find a fly and count its legs. Find a bug that looks like an ant with wings -- Lydia decides to call it a "flutter ant" and declines offers to find out its "real name." Plays with sand table. Go inside and play dress up, pollies, barbies (the pollies are toys that come to life and some halloween witches try to get inside the castle, and the barbies all hide -- I am told afterwards). Make a tent and play in it. Listen to friend's mom read a story. Play more barbies (friend just got swan lake castle for her birthday). Eat dinner. After dinner Lydia and friend play in the living room with a pretend mop and a weasel-ball.

Leave around 9:00 (the playdate friend has to go to bed in time to get up for pre-school the next morning). Talk in car about whether Lydia wants barbie castle for upcoming birthday. She decides that she would rather have bear-shaped chair from IKEA (her currently outstanding request). Thinks it would be fun for us to make a barbie castle. I agree. Drive home both zoning out with very little talking. Baby sleeping.

Get home around 9:30 -- DH is out late for work (fortunately a rare occurence). Play Scooby-Doo computer game on the second level. Decide it isn't much different from the 1st level, except for having 2 fake clues instead of 1 in the 5 clues given to solve the villian.

DH home around 11:00. He plays with children in the living room -- I hide in kitchen and eat more popcorn and read more Mothering Magazines and try to get some alone time -- interupted by various needs and requests. Clean 3/4s of the kitchen, then interrupted to nurse baby to sleep around 12:00 -- while DH finishes cleaning the kitchen and does some vacuuming. Read emails on desktop because Lydia asks me to be in the same room while she plays computer game on laptop -- sleeping baby on my lap (another kind of laptop!). DH goes off to iron shirt for next day and catch up the household accounting on quicken on the basement computer. DH returns and he and Lydia brush her teeth. She, I and the baby go to bed around 12:30.

And so to bed.

-Cat


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/25/2003 9:14:30 AM Eastern Standard Time,
aceto3@... writes:

> Anyway, to add to the recent samples of days with little ones:
>

OK, here's mine too. My kids are 4 and 6.
Trevor woke up before Brenna and I and I could hear him reading aloud
(Magic Treehouse book) in his room. I made Trevor a bowl of cereal and assisted
Brenna in microwaving her pancakes. She likes to do as much as possible by
herself.
I was looking for a video and we ran across a few we wanted to watch again
in the process of searching. We watched The Making of Michael Jackson's
Thriller and The Grinch.
We are getting ready to meet other local homeschooling families at the art
museum where all the kids will play together and make crafts. That's us, so
far....
Amy Kagey
Usborne Books make great holiday gifts!
<A HREF="http://www.ubah.com/ecommerce/default.asp?sid=Z0939&gid=1684902">my Usborne Books website!</A>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

aicitticia

Cat,
Your day looks so incredibly like mine. I play fairy princess meets
Scooby-Doo quite often with Chloe and Raiden too :). Actually your
whole post just rang familiar with me in many ways.

JJ...your post was so sweet. It meant a lot.

Thank you everyone for sharing how you spend your time with your
young ones. I have a lot of friends who have young children, yet
everyone spends their days so differently and many are preparing so
differently. I would say that the majority of kids by the time they
are 3 around here are in pre-school 3 days a week at least! I live
in Orange County, CA. Most people tend to send their kids to
Kindergarten early around here and the Kindergartens are SO
academically focused it is really sad :(. My friend went to the
Kindergarten "round-up" this summer and was horrified to hear the
principal say something in regards to ..."we place a lot of emphasis
on early academics and this isn't the sit-in-the-sandbox and play
all day type of Kindergarten"...so sad :(. Anyhow, that friend ran
out of there and is now homeschooling (pretty much unschooling) and
maybe on this list? :)

I get a lot of questions (I have since Chloe was 3) about where
she "goes" to pre-school, when are we going to start her in pre-
school, she will do SO well in Kindergarten...blah blah blah. I
always have said: we are homeschooling. Usually I get a good
response, but it also often leads into to many detailed questions
about curriculum and my reasons etc. Now I usually answer: We are
really happy with Chloe's learning and plan to keep doing what we're
doing, it seems to be working well. ;) This usually shuts them up
until the next time we see them.

So I just was finding all of your comments have put my mind at ease.
We are doing all those fun things everyone has mentioned and I've
gotten some great ideas too.

Ticia

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/25/03 1:02:42 PM, ticiamama@... writes:

<< Now I usually answer: We are

really happy with Chloe's learning and plan to keep doing what we're

doing, it seems to be working well. ;) This usually shuts them up

until the next time we see them. >>

That's a good way to put it!

I wish I had just told people, when my kids were younger, "It's all very
different and complicated to explain" instead of explaining unschooling to them.
Maybe baffling and dazzling them would have impressed them more than the
explanation that they learn by playing and that we're following the old
open-classroom principles.

Too late now. <g>
But it might not be too late for some of you to say things like "The system
we have going now is working really well, and as long as it does, we don't plan
to change."

Sandra

Robyn Coburn

<<are 3 around here are in pre-school 3 days a week at least! I live
in Orange County, CA. Most people tend to send their kids to
Kindergarten early around here and the Kindergartens are SO
academically focused it is really sad :(.>>



Pam S. has a group that has an all ages park day every Wednesday in Long
Beach- lots of unschoolers. I get down there from Playa Del Rey (lax) less
often than I like. I can't remember the name to give you the link, but I bet
she will post it.

Robyn L. Coburn



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

aicitticia

> Pam S. has a group that has an all ages park day every Wednesday
in Long
> Beach- lots of unschoolers. I get down there from Playa Del Rey
(lax) less
> often than I like. I can't remember the name to give you the link,
but I bet
> she will post it.
>
> Robyn L. Coburn


Is it DragonTree homelearners?
I need to get to this one day...thanks for the reminder.
Ticia

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/25/03 5:01:38 PM, dezigna@... writes:

<< Pam S. has a group that has an all ages park day every Wednesday in Long
Beach- lots of unschoolers. I get down there from Playa Del Rey (lax) less
often than I like. I can't remember the name to give you the link, but I bet
she will post it. >>

Pam's computer is screwed up again. She'll be back around soon (maybe
sooner than I think).

Sandra