hsingmygirls

Hello, group.

My name is Christine. I am the SAHM of 2 bright and beautiful girls.
We have decided to teach them at home. We just aren't completely sure
of which method we want to use. We are looking into many.
My daughter is about to enter "2nd grade" and I am just now starting
this with her (though IMO I have been teaching her all along).
I am so nervous about making sure she is getting what she needs and
knowing I can provide that. I am also looking for idea's on the how to
deal with her resistance to learning. She is very happy about
homeschooling (for lack of a better term) but I think she assumes it's
just going to be sitting on the couch watching t.v.
She says she knows it's work and wants to do this but when I sat her
down with some testing so I could see for myself where she is, well
she was fidgity and not as cooperative as I would have liked.
I was already thinking about backing out but I quickly came to and
said to myself, It's not all going to be easy for her and that means
it wont be for me either. Anyway, thanks for listening.
Christine

Joyce Fetteroll

On Aug 23, 2006, at 11:55 PM, hsingmygirls wrote:

> I was already thinking about backing out but I quickly came to and
> said to myself, It's not all going to be easy for her and that means
> it wont be for me either.

It *can* be easy for her and for you with unschooling. Learning isn't
hard. But trying to memorize information out of context is very hard.
Fortunately they aren't the same! :-)

Here's a (not so) quick ;-) example. My daughter and I have been
listening to a Japanese language learning tape. It's pretty similar
to learning in school: memorization, repetition without real
understanding. The hope is that understanding will come with
repetition. The very first lesson introduces the words for
"I" (watashi) and "understand" (wakari). We're up to the 3rd lesson
and I *still* get the words confused. Anyone learning that language
naturally (as your daughter learned English) wouldn't make that
mistake. In natural conversation I/watashi and understand/wakari
would pick up the feelings of the contexts they are heard in. We also
learned the phrases for "Good morning" and "Good afternoon". They're
both learned in the same context: hearing the sounds from a tape in
the car so the only difference is the sounds of the words and you
have to force your mind to think morning when you hear "ohayo" and
afternoon when you hear "konnichiwa". BUT if you're learning language
naturally, they won't be heard in the same context and someone won't
have the problem of confusion (or not for long). Hearing it used in
Japan for real naturally you'll get a *feeling* of "morning" with
"ohayo" because you'll only hear it in the morning, doing morning
things. And "konnichiwa" will take on a feeling of afternoon for the
same reason. (My daughter and I have an advantage of having hosted a
few Japanese school girls and "ohayo" has absorbed mornings of the
girls being dropped off for camp and all greeting each other with
"Ohayo!")

Getting to easy, though, takes a huge shift in how you see learning
and how you see your children.

There's a good list for beginners:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unschoolingbasics/

The AlwaysLearning list tends to be for unschoolers who've been doing
it for a while and more about life than the details of how to make
unschooling work.

There's also

http://sandradodd.com

and

http://home.earthlink.net/~fetteroll/rejoycing/

and the message boards at:

http://www.unschooling.info

Joyce

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Sandra Dodd

-=-I was already thinking about backing out but I quickly came to and
said to myself, It's not all going to be easy for her and that means
it wont be for me either. -=-

It shouldn't be easy for you, but it CAN be fun and easy for her, and
once you get the flow of it, if you decide to go with unschooling, it
will be fun and easy for both of you.

If you go with school at home, lessons, teaching, tests, it will be
difficult for her, difficult for you, it will probably cost you your
relationship with her, and within a few years you'll give up and put
her back in school.

Or you might try school at home and decide you should've gone with
unschooling in the first place. Here's a collection of people's
expressions of wishing they had unschooled sooner:
http://sandradodd.com/ifonly
It will cost you nothing to read it.

If you blow this by and spend money on a curriculum, it will cost you
some hundreds of dollars and a lot of potential happiness.

Sandra

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Christine K

I think different things work for different people so I am very open minded to any and all ways of home learning. It's tough NOT saying homeschooling, it's been apart of my vocabulary for so long.
I will read the site you gave me tonight with my 1 hour alone and some tea.
Thanks again.
Christine

Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
-=-I was already thinking about backing out but I quickly came to and
said to myself, It's not all going to be easy for her and that means
it wont be for me either. -=-

It shouldn't be easy for you, but it CAN be fun and easy for her, and
once you get the flow of it, if you decide to go with unschooling, it
will be fun and easy for both of you.

If you go with school at home, lessons, teaching, tests, it will be
difficult for her, difficult for you, it will probably cost you your
relationship with her, and within a few years you'll give up and put
her back in school.

Or you might try school at home and decide you should've gone with
unschooling in the first place. Here's a collection of people's
expressions of wishing they had unschooled sooner:
http://sandradodd.com/ifonly
It will cost you nothing to read it.

If you blow this by and spend money on a curriculum, it will cost you
some hundreds of dollars and a lot of potential happiness.

Sandra

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---------------------------------
Get your email and more, right on the new Yahoo.com

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

Sandra Dodd

-=-She says she knows it's work and wants to do this but when I sat her
down with some testing so I could see for myself where she is, well
she was fidgity and not as cooperative as I would have liked.-=-

You're looking at your daughter's world through school-colored
glasses. Testing wasn't educational for her OR you except that you
learned you didn't like something about her. Her lack of cooperation
and her fidgitiness.

That's a situation in which you judged her, mostly by someone else's
standards, and she failed. You would have liked it to have been
different. You saw her as lacking.

The same kinds of damage school can do can be done at home. If you
don't want to bring school home, you don't have to. If you DO want
to bring school home, this list won't be a good fit for you at all.

http://sandradodd.com/johnholt
Read some of what John Holt had to say about learning.

http://sandradodd.com/help
There are many things to help those new to the idea of unschooling
there.

Sandra




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Sandra Dodd

-=-It's tough NOT saying homeschooling, it's been apart of my
vocabulary for so long. -=-

I say homeschooling when I'm talking to people who aren't homeschooling.

When I'm talking to homeschoolers, I say unschooling.

It's a matter of perspective.

If I'm in Ontario and someone asks me where I live, I say "New Mexico."
If I were to say "between Raley's and Hollywood Video, east of Juan
Tabo" that would be nonsense to them, and rude for me to say.

If I'm in Albuquerque and someone asks me where I live, if I were to
say "New Mexico" that would be like saying "None of your business."
Worse yet, if I were to say "The U.S." or "Earth."

If I'm talking to someone who also lives between Raley's and
Hollywood Video, I say "Second house from the left in the cul-de-
sac. The vacant lot is out our back gate."

To the state of New Mexico, I'm homeschooling.

To people whose kids are in school when I'm not, I'm homeschooling.

Homeschooling is a broad class.

Within homeschooling there's school at home, unit studies, eclectic,
Charlotte Mason... lots of particular plans, and there's unschooling
which is ALSO a particular plan, only you can't buy it. You
assimilate the knowledge yourself and use it in your family.
http://sandradodd.com/nest

It's not just doing nothing. It's doing something very broad and deep.

Sandra






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Sandra Dodd

-=-I will read the site you gave me tonight with my 1 hour alone and
some tea.-=-

You won't make much progress in 1 hour, but please do look into it.

There are curriculum salesmen who could sell you a year's worth of
"homeschool" in two minutes. They want your money. They don't care
if it's a good fit for your daughter or for you.

People at this list and the others linked at the help link I sent
don't have anything to sell you. They're willing to help you figure
out what's so wonderful about unschooling, but it can't happen in two
minutes or an hour or a month.

Unschooling would l be cheaper, it would be better for your daughter,
and it would bring fun into your home, but it IS work for the mom to
learn about learning instead of just mimicking what she thinks she
remembers her teachers having done with her.

If school works, send your daughter to school! If school doesn't
work, don't build a school at your house. If you do, she will NEVER
gets to go home after school.



Sandra




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s.waynforth

I'm very closed minded when it comes to "any and all ways of home
learning." Being open to "any and all ways" in my life would mean
abandoning my belief in my children to hold true to tests and scheduling
that other people believe are valuable. What you are doing, from your
previous message, is homeschooling. I don't think you should abandon the
term before you abandon the practice. Unschooling, although a subset of
homeschooling, is not schooling at home; it is not testing your child to
find out where she is so that you can address her areas of academic
weakness. Unschooling is about exploring the world with your child. At
its core, in my life, unschooling is more about my relationship with my
children than it is about their potential academic achievement.

Joyce says it better than I could at
http://home.earthlink.net/~fetteroll/rejoycing/unschooling/unschoolingphilosophy.html:


"The goals of unschooling are different than all the other
methods you mention. The goal of unschooling is not
education. It is to help a child be who she is and blossom
into who she will become. Education happens as a side effect.

Just as people plant vegetable gardens to raise vegetables.
Along the way pollinators come and it's even a vital part of
the process, but the purpose of planting the garden isn't to
attract pollinators.

The purpose of the other homeschooling methods is to give to
the child something that appeals to the parents. In a way
formal educational methods are like those cool educational
toys that parents want to give their kids for their
birthday. What you're buying with a curriculum is an image
of what you want your child to be. The image may be as
simple as being prepared to be whatever they want to be. And
yet it is still like picturing your child playing with the
super deluxe Erector set you're planning to give them. But
what if the child has no interest in Erector sets? What if
what the child really wants is a Nintendo system?

I think many parents see education as a gift they can give
their children. But what if the recipient doesn't want the
gift? If the purpose of giving a gift is to satisfy some
need in the giver for the recipient to have the gift, is it
really a gift? If the gift giver has emotional stake in the
recipient appreciating the gift and the effort involved in
providing the gift, is it really a gift?

I think it would be helpful for parents choosing formal
education to see it honestly. Despite the pictures of happy
children using the various formal curriculums, it's not
about giving a gift. It's about meeting parents' needs. It's
about molding and shaping a fellow human being against their
will into something we want them to be.

That sounds harsh, but if it weren't against their will,
then the children would choose to do it on their own. If it
weren't against their will, there would never be instances
where the parent is coercing the child to do something for
the curriculum that the child doesn't want to do. There
would never be instances where the child can't say "I don't
want to finish that."

Unschooling is about giving them the freedom to be who they
are. Formal education is about molding them into something
we think is valuable to be."


Before you decide to unschool you should really and truly examine why
you want to homeschool. If it is to achieve some educational goal, to
achieve some level at college entrance exams, for example, while
unschooling is as viable a method as any other for attaining that, it
isn't as focused as that. If it is because you believe that school
itself will drain the imagination and joy out of all things learning,
than you may want to rethink whether or not school at home won't do the
same damage. If you set yourself up as an antagonist in your
relationship with your daughter it will always be hard for you. If,
instead, you reach out to her, come to where she is and where she wants
to be, even if that means sitting with her on the couch while she
watches all the television she wants to, than you will be building a
relationship that will go from strength to strength. And you will learn
so much as you go it will astound you.

Schuyler

Christine K wrote:
>
> I think different things work for different people so I am very open
> minded to any and all ways of home learning. It's tough NOT saying
> homeschooling, it's been apart of my vocabulary for so long.
> I will read the site you gave me tonight with my 1 hour alone and some
> tea.
> Thanks again.
> Christine
>
> Sandra Dodd <Sandra@... <mailto:Sandra%40SandraDodd.com>>
> wrote:
> -=-I was already thinking about backing out but I quickly came to and
> said to myself, It's not all going to be easy for her and that means
> it wont be for me either. -=-
>
> It shouldn't be easy for you, but it CAN be fun and easy for her, and
> once you get the flow of it, if you decide to go with unschooling, it
> will be fun and easy for both of you.
>
> If you go with school at home, lessons, teaching, tests, it will be
> difficult for her, difficult for you, it will probably cost you your
> relationship with her, and within a few years you'll give up and put
> her back in school.
>
> Or you might try school at home and decide you should've gone with
> unschooling in the first place. Here's a collection of people's
> expressions of wishing they had unschooled sooner:
> http://sandradodd.com/ifonly <http://sandradodd.com/ifonly>
> It will cost you nothing to read it.
>
> If you blow this by and spend money on a curriculum, it will cost you
> some hundreds of dollars and a lot of potential happiness.
>
> Sandra
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Get your email and more, right on the new Yahoo.com
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>

Sandra Dodd

-=-The goals of unschooling are different than all the other
methods you mention. The goal of unschooling is not
education. It is to help a child be who she is and blossom
into who she will become. Education happens as a side effect.-=-

Learning happens as a side effect.

"Education," like "teaching," comes from a teacher or a school.

Learning happens inside the learner, and when learning is happening
inside a child, in the mom's presence, because the mom let go of
lessons and rules and tests and helped create a situation in which
learning COULD happen, then the mom is learning too.

(I rarely quibble with Joyce's writing, but there's a quibble about
the difference between "education" and"learning," and here's a
learning link: http://sandradodd.com/learning )

Sandra

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Ren Allen

"If school works, send your daughter to school! If school doesn't
work, don't build a school at your house. If you do, she will NEVER
gets to go home after school."

Exactly!! You took her out of school so don't bring all the lame
schoolish methods like testing and "work" and teaching and all that
baggage home with you. Leave it behind and embrace a life about real
learning...which involves a lot of FUN. Learning should be fun.

And if you read around and decide to keep learning more about
unschooling, please feel free to check out the Unschooling Basics
email list...just for newbies.:)

This list is geared for those already committed to unschooling, so you
might feel a bit overwhelmed at first. Read here and simply absorb,
but just know that there are lists geared for the beginner too.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unschoolingbasics/

Ren
learninginfreedom.com

Kelly Shultz

Sandra,

For my benefit, and possibly also for the new to homeschooling mom's
benefit, could you please expand on your comment about the "work"
that an unschooling mom will do in learning about learning?

I feel like this could be a beginner's question, but being a few
years into it, that it can also be relevant to the moms who are
somewhere mid-course.

Thanks,

Kelly

On Aug 24, 2006, at 12:53 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> Unschooling would l be cheaper, it would be better for your daughter,
> and it would bring fun into your home, but it IS work for the mom to
> learn about learning instead of just mimicking what she thinks she
> remembers her teachers having done with her.
>


>> .
>
>



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Joyce Fetteroll

On Aug 24, 2006, at 2:21 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> (I rarely quibble with Joyce's writing

Thanks for the quibble! It's been changed. The goal is clarity.

But learning may have happened as a side effect for some people :-)

Joyce

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

Sandra Dodd

-=-For my benefit, and possibly also for the new to homeschooling mom's
benefit, could you please expand on your comment about the "work"
that an unschooling mom will do in learning about learning?-=-

When people start unschooling, it's often very tentatively. After a
while, instead of telling stories of what they've heard other people
did, they have stories of what their own kids have done, learned,
seen, known.

That's one kind of learning.

Sometimes people start unschooling and they're doing more chattering
than looking, and more asserting than questioning (not chattery
questioning, but soul questioning). It's not as good a beginning,
and at some point they do start really observing their children, and
really thinking about the why and what of learning.

But any time a mom thinks there's nothing to know, I don't think she
knows nearly enough.
When a mom thinks unschooling is doing nothing, she's not doing
nearly enough.
If a mom thinks unschooling will take none of her time, she needs to
spend a LOT of her time (more than those who knew it would be a life
change) figuring out how to spend timebe with her child and what she
can do, even when her child's not there, to help unschooling work
better.

I cringe when I hear/read/see a mom thinking unschooling will take
less effort and cost less than having children in public school.
Anyone unschooling to save time and money is going the wrong
direction. It might cost less in absolutely-required expenditure
compared to buying a curriculum or paying private school tuition, and
most unschoolers I know are content with plain or used or funky
clothes (compared to school uniforms or required fashions and name
brand things that might get stolen or lost at school). But if
parents don't want to spend ANY money on games, toys, museums, out-of-
town trips, books, whatever it is the kids might be interested in,
then I think that's not the best the parents could do as unschoolers.

There's a basis, a foundation, on which confident, workable
unschooling is built, and most of it involves confidence, and
confidence can't come without examination of one's purpose,
priorities and principles. It takes a while to figure those things
out, and while they can be figured out at the same time unschooling
is unfolding, and will probably continue to evolve (maybe even after
the kids are grown), it's not "nothing" to do that.

Once someone was asking how many hours she should spend with her
child, or something, and I said at least as many hours as she
would've been in school, counting transportation, and there seemed to
be some shock and surprise in the audience. So that made me want to
say (I didn't, but should've) TWICE as much time as she would've
spent in school. Because honestly, a child shouldn't lose the mom-
time she would've had at night and on weekends, should she?

The shock probably came from someone who thought those hours would be
teacher-style hours, of being stuck in one place doing something not
too fun. That vision can only come from someone who hasn't looked
into unschooling enough to know that the best unschooling hours are
fun, natural, real activities. They needed to learn more about
learning.

Sandra

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Sandra Dodd

-=-But learning may have happened as a side effect for some
people :-)-=-

It always does. <g>

Sandra

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