Christine

Hello!

I'm Christine, mom to Camryn (8), Addison (4), and William (2). My
husband's name is Chris.

I've been interested in homeschooling for several years and have
researched it pretty thoroughly. I felt certain that, when the time
came, I would choose that option for my kids' education.

In the end though, I chickened out and enrolled Camryn in public
schools, where she has become increasingly bored and understimulated
ever since.

Academically, she's pretty far ahead of her second grade peers (she
tested at the fifth grade level in reading and writing and the
fourth grade level in math last year), but socially, she's right
where she should be. When I inquired about the gifted program, her
teacher told me it was essentially a bureaucratic nightmare to get
her involved before the third grade.

Anyway, she's fairly disillusioned by the school system at the point
(as am I), and so we will be beginning our homeschooling journey in
about three weeks (!).

We are going to start out with a sabbatical in which Camryn
evaluates her interests, then we'll start unschooling from there.
I'm here to learn all I can about unschooling. I'm glad there's a
group like this for newbies. :)

Christine

Debra Rossing

That 'sabbatical' as you call it IS unschooling or rather that is
deschooling and once she's moved into exploring her own interests,
you're unschooling - there need not be a start/end type thing. Sort of
the way summer becomes autumn becomes winter becomes spring - it's a
process totally unlike the start/stop grade level thing of school (or
homeschooling).

Deb

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Meredith

Hi, Chrisitine, I'm Meredith, mom to Mo (6) "always unschooled" and
stepmom to Ray (days away from 14) who joined our family and started
unschooling a year ago this Nov.

If you haven't yet, check out the links for Lots of sources of basic
info about unschooling:

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

And feel free to post any questions, concerns, fears, etc. or browse
the archives for similar topics in the past.

---Meredith (Mo 6, Ray 13)