Re:new to this! would like your responses! : )
Deb Lewis
*** We are currently homeschoolers with a variety of curriculum
books but looking to tweak some things.***
If you're using curriculum and you want to unschool you'll have to do more than "tweak" some things.<g>
Unschooling isn't another or a different method of schooling at home. Unschooling families live interesting and full lives and kids learn from lots of different experiences and from pursuing their interests. It won't look like "education." It won't look like school. It won't look like homeschooling.
An unschooling parent needs to do a lot of work.<g> It starts with rethinking learning. Mostly people believe education has to be administered to children in order for them to learn. Lots of people believe they have to teach their kids to talk and walk. Most people believe children wont be able to learn to read or to use numbers or understand basic mathematics unless someone teaches them. People have been thinking this way so long that it sounds really crazy when unschoolers talk about natural learning. You probably have some ideas about education and how children learn that you will have to examine if you want to unschool. If you believe learning only happens when kids are taught with the use of special educational materials these unschooling ideas will be difficult for you. It's not an easy tweak. <g>
Unschooling is not anything like school. Unschooling parents aren't trying to teach their kids or set up "educational" opportunities. They know people are born with a need to learn and will learn from everything around them. They're respectful to their kids and try to be good examples of the best kind of humans. <g> Parents help their kids do as many of the things they want to do as possible. They provide things they think their kids might like, but without expectation of the way that thing ought to be used or how often. They trust that even if they don't understand a particular interest their child has the child is gaining something valuable.
Two really good explanations of unschooling were written by Joyce Fetteroll and you can read them here:
http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/unschooling/unschoolingphilosophy.html
http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/unschooling/howunschoolingworks.html
Everything on her site is helpful and detailed, wonderful and free of charge!
***I would like to hear from some families
on what their typical day looks like. ***
When Dylan was seven a typical day was getting up in the morning and watching cartoons or playing PlayStation for a couple hours. Then we might go roaming around, wander through the park, stop at the grocery store, go see grandparents. Maybe a friend would come over. We'd play games, play in the yard, dig in the dirt. We'd go play in the creek behind the house. We might watch movies or read some stories, play on the piano, play with the cat. When Dylan was seven he was really fascinated by Godzilla so he made up lots of Godzilla stories to tell me, pretending he was a reporter, reporting monster news. We'd go places, go camping and hiking, go swimming. In the winter we'd go sledding, play in the snow, make snow monsters. Sometimes we'd hang out at the library or bookstore, or we'd go get a big plate of French fries and talk about life, or we'd go visit the greenhouse just out of town and see how many preying mantis babies we could catch. Basically we played and did just whatever we wanted.
Dylan will be seventeen in a few weeks. I'm not sure what a typical day is so I'll tell you what he did yesterday. He got up about 12:30 which is a little early for him, he often sleeps until 2:00. He grabbed some food and went a couple blocks to the house of an older guy he knows who has three reed organs. They watched some organ DVD's (restoration stuff) talked, played on the organs some, fiddled with stuff. He came home with a stack of organ magazines. He ate. <g> He played the organ for awhile. He did some laundry, took apart a vcr and messed with it, put it back together. It works now and doesn't gobble tapes.<g> He visited with me while I made dinner. We watched a movie, "Quarantine" (terrible movie<g> but then, the night before we'd watched "Midnight Meat Train" so you get an idea about our taste in movies.) He played piano some, played the organ some more. We went for a walk in the snow. I went to bed around midnight and when I got up at four this morning he was still up. He'd been listening to music and working on an old beta vcr he believes is possessed by demons. <g> We talked awhile. He went to bed around 5:00 AM. He asked me to wake him around eleven if he sleeps through his alarm so that must mean he has plans today.
*** I am also wondering if you get out any books at all throughout the day or
if your child completely leads his/her learning every day on his/her own. ***
Do you mean textbooks? If so, no. Unschooling parents aren't trying to direct their child's education. That's a hard concept to understand. I'm not trying to educate my son. My son is living and as a consequence of living he is learning.
We have always had books. Lots of books. I read to Dylan a lot when he was little, he loved stories. He reads something every day. He reads about organs and novachords and synthesizers everyday on line. He reads movie and book reviews. He gets a couple of filmmaking magazines and reads those. He reads at a political website he likes. He reads a lot of fiction. He usually has a couple of books going at once. I didn't tell him he should read and I didn't assign reading. He's reading because reading is useful and enjoyable.
I have given him books I thought he'd like. He's not obligated to read them. He gives me books too, because he thinks I'll enjoy them.
Dylan has never been "on his own." I'm here to help him. When he's interested in something I try to provide what he wants in order to do as much as he chooses. I don't decide what he's going to do or what he needs. I help him do what he wants. I help in the ways he wants.
***I am also interested in unit studies and I think the 2 might go well together.***
If you were hungry for cake would you go to the library and check out a bunch of books on the history of baking and read them and visit some baking museums and paste pictures of cakes into a notebook and write a bunch of baking related words? Sounds pretty silly doesn't it, when you can just bake a cake and eat it. Unit studies are silly. They waste precious time a person could be *doing the thing* she's interested in doing.
If you're interested in the history of baking cakes then looking up a bunch of different information about that history would be fun. Doing it because someone else thought you ought to because you expressed an interest in having some cake would be tedious and probably make you a little cranky.
If a kid is interested in learning to skateboard that doesn't mean he needs to read about skateboarding and write the names of different kinds of skateboards and identify all the best skaters in the world. It means he'd like to have a skateboard, maybe get some informal tips or comments from friends, and have the time to mess around with it. The fastest way to snuff out an interest is to assign the busy work, the silly work, of a unit study.
It's that way with anything. A kid who comes to his mom a couple of times asking how to spell a couple different words is *not* showing an interest in doing unit studies. He's showing an interest in that moment of spelling a couple of specific words. Maybe for a whole day or a whole week he'll be asking about different words but please people, please, don't make your kid do unit studies.<g> Blerk! Give him the information he's asking you for. Share interesting or fun thoughts but don't turn it into a spelling lesson.
When Dylan was really interested in Godzilla we watched Godzilla movies and bought Godzilla toys and Godzilla picture books. From there we found other Japanese monster movies. He made up his own stories about Godzilla or Gamera or Guilala and we found more monster toys. None of that was because I got him to do a unit study, it was the natural result of him being interested in Godzilla. From his interest in Godzilla he got interested in Japanese history and culture. He got interested the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. (He got interesting in metaphor) he learned a little of the language, took Karate lessons. He found out about Korean monster movies and learned about the history of filmmaking in Japan and Korea. He got interested in Tae Kwon Do and took lessons. Still, today, he loves Godzilla movies, has a Godzilla toy on his big Wurlitzer organ in the living room, has a Godzilla wallpaper on his desktop. None of what he learned was a result of unit studies or any plan or expectation I had about Dylan's "education." I have started a list of the connections Dylan made from his love of Godzilla and I'll post it here. The connections are still being made all these years later and will probably go on all his life.
*** I am
all for allowing our children explore their own likes/curiosities, I just wonder
if that will inevitably lead to opening up any books at all.....??!!***
It depends what you mean by opening up a book. If you mean will they spontaneously study textbooks then probably not.<g> A couple different friends have given us textbooks over the years and I think Dylan looked at one or two - but textbooks are pretty dull and pointless. Anything in them can be got more accurately and interestingly somewhere else. As far as I know he never read one.
But if you read and have books around the house, then yes, probably your kid will open a book.<g>
Dylan loves books. He has shelves and shelves of them, boxes and boxes, stacks and teetering towers. I gave away hundreds of books to make way for his ever growing library.<g>
I think Dylan learned to read for a couple different reasons. I read to him and he liked stories. He saw words everywhere (in books, magazines, newspapers, mail, notes and lists we had around the house, road signs and business signs, etc.) and got more and more curious about them. He realized reading was useful. He liked the idea of reading any story he wanted to read. He liked the idea of making up his own stories. He drew cartoons and wrote captions for them and wanted to be able to read other cartoons. Some of his Japanese monster movies were only available subtitled and he wanted to be able to watch them at night when his parents were sleeping and he had the house all to himself.<g> He wanted to be able to read the stuff on his video games.
He likes to read because he gets to choose for himself what to read and he finds reading fun and useful. If I had assigned reading I might have spoiled that.
I believe anyone with exposure to happily reading people and interesting things to read will learn to read. Not everyone will have a love affair with books. That's ok. Books aren't the only way we learn.
***Right now my 7 yr old daughter is playing with a cash registar and I can see how that can
lead to many learning activities! ***
She's learning all the time. She's having fun playing with a cash register. She's adding to ideas she already has about what people do and how people live and how things work. If she was digging a hole in the back yard she'd be learning. If she was rolling in the grass, she'd be learning. Every experience adds to what we already know about ourselves and our world. Everything we do we connect to something we already know and then connect more stuff to that. There's no special magic in the cash register. The really wonderful thing is in your daughter, that natural and compelling drive to learn.<g> You don't have to get it into her, she was born with it and is learning every minute, even if you can't see or name what she's learning.
Deb Lewis
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
books but looking to tweak some things.***
If you're using curriculum and you want to unschool you'll have to do more than "tweak" some things.<g>
Unschooling isn't another or a different method of schooling at home. Unschooling families live interesting and full lives and kids learn from lots of different experiences and from pursuing their interests. It won't look like "education." It won't look like school. It won't look like homeschooling.
An unschooling parent needs to do a lot of work.<g> It starts with rethinking learning. Mostly people believe education has to be administered to children in order for them to learn. Lots of people believe they have to teach their kids to talk and walk. Most people believe children wont be able to learn to read or to use numbers or understand basic mathematics unless someone teaches them. People have been thinking this way so long that it sounds really crazy when unschoolers talk about natural learning. You probably have some ideas about education and how children learn that you will have to examine if you want to unschool. If you believe learning only happens when kids are taught with the use of special educational materials these unschooling ideas will be difficult for you. It's not an easy tweak. <g>
Unschooling is not anything like school. Unschooling parents aren't trying to teach their kids or set up "educational" opportunities. They know people are born with a need to learn and will learn from everything around them. They're respectful to their kids and try to be good examples of the best kind of humans. <g> Parents help their kids do as many of the things they want to do as possible. They provide things they think their kids might like, but without expectation of the way that thing ought to be used or how often. They trust that even if they don't understand a particular interest their child has the child is gaining something valuable.
Two really good explanations of unschooling were written by Joyce Fetteroll and you can read them here:
http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/unschooling/unschoolingphilosophy.html
http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/unschooling/howunschoolingworks.html
Everything on her site is helpful and detailed, wonderful and free of charge!
***I would like to hear from some families
on what their typical day looks like. ***
When Dylan was seven a typical day was getting up in the morning and watching cartoons or playing PlayStation for a couple hours. Then we might go roaming around, wander through the park, stop at the grocery store, go see grandparents. Maybe a friend would come over. We'd play games, play in the yard, dig in the dirt. We'd go play in the creek behind the house. We might watch movies or read some stories, play on the piano, play with the cat. When Dylan was seven he was really fascinated by Godzilla so he made up lots of Godzilla stories to tell me, pretending he was a reporter, reporting monster news. We'd go places, go camping and hiking, go swimming. In the winter we'd go sledding, play in the snow, make snow monsters. Sometimes we'd hang out at the library or bookstore, or we'd go get a big plate of French fries and talk about life, or we'd go visit the greenhouse just out of town and see how many preying mantis babies we could catch. Basically we played and did just whatever we wanted.
Dylan will be seventeen in a few weeks. I'm not sure what a typical day is so I'll tell you what he did yesterday. He got up about 12:30 which is a little early for him, he often sleeps until 2:00. He grabbed some food and went a couple blocks to the house of an older guy he knows who has three reed organs. They watched some organ DVD's (restoration stuff) talked, played on the organs some, fiddled with stuff. He came home with a stack of organ magazines. He ate. <g> He played the organ for awhile. He did some laundry, took apart a vcr and messed with it, put it back together. It works now and doesn't gobble tapes.<g> He visited with me while I made dinner. We watched a movie, "Quarantine" (terrible movie<g> but then, the night before we'd watched "Midnight Meat Train" so you get an idea about our taste in movies.) He played piano some, played the organ some more. We went for a walk in the snow. I went to bed around midnight and when I got up at four this morning he was still up. He'd been listening to music and working on an old beta vcr he believes is possessed by demons. <g> We talked awhile. He went to bed around 5:00 AM. He asked me to wake him around eleven if he sleeps through his alarm so that must mean he has plans today.
*** I am also wondering if you get out any books at all throughout the day or
if your child completely leads his/her learning every day on his/her own. ***
Do you mean textbooks? If so, no. Unschooling parents aren't trying to direct their child's education. That's a hard concept to understand. I'm not trying to educate my son. My son is living and as a consequence of living he is learning.
We have always had books. Lots of books. I read to Dylan a lot when he was little, he loved stories. He reads something every day. He reads about organs and novachords and synthesizers everyday on line. He reads movie and book reviews. He gets a couple of filmmaking magazines and reads those. He reads at a political website he likes. He reads a lot of fiction. He usually has a couple of books going at once. I didn't tell him he should read and I didn't assign reading. He's reading because reading is useful and enjoyable.
I have given him books I thought he'd like. He's not obligated to read them. He gives me books too, because he thinks I'll enjoy them.
Dylan has never been "on his own." I'm here to help him. When he's interested in something I try to provide what he wants in order to do as much as he chooses. I don't decide what he's going to do or what he needs. I help him do what he wants. I help in the ways he wants.
***I am also interested in unit studies and I think the 2 might go well together.***
If you were hungry for cake would you go to the library and check out a bunch of books on the history of baking and read them and visit some baking museums and paste pictures of cakes into a notebook and write a bunch of baking related words? Sounds pretty silly doesn't it, when you can just bake a cake and eat it. Unit studies are silly. They waste precious time a person could be *doing the thing* she's interested in doing.
If you're interested in the history of baking cakes then looking up a bunch of different information about that history would be fun. Doing it because someone else thought you ought to because you expressed an interest in having some cake would be tedious and probably make you a little cranky.
If a kid is interested in learning to skateboard that doesn't mean he needs to read about skateboarding and write the names of different kinds of skateboards and identify all the best skaters in the world. It means he'd like to have a skateboard, maybe get some informal tips or comments from friends, and have the time to mess around with it. The fastest way to snuff out an interest is to assign the busy work, the silly work, of a unit study.
It's that way with anything. A kid who comes to his mom a couple of times asking how to spell a couple different words is *not* showing an interest in doing unit studies. He's showing an interest in that moment of spelling a couple of specific words. Maybe for a whole day or a whole week he'll be asking about different words but please people, please, don't make your kid do unit studies.<g> Blerk! Give him the information he's asking you for. Share interesting or fun thoughts but don't turn it into a spelling lesson.
When Dylan was really interested in Godzilla we watched Godzilla movies and bought Godzilla toys and Godzilla picture books. From there we found other Japanese monster movies. He made up his own stories about Godzilla or Gamera or Guilala and we found more monster toys. None of that was because I got him to do a unit study, it was the natural result of him being interested in Godzilla. From his interest in Godzilla he got interested in Japanese history and culture. He got interested the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. (He got interesting in metaphor) he learned a little of the language, took Karate lessons. He found out about Korean monster movies and learned about the history of filmmaking in Japan and Korea. He got interested in Tae Kwon Do and took lessons. Still, today, he loves Godzilla movies, has a Godzilla toy on his big Wurlitzer organ in the living room, has a Godzilla wallpaper on his desktop. None of what he learned was a result of unit studies or any plan or expectation I had about Dylan's "education." I have started a list of the connections Dylan made from his love of Godzilla and I'll post it here. The connections are still being made all these years later and will probably go on all his life.
*** I am
all for allowing our children explore their own likes/curiosities, I just wonder
if that will inevitably lead to opening up any books at all.....??!!***
It depends what you mean by opening up a book. If you mean will they spontaneously study textbooks then probably not.<g> A couple different friends have given us textbooks over the years and I think Dylan looked at one or two - but textbooks are pretty dull and pointless. Anything in them can be got more accurately and interestingly somewhere else. As far as I know he never read one.
But if you read and have books around the house, then yes, probably your kid will open a book.<g>
Dylan loves books. He has shelves and shelves of them, boxes and boxes, stacks and teetering towers. I gave away hundreds of books to make way for his ever growing library.<g>
I think Dylan learned to read for a couple different reasons. I read to him and he liked stories. He saw words everywhere (in books, magazines, newspapers, mail, notes and lists we had around the house, road signs and business signs, etc.) and got more and more curious about them. He realized reading was useful. He liked the idea of reading any story he wanted to read. He liked the idea of making up his own stories. He drew cartoons and wrote captions for them and wanted to be able to read other cartoons. Some of his Japanese monster movies were only available subtitled and he wanted to be able to watch them at night when his parents were sleeping and he had the house all to himself.<g> He wanted to be able to read the stuff on his video games.
He likes to read because he gets to choose for himself what to read and he finds reading fun and useful. If I had assigned reading I might have spoiled that.
I believe anyone with exposure to happily reading people and interesting things to read will learn to read. Not everyone will have a love affair with books. That's ok. Books aren't the only way we learn.
***Right now my 7 yr old daughter is playing with a cash registar and I can see how that can
lead to many learning activities! ***
She's learning all the time. She's having fun playing with a cash register. She's adding to ideas she already has about what people do and how people live and how things work. If she was digging a hole in the back yard she'd be learning. If she was rolling in the grass, she'd be learning. Every experience adds to what we already know about ourselves and our world. Everything we do we connect to something we already know and then connect more stuff to that. There's no special magic in the cash register. The really wonderful thing is in your daughter, that natural and compelling drive to learn.<g> You don't have to get it into her, she was born with it and is learning every minute, even if you can't see or name what she's learning.
Deb Lewis
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]