So excited!!
sarahrandom78
I just had to share this. My husband has been very critical of unschooling, but also has not wanted to send our daughter(11) back to school, nor has he wanted to send our middle child (5) to kindergarten this year. I tried homeschooling the first two years with our daughter, and promptly got burned out with the struggles and arguments over school work. This past year we, my daughter and I, decided to try unschooling. It was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated, since I had all the fears that accompany something new and not especially socially accepted. Things went OK, my husband has never been on board with it though. Things have improved a lot over the summer, as our daughter seems to be coming out of her deschooling phase and is actually starting to get interested in learning things again. By that I mean she seems to be asking questions and talking more, instead of just sitting in her room watching countless youtube videos ( I know she can be learning things there, but what I mean is she's interacting with the family again, instead of just shutting down because she thinks any question we ask is somehow a sneaky way of us being educational) ANYWAY, LOL! The whole point of this doesn't even have anything to do with her, it's my son. He just turned 5 in July, but has been showing a huge interest in reading and writing in the past year. He's constantly asking "how do you spell____" I just answer him, I don't try to get him to sound it out or anything. He's learned to spell his own name and both of his sister's names and mom and dad, probably from memory. Well today he brings me a paper that says spidr. He says "look mom, I wrote spider. See?" Then he proceeded to sound it out to me as he ran his finger underneath the letters. I was in shock that he had taught himself this! I had to tell my husband. Get this!! He said "Thank you for selling me on the whole unschooling thing" Can you believe it!!!??? I'm so excited I don't know what to do with myself. Not only that but just last week, our 3 year old brought me a piece of paper that said mom, and she says "It's for you, it says mom" I can't believe how fooled the schools have people that we think we have to TEACH kids to read! Clearly it really is something you learn on your own (not saying I haven't given guidance when asked) and on your own time. I hope this helps anyone who may be worried that their kids won't learn to read if they're not taught.
Thanks
Sarah
Thanks
Sarah
Holly Beth Hatcher
Thank you, Sarah. You are not the only one with this type of experience. We need to keep hearing it! I am forwarding this to my husband. That way, when I tell his parents, he'll be able to back me up.
Holly Beth Hatcher
Sent from my iPhone
Holly Beth Hatcher
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 27, 2010, at 7:18 PM, "sarahrandom78" <bdb1978@...> wrote:
> I just had to share this. My husband has been very critical of unschooling, but also has not wanted to send our daughter(11) back to school, nor has he wanted to send our middle child (5) to kindergarten this year. I tried homeschooling the first two years with our daughter, and promptly got burned out with the struggles and arguments over school work. This past year we, my daughter and I, decided to try unschooling. It was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated, since I had all the fears that accompany something new and not especially socially accepted. Things went OK, my husband has never been on board with it though. Things have improved a lot over the summer, as our daughter seems to be coming out of her deschooling phase and is actually starting to get interested in learning things again. By that I mean she seems to be asking questions and talking more, instead of just sitting in her room watching countless youtube videos ( I know she can be learning things there, but what I mean is she's interacting with the family again, instead of just shutting down because she thinks any question we ask is somehow a sneaky way of us being educational) ANYWAY, LOL! The whole point of this doesn't even have anything to do with her, it's my son. He just turned 5 in July, but has been showing a huge interest in reading and writing in the past year. He's constantly asking "how do you spell____" I just answer him, I don't try to get him to sound it out or anything. He's learned to spell his own name and both of his sister's names and mom and dad, probably from memory. Well today he brings me a paper that says spidr. He says "look mom, I wrote spider. See?" Then he proceeded to sound it out to me as he ran his finger underneath the letters. I was in shock that he had taught himself this! I had to tell my husband. Get this!! He said "Thank you for selling me on the whole unschooling thing" Can you believe it!!!??? I'm so excited I don't know what to do with myself. Not only that but just last week, our 3 year old brought me a piece of paper that said mom, and she says "It's for you, it says mom" I can't believe how fooled the schools have people that we think we have to TEACH kids to read! Clearly it really is something you learn on your own (not saying I haven't given guidance when asked) and on your own time. I hope this helps anyone who may be worried that their kids won't learn to read if they're not taught.
> Thanks
> Sarah
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Ann
Thanks for sharing, Sarah. I think it's so helpful to many people to hear unschooling success stories. And it's so great that your husband is now on board. It really makes things so much more comfortable for everyone in the household.
Ann
Ann
rockyhorseaz
Sarah (and others) - I have been homeschooling/unschooling my son, who is now 10, since he was 7. He did a few years at a local Waldorf school - 2 of kindergarten and then first grade. In the Waldorf schools they really don't begin to teach any alphabet/reading stuff until the 1st grade and they take that very slowly so when he was finished with 1st grade, although he knew the alphabet by then, he really wasn't reading or writing. For the first few months of "2nd grade" I was trying to do school at home but then life took over and we switched onto the unschooling path. Anyway, my point was that for the most part, he was taught some basics in the beginning, but then pretty much left alone - he did start reading himself mostly through using the computer....but as for books, he really just still enjoyed me reading to him at bedtime. Sometimes when I read, it is late at night and I'm just too tired to read much before I fall asleep. One day (within the past year), as I was falling asleep and we were at a really good part in the book I just said "I can't read anymore...do you want to keep reading?" and to my surprise he said "yeah". Well, all of a sudden he was reading like 40 pages at a time to himself! I'd go to pick up where he left off and not have a clue what had happened so he'd fill me in and then we'd continue from there. That was really cool.
But I still wondered about his writing. He seemed to have NO interest at all in writing and I wondered if he even remembered how to write certain letters. It wasn't a huge deal but I just wondered. Well, just recently he has started writing - not writing stories or anything but just incorporating a lot of words into his drawings. It's so nice to see him do these things all by himself on his own time because he wants to. In the unschooling community, of course, you always hear that kids will teach themselves these things, but when your kid really does take off on their own it's just a really cool thing to see when you've been brought up in the traditional mindset of "you need to go to school to learn how to read and write blah blah blah blah" :)
-Robyn
But I still wondered about his writing. He seemed to have NO interest at all in writing and I wondered if he even remembered how to write certain letters. It wasn't a huge deal but I just wondered. Well, just recently he has started writing - not writing stories or anything but just incorporating a lot of words into his drawings. It's so nice to see him do these things all by himself on his own time because he wants to. In the unschooling community, of course, you always hear that kids will teach themselves these things, but when your kid really does take off on their own it's just a really cool thing to see when you've been brought up in the traditional mindset of "you need to go to school to learn how to read and write blah blah blah blah" :)
-Robyn
plaidpanties666
How wonderful and exciting about your husband! Hooray!
"sarahrandom78" <bdb1978@...> wrote:
That's so cool!
Yes, kids can learn the basics of phonics from the "ABC song" and watching others interact with print. University lab schools that use an open classroom approach see that work consistently, without significantly more or greater "errors" than kids taught letter-sound correspondences.
Of course, other kids learn to read by different routes than phonics - some can read without even recognizing all the letters of the alphabet! Its pretty amazing all the different ways people assemble the various skill sets necessary to read.
I taught at an adult literacy program years ago where we avoided phonics like the plague, since virtually all our students couldn't process that kind of information. And then Ray couldn't make sense of words using phonics, either, back when we were homeschooling. Along comes Mo and proceeds to learn to read using phonics as her primary strategy, using the ABC song as her guide.
---Meredith (Mo 9, Ray 16)
"sarahrandom78" <bdb1978@...> wrote:
> He says "look mom, I wrote spider. See?" Then he proceeded to sound it out to me as he ran his finger underneath the letters. I was in shock that he had taught himself this!****************
That's so cool!
Yes, kids can learn the basics of phonics from the "ABC song" and watching others interact with print. University lab schools that use an open classroom approach see that work consistently, without significantly more or greater "errors" than kids taught letter-sound correspondences.
Of course, other kids learn to read by different routes than phonics - some can read without even recognizing all the letters of the alphabet! Its pretty amazing all the different ways people assemble the various skill sets necessary to read.
I taught at an adult literacy program years ago where we avoided phonics like the plague, since virtually all our students couldn't process that kind of information. And then Ray couldn't make sense of words using phonics, either, back when we were homeschooling. Along comes Mo and proceeds to learn to read using phonics as her primary strategy, using the ABC song as her guide.
---Meredith (Mo 9, Ray 16)
plaidpanties666
Holly Beth Hatcher <hbhatcher@...> wrote:
Do you need to tell his parents anything? It can be better, with extended family, to keep things a little vague at first until you're family is really comfortable and solid in your lifestyle. Its more convincing to point to happy, involved kids and say "see? nothing wrong" than to throw out a bunch of theories that fly in the face of "conventional wisdom".
Something else that can be helpful with family and friends (this is kind of a tangent) is to avoid making comparisons that imply that unschooling is "better" than what they may have done/ be doing. Realistically, unschooling doesn't have to be one iota better than any other kind of parenting or "education" as long as its no worse. That sounds like kind of a downer, but from the standpoint of communicating with others, it can save a lot of hurt feelings and defensiveness. Not better, just different - that's less threatening.
---Meredith
>> I am forwarding this to my husband. That way, when I tell his parents, he'll be able to back me up.*******************
Do you need to tell his parents anything? It can be better, with extended family, to keep things a little vague at first until you're family is really comfortable and solid in your lifestyle. Its more convincing to point to happy, involved kids and say "see? nothing wrong" than to throw out a bunch of theories that fly in the face of "conventional wisdom".
Something else that can be helpful with family and friends (this is kind of a tangent) is to avoid making comparisons that imply that unschooling is "better" than what they may have done/ be doing. Realistically, unschooling doesn't have to be one iota better than any other kind of parenting or "education" as long as its no worse. That sounds like kind of a downer, but from the standpoint of communicating with others, it can save a lot of hurt feelings and defensiveness. Not better, just different - that's less threatening.
---Meredith
Maria
Good morning everyone!
Sarah, this is all very exciting indeed!
My 14yo girl started to read at age 6 with no credit to my own. She just wanted to know what every book with the image of a horse on the cover was all about. Amazing! It just happened!
My 12yo son started at age 7 which is when he really got interested in understanding what his Lego Magazine stories were signifying with the group of letters by the characters' side.
And again, this happened to no credit really to my own, but to life itself.
Natural exposure it's all that is needed, and in some instances not even that.
Now my son still shows no great interest in handwriting, BUT (and notice this is a big "but"...hehe), he types faster than I do it (by playing games online with real people all around the world, and communicating with them through the game's site), and he is very interested in spelling correctly every word so, I am his "spell master machine" (these are his own words).
This, is our story. Plain, and simple. And happy too!
Maria.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Sarah, this is all very exciting indeed!
My 14yo girl started to read at age 6 with no credit to my own. She just wanted to know what every book with the image of a horse on the cover was all about. Amazing! It just happened!
My 12yo son started at age 7 which is when he really got interested in understanding what his Lego Magazine stories were signifying with the group of letters by the characters' side.
And again, this happened to no credit really to my own, but to life itself.
Natural exposure it's all that is needed, and in some instances not even that.
Now my son still shows no great interest in handwriting, BUT (and notice this is a big "but"...hehe), he types faster than I do it (by playing games online with real people all around the world, and communicating with them through the game's site), and he is very interested in spelling correctly every word so, I am his "spell master machine" (these are his own words).
This, is our story. Plain, and simple. And happy too!
Maria.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
movingonout2009
We are in a very similar situation. My daughter taught herself (with some mild help from us) how to write the entire uppercase alphabet, and is now learning the lowercase as well. She has also taken up learning to spell words, all so that she can write cards to give to people. It absolutely amazes me, and has totally sold me on unschooling. If they can teach themselves this at 4 years old, I think that they can learn anything, as long as the interest is there.
Jo-Anna
Jo-Anna
Judy Negrey
Thanks you for your post. It is so reassuring to read of others who are
experiencing the same thing...and so many of you/us!
We had the same thing. We have not pushed her to learn and write the
alphabet (other that singing) and talking about it when she showed interest.
Our daughter began showing interest on her own and would want me to write
out the word she wanted to print (and in capital letters - her choice) then
would print the word/words. She also shows recognition of words and
sentences and names of things when we are reading. I am confident that she
is learning and doesn't need 'pushing'.
Thank you again for sharing!
Judy - mama to Gabrielle
experiencing the same thing...and so many of you/us!
We had the same thing. We have not pushed her to learn and write the
alphabet (other that singing) and talking about it when she showed interest.
Our daughter began showing interest on her own and would want me to write
out the word she wanted to print (and in capital letters - her choice) then
would print the word/words. She also shows recognition of words and
sentences and names of things when we are reading. I am confident that she
is learning and doesn't need 'pushing'.
Thank you again for sharing!
Judy - mama to Gabrielle
[email protected]
I love hearing stories like this!! Thank you for sharing. My two kids went to public school and are still deschooling. I can't wait til they enjoy learning again!