AndreaH

Hi everyone,

My name is Andrea, I have been homeschooling for 2 years. My children are Noelle 8, Timothy 6, and Nicholas 4.

This is actually my first 'go' at unschooling...at least officially. ;)

We have been Waldorf inspired homeschoolers, but I am intuitively moving more toward unschooling, as I see that my children thrive under this philosophy. It has been the summer that has opened my eyes. In the last few weeks, without a structured curriculum because we are not doing 'school' but are on vacation, I have inadvertently taught my children about animals, the ocean, geography, even a little math, and they loved it! It dawned on me that learning is much easier this way.

Hopefully I can develop a good strategy for the coming fall. I am the type who needs a plan, but a flexible one.

I am very excited about this group!

Andrea

Sacha Davis

Hi Andrea - I too am a planner, so I will share my plan. Get up. Eat something. Spend time with my family. Go to bed. Do what my kids want to do within my abilities and means. Find opportunities to do things I can't do. Figure out how to provide things every once in a while that are special and beyond our day to day means. I would also say keep living like it's summer when fall comes, and winter, and spring, and summer again, so what you're doing now is a great plan for the fall :). Since we have never done school we find our time flows differently. Only the weather really dictates our activities, not calendars, then I do shift work and work weekends, so we're not even dictated to by what day it is. It's quite nice and freeing. The other rule I have is that nothing comes before family time. Nothing at all.

Sacha


On Jul 11, 2011, at 12:27 PM, AndreaH wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> My name is Andrea, I have been homeschooling for 2 years. My children are Noelle 8, Timothy 6, and Nicholas 4.
>
> This is actually my first 'go' at unschooling...at least officially. ;)
>
> We have been Waldorf inspired homeschoolers, but I am intuitively moving more toward unschooling, as I see that my children thrive under this philosophy. It has been the summer that has opened my eyes. In the last few weeks, without a structured curriculum because we are not doing 'school' but are on vacation, I have inadvertently taught my children about animals, the ocean, geography, even a little math, and they loved it! It dawned on me that learning is much easier this way.
>
> Hopefully I can develop a good strategy for the coming fall. I am the type who needs a plan, but a flexible one.
>
> I am very excited about this group!
>
> Andrea
>
>



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

Debra Rossing

Hi there. I like plans and lists and things too. So, I plan to facilitate things - I keep an eye out for things that might be of interest to anyone in the household, offer them, make the arrangements as needed, etc. I look for the 'back to school' sales and see if there's anything that anyone would like (for example, we usually re-stock on sketchpads and DS' favorite fine line markers, my steno pads - I love the spiral bound steno pads for grocery lists, regular pens for general purpose use, etc). I note when favorite programs, movies, books might be coming up. I plan 'around' them but I don't plan 'them' - that is, my plan is to facilitate their plans.

Deb R



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

plaidpanties666

"AndreaH" <hartmandrea@...> wrote:
>> Hopefully I can develop a good strategy for the coming fall. I am the type who needs a plan, but a flexible one.
***************

I find it helpful to make plans for me, while leaving space in them for my kids. When the kids were younger and needed more of my time, I did a bit of research on learning - learning isn't the same as teaching! and its fascinating how much "teaching" has to do with seeing oneself as a teacher rather than being about the needs of the other person. Here are a couple links on that topic:

http://sandradodd.com/teaching/
http://sandradodd.com/pam/principles

---Meredith