greengloves360

Hi all,

I usually sit back and marvel at you all, but I would like to respond
to this post simply because I feel that so much has been going right
for my daughter and I since I threw out some of my ideas.

When I took my dd out of school this year, even though I thought I had
an unschooling philosophy I felt pushed (by my own conditioning more
than likely) to 'teach' Kaya what I thought she 'needed' to know. I
tried to make it fun and exciting, but it was still led by me. I
wanted her to do certain things every day or every week.

Finally I realized that it wasn't really 'fun' for either of us. I
still had anxiety about whether I was doing everything right.

Things changed for us when we started reading the fourth Harry Potter
book out loud. We were so into it that we sometimes read for the whole
day. Seriously, it was hard putting the book down long enough to make
meals, my throat started getting so sore. LOL

I found myself justifying this to myself. We are homeshoolers we can
do what we want. As this went on I started believing myself, we can do
what we want truly.

I am finding that when I am interested in something and spend time
myself on learning what I want to learn it opens Kaya up to explore
what she wants to learn and sometimes our interests coincide.

Right now I am very interested in geography, finding out exactly where
things are in our world. I have maps on every wall of my living room.
We are literally surrounded by the world. I find it very exciting and
Kaya has picked up on that and wants to learn as much as she can.

When I was in school there were so many things being crammed into my
head that I was uniterested in; I remeber very little about those
things. I don't use chemistry in my everday life, but I am finding
that there are situations where algebra would come in handy. While I
was not interested when I was in school, now I want to learn it and so
will put energy into doing so, not because someone is making me, but
because I can see how it would be helpful in my life.

Schools turn out a remarkably uniform product. Each kid retains a tiny
fraction of what they consider to be the useless junk that has been
crammed into their heads.

I feel that if you sit back and let your kids find what interests them
you will soon be marveling at how much energy they will put into
learning about their current passion. And you will probably be
remarking to everyone who will listen "Wow, do you see how cool s/he
is? That is one amazing kid!" ( or maybe that's just me) tee hee

Peace,
Lisa

[email protected]

In a message dated 2/8/05 9:44:59 AM, greengloves360@... writes:

<< Schools turn out a remarkably uniform product. Each kid retains a tiny

fraction of what they consider to be the useless junk that has been

crammed into their heads. >>

Right, if by "uniform" you mean uniformly disgusted with education and
resistent to learning. Some escape, but not because the school didn't try to
squelch all joy.

Parents can do that at home, too!

-=-I feel that if you sit back and let your kids find what interests them

you will soon be marveling at how much energy they will put into

learning about their current passion. -=-

If you hang out with them and do cool things instead of just sitting back, it
will happen even sooner.

Sandra


Sandra