Tempe

Hi Bob,
My name is Tempe, and we've been homeschooling since the fall. My
daughter went to K last year in the public school. She did well, but
to me, it all ended up feeling very packed. The amount of material
they are required to pack in in a year seemed so much. She learned
to read, which on one hand is good, and on the other hand I'm of the
mind that I think doing that in K is a little early. At the time, I
was still working full time and very pregnant with our third child,
so homeschooling didn't seem like a possibility. But by April, I
left work and stayed at home with the two youngest. And by April my
daughter was coming home saying school was "boring...all we do is
work, work, work."

I was already thinking about homeschooling (I had thought about it
since before we had kids) and had read lots (I highly recommend John
Holt - Teach Your Own and Learning All the Time are two I've read,
Linda Dobson, Ann Larson Fischer).

Anyway, I used the summer as a trial period to see how it might be
staying home all the time with three. It was great. We went to the
beach, had playdates, went to a few fairs and festivals and mostly
played!

I had been thinking about maybe making up my own curriculum, or
maybe unschooling, but started feeling anxious just before
the "official" school year started. And yet I could see how the kids
were indeed "learning all the time". It's amazing to witness!
Needless to say I started the year with some bought curriculum, and
there were some really good books we read from it, but overall by
the end of the first quarter, it felt like i was pulling teeth. My
daughter was resistant to daily reading aloud, and to the math
workbook, and one day I just followed my heart and said to myself"
Okay, I'll try it for a few days (unschooling), and ujst see what
happens." Well, it was two days later that I found my daughter and
son (4) curled up in their closet and she was reading to him. It
brought tears to my eyes. Once i took the pressure off, she did this
stuff on her own, because she wanted to! And they played and played
all day. That was all I needed. I could see that in everything we
did in a day they were learning. From then on we've been
unschooling.

My daughter is learning math and amazes me what she can figure out
in her head on her own, but we're not using workbooks and I'm not
quizzing her, it just happens in our daily life. We weigh things at
the store. We compare things - size, weight, whatever.We play games
with money and the kids pay for things with their own money
sometimes. A lot of what the kids do is play, but i can see that
they learn so much from that. We play board games, we read a lot
before bedtime, we paint, cut, glue, listen to all sorts of music.
She doesn't write a lot, but she can when she wants to. She asks for
help spelling what she wants. We take walks and talk about things we
see. My daughter fell in love with a song we have by Mary Chapin
Carpenter, called "Halley came to Jackson". We have it on a tape
that has that same song on both sides, so it will play over and over
in our car tape deck - That song got us talking about comets, and
about Halley and Hale-Bopp and that I had seen Hale-Bopp, and how
old would each of us be the next time Halley comes around (every 76
yrs). And so on and so on.

My experience has been that you just have to try it and be open to
seeing all kids learn in just living everyday life. And as others
have said, you can put things in their path and if it interests
them, you can go with helping them find out more of what they want
to know/experience.

Sorry this is long. I have one more thing...not a day goes by when i
don't think about how grateful i am to be at home with my kids
homeschooling. It's often when we're outside playing, and I think
about how "right now my daughter would be inside, in school" or the
bus goes by at 4 and I think, "Winter would just be getting home
now!"

Good luck! And Easy Does It...The idea of unschooling can be
overwhelming because it is unstructured, but it's worth it.

Tempe

b0b_5mith

Hi Tempe,

You certainly don't need to apologize about the length of your
response. I loved reading it. I nearly got tears in my eyes, too. I
know what you mean about watching your little ones and just
appreciating them for who and what they are right then and there. I
remember taking Hannah to preschool two years ago and how she cried
when we left her, how I couldn't carry her in from the car, because
she'd struggle and not want me to put her down. And as I think back,
I feel so sad and wonder "why?" Why was it so important that she go
to preschool, or sign up for soccer, or do all the other things that
all the other kids were doing?

I feel like we were putting expectations on her to be something or
someone that she wasn't ready to be and I feel bad about it now. My
daughter loved to learn even before we sent her to preschool. I can't
say that preschool has increase it any, and perhaps decreased it a
little. The only thing that I feel preschool has done for her is
teach her how to "fit in" in the social scene of the other preschool
kids. And who really cares about that anyway?! She's learned how to
whine. She's mastered it actually. :) No doubt something that works
when you're trying to convince another preschooler to play the game
you want to play, and likely something she sees modeled on a day-to-
day basis.

It was nice to read about your family and I'm glad that homeschooling
and more specifically unschooling is working for you. I'll be sure to
read your response to my wife (I plan to read them all to her) and
I'm sure she'll be encouraged by your experiences.

Thanks again for taking the time to write that "long" response. I
enjoyed it all!

Bob