hollyhillrose

I always feel funny posting on a forum, when I really want to talk to a friend, and so I have done it infrequently, so please bear with me.

I am new to this forum, but we are unschoolers. There I admit it! To everyone else we are interest led learners. It sounds more "officical" and we get more understanding with that term. But when I try to find support from other's who use that term I run into too many parents who figure that it is their "own" interest that they insist upon the child. That would never work for us. So I am now here and hope to find some support.

I need it this year. I am returning to university myself. Something I have wanted to do for a while. And I think it is important that my children witness me attaining my goals. But as a result the children will be on their own completely. Which doesn't worry me, they have always taught them selves so no problem there. BUT they have asked for some things which I don't know what to suggest and hope you can help.

Some background. we have homeschooled/unschooled from the beginning. My children have never been in a school. My 19 year old is in College (and doing great, thank-you!), I have a 17 year old son and a 14 year old daughter.

My son does programing, composing, and teaches children to kayak and DJ's on friday nights. He has approached me and decided to get his math up to grade level. No problem there, there are enough texts lieing about and so he has started all ready and is very determined. But he also asked for something to help him with English. He has never enjoyed reading (he is right brained & very visually impaired) so about the only reading he likes are Graphic novels. Until now he has only writen on forums and facebook on the computer.

So he has asked me to help him with getting his writing skills up to a decent level. NOW. When I will not even be home for long periodso f time.

So I am asking for suggestions. Is there a "remedial" type of program that you know of and can recommend? An online site with guided writing instruction. Something that can teach the basics without killing the subject?

My eldest daughter also hated writing when she was younger. When she was 16 she took a one week course called excellence in writing. In her first year in College she got an A+ (and an award) in Canadian Literature and a B+ in Academic writing. So I fully believe that you don't need years of any subject to go to college. You just need to want to do it. The excellence in writing wouldn't be a good course for my son, because it was very intense, and he can only focus on the written word for short periods of time before he gets headaches (he has colobomas in both eyes and sees very poorly).. so I would like something he could do at his own pace..Any ideas?.

My youngest daughter. Taught herself to write and wrote a 280 page Novel this summer. So no help there.

Joyce Fetteroll

On Sep 2, 2011, at 3:23 PM, hollyhillrose wrote:

> And I think it is important that my children witness me attaining my
> goals. But as a result the children will be on their own completely

The following is a more generalize statement than to your specific
situation:

The above is something adults occasionally say but it has no basis in
children's reality. What children want and need is to be able to
depend on their parents to meet their needs. Everything else from
kids' points of view is parents doing what they want to do. Whether it
be mowing the lawn, going to work, grocery shopping, getting a degree.
It's all the same to kids.

What's important to kids is that they don't feel their needs dropping
to second place for the parents' needs. Which is important in any
relationship. If a husband or wife keeps breaking dates, forgetting to
pick something up at the grocery, forgetting birthdays because of all
this other stuff going on in their lives, the actions say "You're way
down on my priority list."

It *is* valuable for kids to experience parents balancing meeting
their own needs while keeping the kids needs as a priority.

So, no, it's not important for kids to see parents meeting their
goals. Your kids are older so you doing your thing may have less
negative impact on them. Your 17 yo may think it's cool since he's at
an age when he may be thinking along the same lines.

> He has approached me and decided to get his math up to grade level.
> No problem there, there are enough texts lieing about and so he has
> started all ready and is very determined. But he also asked for
> something to help him with English.

Why does he want to be up to "grade level"? What does he want better
English for? And what does he mean by English? Literature? Grammar?
Communication? It will help you narrow down your search if you can
identify exactly what he wants.

The requests seem to be coming from a schoolish mindset. So if he's
expecting a schoolish process and schoolish results, eg, do this, this
and this and you'll have done what you need to do, an unschooling
forum isn't the best place to ask!

I know it seems unschoolers would be a great resource for self-
directed approaches to learning, but most unschooled kids aren't using
programs. (There is the occasional unschooled kid who does love
courses so sometimes members do come up with something!) But the
eclectics, who tend to be more laid back while using a wide variety of
programs, would be a much better resource. They've done the research
and exploration. Unschoolers only do it if they happen to have a kid
who pushes them in that direction!

I wonder if there might be writing (or is it grammar he wants?)
programs for the visually impaired?

> My youngest daughter. Taught herself to write


Unless she was going through a self-paced course of study it's more
accurate to see that she is learning to write by writing. It sounds
like a quibble, but "taught" tends to keep people thinking in terms of
acquiring a specific body of knowledge, which makes them tend to think
in terms of courses of study.

But the concept of learning is vast, takes all sorts of shapes and
forms and is never ending.

At this point your daughter may know very little about the
communication type of writing that your son sounds like he's
interested in: writing that transfers ideas from one person's head
into another person's head. So in those terms she hasn't taught
herself to write nor even learned to write for communication. What she
wrote may be fairly unreadable to anyone else. (And it's not important
if it is or isn't!) (I know my daughter's NaNoWriMo at 14 was a pretty
surreal wild ride for her characters ;-)

What's important is that your daughter had the freedom to do something
she enjoyed doing. That the side effect of doing what she enjoyed
created something that adults see as valuable is irrelevant. What
she's doing is exactly what other kids are doing when they explore
anything with driving interest whether it be beating a video game,
nailing a song on the guitar, acting out a convoluted (to adults ;-)
scenario with Barbies. It's all exploring passions. And it's all
learning.

Joyce

Sandra Dodd

-=-I am new to this forum, but we are unschoolers. There I admit it! To everyone else we are interest led learners.=-

This forum is very quiet these days, which is fine, but what you're describing is more like interest led learning than unschooling, I think. Still I have some ideas.

-=- BUT they have asked for some things which I don't know what to suggest and hope you can help.
-=-

http://www.khanacademy.org/
From their main page:
-------------------
Watch. Practice.

Learn almost anything for free.

With a library of over 2,400 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 150 practice exercises, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
-------------------

My older two kids took math at the community college after they were 18 (and some other classes, one is still there, taking Easter Religions and Macro Economics this term). They tested into the middle level of five ranked-in-order non-credit math courses (review of math) and though they had never studied formal mathematical notation, they both caught up in a week or two and got A's. Maybe your son knows more than the thinks he does, and if you're near a community college he could do that.


Here are some writing ideas already compiled--more about how parents can see writing than the techniques, but in your situation that might be more helpful:

http://sandradodd.com/writing

My husband was a terrible speller when I met him, though he was a good student (better at math and theatre than at anything involving writing!), and our older son is also not a good speller, even though he writes constantly at work. There's something about recognizing a word's appearance that some people have and some people don't. Over the years, my husband's spelling and punctuation have improved greatly, so unlike school's dire curses, it's not true that you have to learn it as a kid or you'll never know it.

I used to teach English and have always been interested in technicalities, but i don't use my (many) books at all anymore. I use google if I have a question, or if someone else does.

Sandra

Sandra Dodd

Another idea about learning to write might be something you're already doing. Writing is better if people have read good writing, but if your son has a hard time physically reading, audio books will help. The more one thinks of other people's language use, the better their own might be, if they have normal-to-high verbal intelligence.

http://sandradodd.com/intelligences

http://www.audible.com/

Sandra

Pam Sorooshian

On 9/3/2011 6:37 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:
> Another idea about learning to write might be something you're already
> doing. Writing is better if people have read good writing, but if your
> son has a hard time physically reading, audio books will help. The
> more one thinks of other people's language use, the better their own
> might be, if they have normal-to-high verbal intelligence.

Good conversation is really writing development, too. Sometimes I see
parents who kind of shush their kids or get obviously bored when their
kids are telling them a rather long drawn-out story (like retelling a
movie plot). But retelling a tv or movie plot or telling everything that
happened, in order, in a video game are really great for writing. In
fact, all that verbal stuff - conversation, summarizing movies,
persuading or arguing, playing games, etc., are MUCH better for
developing good writing than practicing writing in the artificial ways
that schools do it.

-pam