[email protected]

Hi, I am looking forward to being apart of this loop. I have four children
ages 16, 14, 12, 10. We have always homeschooled. We started out quite
structured and have been loosing up more and more each year. I first heard of
unschooling when we went online a few years ago. Now I consider us to be
apart of this wonderful lifestyle. The kids do use Math-u-See math books but
it is their choice and I do not require it. Matter of fact my 10 year old
said he does not want to do it for a while and that is ok. We also read aloud
together almost daily and enjoy it very much. Right now we all have an
interest in ancient history, so that is what we have been reading. Boy I have
learned a lot. It is so interesting. (But we did take a break to read the
newest Harry Potter book recently!) The kids came to me yesterday telling me
somethings they would like to check out. The oldest saw the book Blueprints
for Geometry in a catalog and wants to try it. The 14 yr. old wants to learn
Japanese, an interest that stems from the Japanese terms they use in karate.
All the sudden this summer all the kids have gotten excited about playing the
sax and clarinet we have here. The boys found art and science books they want
to try. And this is pretty much how it goes. We live in the country on a few
acres. We live pretty simply except for this pc which has become a necessity.
We do love the internet! :)
My husband works a lot of hours in the summer for a construction company
but winter is coming. The kids and I earn money selling items on ebay. And
the kids clean a house for a neighbor to pay for karate classes. The kids
also race BMX. Seems like we are seldom bored.
I look forward to meeting you all
Candy
"I never let schoolin interfer with my education"
Mark Twain

Jill

Hello,

I have been lurking for a few days after rec'g the newsletter & joining the list, and I have found it very fascinating. I esp. enjoy reading ALL of Sharon's (Childs) posts, they're great! Sharon, if you don't have your own website, you should.

I am Jill, unschooling mom of a 10 yr old daughter.

This list so far has been informative to me...I hope to read lots more.

~Jill



"If your plan is for a year, plant rice. If your plan is for a decade, plant trees. If your plan is for a lifetime, educate children."
-- Confucius



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

sharon childs

Jill, welcome to the list and thank you very much for one of the nicest
things anyone has ever said to me.

I am unschooling my ten year old grand-daughter. Maybe we should get
together and compare notes. Might be able to help each other out or maybe
even the girls would like a pen pal? Feel free to private post me if you
like.

Sharon ( feeling my ego grow!)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jill" <jelliss_c@...>
To: "unschooling" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 4:34 PM
Subject: [Unschooling-dotcom] New Here


>
> Hello,
>
> I have been lurking for a few days after rec'g the newsletter & joining
the list, and I have found it very fascinating. I esp. enjoy reading ALL of
Sharon's (Childs) posts, they're great! Sharon, if you don't have your own
website, you should.
>
> I am Jill, unschooling mom of a 10 yr old daughter.
>
> This list so far has been informative to me...I hope to read lots more.
>
> ~Jill
>
>
>
> "If your plan is for a year, plant rice. If your plan is for a decade,
plant trees. If your plan is for a lifetime, educate children."
> -- Confucius
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ~~~ Don't forget! If you change the topic, change the subject line! ~~~
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> [email protected]
>
> Visit the Unschooling website:
> http://www.unschooling.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

jelliss_c

Thanks Sharon, and I'm glad my compliment affected you so. :-)

I will definitely be emailing you, and the girls being penpals sounds
like a good plan.

Til later~
Jill


--- In Unschooling-dotcom@y..., "sharon childs" <sugarcrafter@u...>
wrote:
> Jill, welcome to the list and thank you very much for one of the
nicest
> things anyone has ever said to me.
>
> I am unschooling my ten year old grand-daughter. Maybe we should
get
> together and compare notes. Might be able to help each other out
or maybe
> even the girls would like a pen pal? Feel free to private post me
if you
> like.
>
> Sharon ( feeling my ego grow!)
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jill" <jelliss_c@y...>
> To: "unschooling" <unschooling-dotcom@y...>
> Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 4:34 PM
> Subject: [Unschooling-dotcom] New Here
>
>
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I have been lurking for a few days after rec'g the newsletter &
joining
> the list, and I have found it very fascinating. I esp. enjoy
reading ALL of
> Sharon's (Childs) posts, they're great! Sharon, if you don't have
your own
> website, you should.
> >
> > I am Jill, unschooling mom of a 10 yr old daughter.
> >
> > This list so far has been informative to me...I hope to read lots
more.
> >
> > ~Jill
> >
> >
> >
> > "If your plan is for a year, plant rice. If your plan is for a
decade,
> plant trees. If your plan is for a lifetime, educate children."
> > -- Confucius
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> >
> > ~~~ Don't forget! If you change the topic, change the subject
line! ~~~
> >
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> > Unschooling-dotcom-unsubscribe@y...
> >
> > Visit the Unschooling website:
> > http://www.unschooling.com
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >

Jodi

Hi everyone, My name is Jodi and I am new to this list. Shyrley told me
about it and here I am. We have homeschooled for 3 years but I am brand new
to unschooling. I have 4 children, ds-8, dd-7, ds-4, ds-3. We live in New
Hampshire. Looking forward to learning about unschooling, have a lot of old
ideas to unlearn.

Jodi

[email protected]

Welcome Jodi.! Ive never met anyone from New Hampshire before, nice to meet
you :-)

Teresa


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

Kelli Traaseth

Hi Jodi,

Welcome to the list!!

I'm sure you'll learn a ton here, and have a great time too. As you can see the subjects discussed can be quite interesting!

Kelli


Jodi <jmoore@...> wrote:Hi everyone, My name is Jodi and I am new to this list. Shyrley told me
about it and here I am. We have homeschooled for 3 years but I am brand new
to unschooling. I have 4 children, ds-8, dd-7, ds-4, ds-3. We live in New
Hampshire. Looking forward to learning about unschooling, have a lot of old
ideas to unlearn.

Jodi


~~~~ Don't forget! If you change topics, change the subject line! ~~~~

If you have questions, concerns or problems with this list, please email the moderator, Joyce Fetteroll (fetteroll@...), or the list owner, Helen Hegener (HEM-Editor@...).

To unsubscribe from this group, click on the following link or address an email to:
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Visit the Unschooling website: http://www.unschooling.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.



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

Jodi

From: <grlynbl@...>

> Welcome Jodi.! Ive never met anyone from New Hampshire before, nice to
meet
> you :-)

Thanks for the welcome Teresa. Isn't anyone else from NH on list then? I was
hoping to meet some local unschoolers as well. Anyway, it's been interesting
reading so far and I've only been on a few days. take care,

Jodi

Donna B <[email protected]>

Hello My name is Donna -our family has been homeschooling for 5 yrs.
My 7th grader has been hearing her friends in PS Taking about writing
reports and would love to write one her self. We think this is a
great idea. However I can not find anything on how to write one with
all the steps. research, ect.... What should be in it that kind of
thing.

Does this make sense?

does any one know of a web site that could help?

Thank you very much

Donna B

Fetteroll

on 1/7/03 8:27 AM, Donna B <Brewerd@...> at Brewerd@...
wrote:

> Taking about writing
> reports and would love to write one her self. We think this is a
> great idea. However I can not find anything on how to write one with
> all the steps. research, ect.... What should be in it that kind of
> thing.

Maybe it's difficult because it's for pretend. Something written with a real
audience in mind who needs the information, takes the shape it needs to be
for them.

She could write an article for a newspaper about soemthing she feels
strongly about and something she feels others would like to know more about.
(Even if it doesn't get published.)

She could write book or movie or toy reviews at Amazon. Anyone is allowed to
do that :-) If she reads through some of the reviews posted there on
something she's been thinking about buying that will help her get a sense of
what information people gave that she found valuable.

Joyce

Tia Leschke

> Hello My name is Donna -our family has been homeschooling for 5 yrs.
> My 7th grader has been hearing her friends in PS Taking about writing
> reports and would love to write one her self. We think this is a
> great idea. However I can not find anything on how to write one with
> all the steps. research, ect.... What should be in it that kind of
> thing.

Sounds like she wants to see if she can do what her PS friend can do. Maybe
she could talk more with the friend about what they have to do to write it.

Otherwise, she needs to think about why she's writing it. All writing has a
purpose (which is what's wrong with the way they teach it in school) and the
purpose is not simply to show off what you know. Does she want to write a
report because there's something she'd like to learn about? Will actually
writing it up help her learn? Or is it the research? Maybe she has younger
sibs who would like to read (or hear read) what she's discovered about a
subject.

It's not really hard to research and write about a subject, though the
schools want to make it seem so. If you don't know much about the subject
to begin with, start by reading a very basic book, even an encyclopedia
entry. Find something specific about the general subject you'd like to know
more about. Write down some questions you'd like the answers to and start
looking for the answers in other books, magazines, encyclopedias. Write
down the answers in your own words as you find them. Keep track of your
sources if you're going to do any kind of bibliography. When you've got
lots of information written down, spread it all out. (We used to do it on
index cards, but it's easier to do it in a word processor.) Play around
with the facts, see how they naturally want to fit together, how they flow.
Once you've got them in order, all you really need to write are transitions.
Tia

[email protected]

In a message dated 1/7/03 6:29:10 AM, Brewerd@... writes:

<< our family has been homeschooling for 5 yrs.
My 7th grader has been hearing her friends in PS Taking about writing
reports and would love to write one her self. We think this is a
great idea. However I can not find anything on how to write one with
all the steps. research, ect.... What should be in it that kind of
thing. >>

Holly wrote a book report a couple of years ago. I laminated it and took it
to a homeschooling conference and showed it around, mostly for the invented
spellings.

The other day, in December, she asked me what a book report is really like.
I told her, and she kinda nodded and shrugged and went away. Then last week
we had rented a South Park DVD and one of the shows (Chicken Lover) had book
reports!! AND they were on books she had read, which made it a scream.

Chicken Lover involves the police chief being discovered to be illiterate.
The young hippie bookmobile driver is trying to get him to read (it's a
typical South Park story, and I wouldn't recommend anyone reading it just
about book reports!). He ends up going to third grade and being in the boys'
class. Cartman is going to report on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
so when the teachers says he hasn't read it, Cartman makes up some cool
nonsense which really amused Holly because she knows the books. Then the
police guy reported on Go Dog, Go and went into deep meanings, and read a
passage.

The next night we were at Walmart, and Go Dog, Go was offered as a freebie if
you bought two books (or some such thing), so Holly picked it up and said "Is
this the book?"

Then the punchline of that new literacy and reading is the bookmobile guy
gives the police guy a copy of Atlas Shrugged as a gift for his having
learned to read. So at a ceremony at which he's reinstated in his job and
honored for learning to read, he says he read Atlas Shrugged and it was
terrible so he's never going to read a book ever again.

I would tell your daughter that every book or movie review is a report, but a
REAL report, for other people to read. Every summary in Newsweek that has a
graph or a chart is a report, but not a pretend report, like kids write in
school, that are read by one person and thrown away. A REAL report.

Show her real writing, not school writing.

Sandra

[email protected]

In a message dated 1/7/03 11:12:32 AM, leschke@... writes:

<< It's not really hard to research and write about a subject, though the
schools want to make it seem so. If you don't know much about the subject
to begin with, start by reading a very basic book, even an encyclopedia
entry. Find something specific about the general subject you'd like to know
more about. Write down some questions you'd like the answers to and start
looking for the answers in other books, magazines, encyclopedias. Write
down the answers in your own words as you find them. Keep track of your
sources if you're going to do any kind of bibliography. When you've got
lots of information written down, spread it all out. (We used to do it on
index cards, but it's easier to do it in a word processor.) Play around
with the facts, see how they naturally want to fit together, how they flow.
Once you've got them in order, all you really need to write are transitions.>>

Tia,
gawd, that was like watching someone eat boogers!!!

And I LOVED English, and I used to teach English.'

I don't think we should be encouraging unschooling moms to do that to their
poor children.

To whichever mom asked---maybe you could consider oral reports for starters.
And that's basically storytelling. If your child goes to a movie you could
ask "What was it about?"

That will be a report.

If you need some information about something, you could ask your child to
look it up in a cookbook or a dictionary or on a website, and tell you what
the reference book said.

That would be a report.

And if they go to three different sources and fold together what they found
as they tell you, that's a research report!

Sandra

Tia Leschke

> Tia,
> gawd, that was like watching someone eat boogers!!!

Sandra, you're so kind! <g>
>
> And I LOVED English, and I used to teach English.'
>
> I don't think we should be encouraging unschooling moms to do that to
their
> poor children.

The child asked to do it. I was trying to show the mother that it's not
that big a deal to learn how. I'm definitely not a believer in writing
reports.
Tia

[email protected]

In a message dated 1/7/03 2:38:57 PM, leschke@... writes:

<< The child asked to do it. I was trying to show the mother that it's not
that big a deal to learn how. I'm definitely not a believer in writing
reports. >>

If the child wanted to jump off a bridge, would you tell the mom how to help
her do it?

(I know, there's bunjie jumping. There's hang gliding.)

Sandra