Bart and Lia HOEN

Hello Eiraul and company,

That sounds like what I would like for my kids.
Mine are thirteen and twelve.  The older one was going to fail for a second time (she ain't dumb, just slow) and so I took her out of school when the mom and girls came back two months late from Brazil.
At first we had a "tutor",  a young French first year university student to do French with them because neither of us felt competent, we are but we didn't feel it, and the next year, we worked out of school books for French and Maths.  This last year we tried the correspondence course from France, CNED, they got through about three out of twelve lessons, and looked so much like what we were doing out of text books ourselves, without costing two hundred bucks a course.
I have read a number of books about home and unschooing and I am more and more convinced that that is the way to go.

I also like to take articles out of the paper and discuss them.  Discussion is really the way to go.  As a matter of fact, this was confirmed when my wife went to Cali in Colombia and visited the Ruhi Institute and Fundaec university agricultural institute and she said discussion texts was the main way of learninng there.  They have a technique in which you read a text, each person asks questions for which the text contains the answers and another person must reply (is a great and unstressful way to find out if there is minimal understanding of the text) then you ask if there are any words you don't understand and then there are some deeper questions either to answer in writing or orally.

However I will finish with some questions.

1. How much freedom do you give the kids?

2. In what way do you keep track of what the child had done and learned?

3. How do you stimulate the child to read?

4. Have you bought any CDs or books that you would STRONGLY recommend to others?
 

Greetings (from a more and more unschooling oriented homeschooler)
Bart HOEN
Cayenne (if you don't know where it is, get out the Atlas!)
 
 

braunville@... wrote:

In a message dated 8/11/2000 9:22:02 PM Pacific Daylight Time, j1986@...
writes:

> I have just recently heard about unschooling, but I have heard so many
things
> from different people that contradict each other.
>  I would also love any advise you may have. Thanks
>  Dianna
>

You're still gonna get a lot of that!  (contradictions, I mean)

Essentially (IMO) homeschool is any activity that is education at home rather
than a traditional school.  Well, that isn't good either.  How about
education directed by the parents/guardians/family and based from home...?
Unschooled is less structure.  For some it means no structure and strictly
child-led.

I avoid grade labeling.  At first it was difficult for ds to know how to
answer when someone asked what grade he was in; he felt like he somehow
didn't belong because he didn't have a label like everyone else he knew.  So,
I took opportunities to point out to him when he had just learned something
and say something like 'Look!  You just counted the correct change to the
clerk.  That counts as our math lesson for the day.'  A few examples and he
started feeling more confident that he was getting enough 'school'.

Now when someone asks what grade he's in, he simply responds that we
homeschool and don't use grade categories!

He will be 12 in October.  He has never been to ps.  We have at times tried a
more structured approach, but always fall off the wagon.  I finally gave
myself permission to decide that our homeschool style was unstructured and
we've done great every since!  At first I got real nervous about the 'what if
we miss something' dilemma.  But, as time has gone on I see how silly I was
to be concerned.  There is no way to STOP ds from learning!  He explores
things on his own.  When I insist on a time table or set curriculum, I get in
his way.

I still use a text for math, but not for any other subjects.  That may change
in the future, depending on the needs as we go.  Even the math text is used
very loosely.  We don't follow the schedule and will do a lot of on again,
off again work.  It often depends on the weather!  If it's dreary outside (or
too hot!) we'll do more inside things which may include the math text.

As for assessments...I rely on conversations with my child.  I can clearly
tell he understands use of the English language, for instance (or at least
our Americanized version!).  He often comes to me with a theory he has come
up with about xyz which will lead to exploration to discover if he is
correct.  It truly amazes me what I can learn about my child by just talking
and sharing with him.

We read a lot aloud and silently.  I have him read to me as well as my
reading to him.  Family reading time leads to great discussions and lets me
know how well he is understanding what he reads and the world around him.
The questions he asks as we are reading are great clues.  For instance, the
reading might have the word 'racism' in it; he has difficulty pronouncing the
word, so we sound it out; then he asks what it means and it leads to a
discussion.  Now, the next time we run into that topic, we'll have a
different discussion and I can tell he's learned from one time to another.

As for nouns, verbs, etc.  As far as I'm concerned an 8 yr old has no need to
worry about such things.  If he can instinctively put together decent
sentence structure, who cares whether he knows how many nouns, verbs,
adverbs, adjectives, etc., were used in the sentence.

Best real life use I've ever had for such information was a fill-in-the blank
story game asking me to list nouns, verbs, etc., which were then put into a
story line.  Very humorous and lots of fun, but hardly an essential life
skill.

Eiraul

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