Re: Reading and Writing
A.Y.
I'm sending you a huge hug of thanks.....
I needed that! :)
Our three kids (6, 4 and 3) are always busy, busy busy, but never want to do
anything like learning to write or read ect... They don't even care much about
drawing or coloring. we live on a farm, and are very busy outside doing "stuff".
Today we have hatched two peacocks, what a thrill. We are waiting for the third
egg to start.
They know lots about chickens, chicks, ducks, horses, ponies, dogs, cats, and now
peacocks, but aren't' very bookish. Though they'd let me read to them all day.
I guess its mostly my battle with comparisons and doubts.
Thanks for all your sharing. I know unschooling is the way to go for us. The
freedom and fun. It really helps me though to hear about families like yours.
Big hugs to all your family for sharing life with us all!
Ann
I needed that! :)
Our three kids (6, 4 and 3) are always busy, busy busy, but never want to do
anything like learning to write or read ect... They don't even care much about
drawing or coloring. we live on a farm, and are very busy outside doing "stuff".
Today we have hatched two peacocks, what a thrill. We are waiting for the third
egg to start.
They know lots about chickens, chicks, ducks, horses, ponies, dogs, cats, and now
peacocks, but aren't' very bookish. Though they'd let me read to them all day.
I guess its mostly my battle with comparisons and doubts.
Thanks for all your sharing. I know unschooling is the way to go for us. The
freedom and fun. It really helps me though to hear about families like yours.
Big hugs to all your family for sharing life with us all!
Ann
Helen Hegener
At 2:08 PM -0400 7/1/99, A.Y. wrote:
when our two oldest sons were small. We enrolled our oldest son, John (now
25, married, with two little girls), in the Alaska State Correspondence
Course for first grade. The state sent us huge boxes of books, workbooks,
pencils, crayons, just scads schoolish stuff. We worked with a teacher
based at the local public school who reviewed John's workbooks once a
month, suggested art projects and books and tapes we could check out of the
school library, and otherwise left us alone. It didn't take us long to
figure out that the workbooks didn't need to be all finished, the teacher
just skimmed them and relied more on talking to John about what he'd
learned about letters, numbers, etc. He was (still is) a very bright kid,
and she was always quite pleased with his progress. The last two months we
didn't even bother with the workbooks, but just kinda winged it on our own.
Of course John passed with flying colors. <s>
The next year we moved to Washington state, and when we didn't find
anything like the Alaska Correspondence Program we enrolled John in second
grade and his brother, Jim, in kindergarten at the local public school.
After about three weeks it was clear that the boys weren't happy being in
school (mostly older kids being mean) and we took them both out of school.
My mother had introduced us to John Holt's Growing Without Schooling about
that time (I think his Plowboy Interview had just come out in The Mother
Earth News) and we decided homeschooling was the route for us.
As far as teaching them, we played around with correspondence-school type
stuff for that first winter, making up notebooks with alphabet letters to
color or copy, some very simple number games (if Jim has six cookies and
wants to give you half, how many would you receive?" "WHAT? Jim share his
cookies evenly? Are you kidding?") After a while we found more interesting
things to do than play with schoolish stuff, and abandoned the notebooks
altogether. I still have them though. They're pretty cute. Lots of pictures
of cars and horses and knights in shining armor battling dragons in the
margins... One of these days I'll give the books to them for Christmas or
something. <g>
But that was it as far as trying to teach any of our kids anything. We
didn't just totally leave them to their own devices, of course. We wrote
quite a bit in Home Education Magazine over the years about how we
approached learning as just part of everyday life (some of those writings
can be found at our website). If the kids had questions, we answered them.
If the kids got interested in something, we bought books and movies and
other stuff on the subject. We learned right along with them, and are still
learning, every day. In the last month I've learned about rock climbing and
rock climbing gear and although I'm still much happier with my own feet
planted on terra firma, it's a thrill to watch these kids of mine scramble
up a cliff and to see the sheer joy on their faces as they rappel back down
again. We're learning together, as usual.
As far as how successful we've been - well, we're fine on the reading, but
the jury's still out as far as writing goes. Every one of our kids reads as
well as I do - it's just something they do all the time because we run a
publishing company and we're a very book and magazine oriented family. Our
house has more bookshelves than cupboards or closets in it, and magazines
of all kinds are always all over the place. We read more than we watch TV
(though we all loved watching an old John Wayne/Dean Martin western last
night). I guess I'd have to say overall, books are our first love, with
movies a very close second. We very often buy the book version of a movie -
right now I think we've got a dozen or more books on the latest Star Wars
release (my favorite is Dorling-Kindersley's Star Wars Episode I Visual
Dictionary). <s>
But writing has been more touch and go. Our daughter, Jody (19) is an
accomplished writer. She's always loved it, writes constantly, and her
handwriting is much more legible than either mine or her dad's (especially
her dad's - Mark has a doctorish scribble that often isn't even
decipherable). But the boys have avoided writing for the most part. Their
writing is obviously a struggle, but they all know that it's only because
they're just not interested in pursuing it as seriously as Jody has. The
two older boys write pretty well now because they need to for their
respective jobs, but they've both said it was a damned nuisance to learn to
spell and to write legibly. But it didn't take either of them long to get
up to speed, and they've both said it wasn't really all that hard to pick
up. The two younger boys are still avoiding writing whenever possible, but
I know they'll pick up on it when they need to, when they find a use for
writing skills.
I need to get back to work, but I'm enjoying the breaks to answer your
questions, Ann.
Helen
>From: "A.Y." <hooperck@...>Not really. I was pretty much unschooled myself, so I already knew it worked.
>
>Helen,
>I wish you were closer! I'd love to spend an afternoon listening to how your
>days were and are.
>How did you combat doubts? Did you have doubts?
>I have millions of questions.... your the only true unschoolers I've everNo. The only time we really tried to teach any of the kids anything was
>heard
>of.
>I'll pace some of the questions though.
>Did you worry about reading, or try to teach it? Or writing ect??
when our two oldest sons were small. We enrolled our oldest son, John (now
25, married, with two little girls), in the Alaska State Correspondence
Course for first grade. The state sent us huge boxes of books, workbooks,
pencils, crayons, just scads schoolish stuff. We worked with a teacher
based at the local public school who reviewed John's workbooks once a
month, suggested art projects and books and tapes we could check out of the
school library, and otherwise left us alone. It didn't take us long to
figure out that the workbooks didn't need to be all finished, the teacher
just skimmed them and relied more on talking to John about what he'd
learned about letters, numbers, etc. He was (still is) a very bright kid,
and she was always quite pleased with his progress. The last two months we
didn't even bother with the workbooks, but just kinda winged it on our own.
Of course John passed with flying colors. <s>
The next year we moved to Washington state, and when we didn't find
anything like the Alaska Correspondence Program we enrolled John in second
grade and his brother, Jim, in kindergarten at the local public school.
After about three weeks it was clear that the boys weren't happy being in
school (mostly older kids being mean) and we took them both out of school.
My mother had introduced us to John Holt's Growing Without Schooling about
that time (I think his Plowboy Interview had just come out in The Mother
Earth News) and we decided homeschooling was the route for us.
As far as teaching them, we played around with correspondence-school type
stuff for that first winter, making up notebooks with alphabet letters to
color or copy, some very simple number games (if Jim has six cookies and
wants to give you half, how many would you receive?" "WHAT? Jim share his
cookies evenly? Are you kidding?") After a while we found more interesting
things to do than play with schoolish stuff, and abandoned the notebooks
altogether. I still have them though. They're pretty cute. Lots of pictures
of cars and horses and knights in shining armor battling dragons in the
margins... One of these days I'll give the books to them for Christmas or
something. <g>
But that was it as far as trying to teach any of our kids anything. We
didn't just totally leave them to their own devices, of course. We wrote
quite a bit in Home Education Magazine over the years about how we
approached learning as just part of everyday life (some of those writings
can be found at our website). If the kids had questions, we answered them.
If the kids got interested in something, we bought books and movies and
other stuff on the subject. We learned right along with them, and are still
learning, every day. In the last month I've learned about rock climbing and
rock climbing gear and although I'm still much happier with my own feet
planted on terra firma, it's a thrill to watch these kids of mine scramble
up a cliff and to see the sheer joy on their faces as they rappel back down
again. We're learning together, as usual.
As far as how successful we've been - well, we're fine on the reading, but
the jury's still out as far as writing goes. Every one of our kids reads as
well as I do - it's just something they do all the time because we run a
publishing company and we're a very book and magazine oriented family. Our
house has more bookshelves than cupboards or closets in it, and magazines
of all kinds are always all over the place. We read more than we watch TV
(though we all loved watching an old John Wayne/Dean Martin western last
night). I guess I'd have to say overall, books are our first love, with
movies a very close second. We very often buy the book version of a movie -
right now I think we've got a dozen or more books on the latest Star Wars
release (my favorite is Dorling-Kindersley's Star Wars Episode I Visual
Dictionary). <s>
But writing has been more touch and go. Our daughter, Jody (19) is an
accomplished writer. She's always loved it, writes constantly, and her
handwriting is much more legible than either mine or her dad's (especially
her dad's - Mark has a doctorish scribble that often isn't even
decipherable). But the boys have avoided writing for the most part. Their
writing is obviously a struggle, but they all know that it's only because
they're just not interested in pursuing it as seriously as Jody has. The
two older boys write pretty well now because they need to for their
respective jobs, but they've both said it was a damned nuisance to learn to
spell and to write legibly. But it didn't take either of them long to get
up to speed, and they've both said it wasn't really all that hard to pick
up. The two younger boys are still avoiding writing whenever possible, but
I know they'll pick up on it when they need to, when they find a use for
writing skills.
I need to get back to work, but I'm enjoying the breaks to answer your
questions, Ann.
Helen