[email protected]

In a message dated 4/27/02 6:32:29 AM Central Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:

<< When I say he
> goes to 'school' over there the quote marks signify that that is what
> we call it, but not necessarily what it is. >>

Then why call it that?
School is school is school in my book.
I unwittingly labeled some of our sit down, bookwork time "school time". This
was before I had totally come to unschooling though. My dd occasionally says
"I want to do school Mommy" meaning she wants me to do some workbooky type
stuff with her.
I now point out that we aren't doing school, just playing with her workbook
for a while.
But calling a certain time of day "school" and having the child do certain
activities is not very unschoolish in my mind.
BTDT.
Ren

Alan & Brenda Leonard

> Sometimes I get ideas about how to learn about something from some
> bit of a curriculum and sometimes I get ideas about parenting from some bit
> in a parenting book. I've sat at conferences and read through the KONOS
> books, the Calvert stuff, the Oak Meadow materials, and others. So - looking
> at them is interesting to me.

I have piles of curriculum at home - all 4 grandparents are educators of
some sort. They send all kinds of stuff. (I keep it in the basement to
read while the laundry runs or something.) I think the thing that facinates
me about curriculum is how much of what is in it we actually do, just not
the way it is prescribed.

My mom likes to send these unit studies. Read about the farm, visit the
farm, make a diarama, answer these questions, color pictures, write a story
about them, etc. all laid out neatly for you. When my son was into farms,
we DID read about them and visit them, and find answers to our questions.
The lego people farmed for weeks (closest thing to a diarama likely to
happen here!). My son drew pictures of farms (during church, but hey!).
But I never sat him down to do those things, he just did them.

Maybe it's an oversimplification, but sometimes I think unschooling is not
all that different from school-y stuff, just in its pace and timing. Any
thoughts?

brenda
(I hope this isn't heresy.....)

Fetteroll

on 4/28/02 12:46 AM, Alan & Brenda Leonard at abtleo@... wrote:

> Maybe it's an oversimplification, but sometimes I think unschooling is not
> all that different from school-y stuff, just in its pace and timing. Any
> thoughts?

No, the huge difference is that the interest is child owned. How the parent
then facilitates the child exploring that interest will be different for
each child and each parent. It may at times resemble something kids would do
in school. Most times it won't.

Maybe, as a beginning point, look at it as how you'd like your husband to
help you explore an interest.

You'd probably appreciate it if he happened to notice a book or video or
article or event that might interest you and point them out to you or buy
them for you. You wouldn't want him to take over the interest and feel your
learning was his responsibility and how much you learned depended entirely
on how well he performed for you. You wouldn't want him to overwhelm you
with an itinerary of things to do. You wouldn't want him hovering over you
to see how much and how well you were learning. I think you'd appreciate
being left alone to explore at your own pace, to delve as deeply or
shallowly as whimsy strikes you. Any help he gave you would be a gift with
no strings attached.

Of course kids are different. Younger kids generally aren't scanning the
list of week's activities in the newspaper and may not even care to look up
books at the library. (The process of finding the information and sorting
out the useful from the not useful can be overwhelming.) So we need to be
more active, but still recognize that the child owns the interest and should
have the freedom to explore as deeply or shallowly as he or she wishes. We
just make sure the resources are available. (And if we get frustrated with
them not digging deep enough, then *we* should dig deeper for *ourselves*
:-)

And that doesn't rule out something that resembles a unit study. Some kids
like to live and breathe something for a while. (Where our husbands would
assume we'd be able to set up our own "unit study" to pursue our own
interests, our kids would proabably appreciate some help.) It doesn't rule
out mom coming up with some nifty "learning activities". But we shouldn't
feel their learning depends on it. Their learning depends entirely on them
and the quality of the environment they have to explore in. (And the
environment includes parents who are actively learning and interested in
life -- and interested in their kids too. :-)

I wouldn't not do some parent-directed activity that my daughter would enjoy
but I'd be aware of how she's learning about learning. If she's getting the
idea that in order to learn, she needs mom to put on a performance for her,
then I'd make sure she had more access to child-directed resources too.

Of course another part of unschooling is strewing their paths. We don't need
our husbands to run the world past us to help us discover new interests
because we're pretty capable of exploring the world on our own. But we do
need to filter and direct some of the world into our kids' lives so they
have access to new interests.

Joyce

rumpleteasermom

--- In Unschooling-dotcom@y..., Alan & Brenda Leonard <abtleo@e...>
wrote:

>
> Maybe it's an oversimplification, but sometimes I think unschooling
is not
> all that different from school-y stuff, just in its pace and timing.
Any
> thoughts?
>
> brenda

I know lots of unschoolers whose lives look the same as unit studies
people. I also know lots of unschoolers whose lives don't look at all
lke that.

Here with my three, Wyndham's learning probably looks a lot like unit
studies. The girl's learning looks like osmosis! They just know
stuff. I don't see them learning it or finding it but they pop up
with interesting bits of knowledge all the time. What it looks like
they do, day to day, is hang out, read books and mags, play on the
computer, poke around the gardens (which are looking great this year
thanks to Rachel) ride bikes, hike, watch TV and movies, etc.

It was an issue with my mom when we first started homeschooling
actually. She could not imagine at that point that they could learn
anything in the chaos that was our lives then. She has since seen the
light, so to speak. Now her concern with Wyndham is not in teaching
him things but in offering the stability and structure that he needs
right now and that I can't offer (not because I don't want to, but
because it just is so out of my nature we would come to a point of my
mental health or his and that isn't a choice I want to have to make!)

Bridget

[email protected]

In a message dated 4/28/02 7:09:07 AM, rumpleteasermom@... writes:

<< I know lots of unschoolers whose lives look the same as unit studies
people. I also know lots of unschoolers whose lives don't look at all
lke that. >>

I didn't think you knew lots of unschoolers. Where do you live again?

I know sometimes a day or two will look a little like unit studies, maybe, or
someone might develop an obsession (Holly for the 1930's, for many months
now) but that becomes a full-on hobby or personal interest, not a temporary
unit.

Sandra

rumpleteasermom

--- In Unschooling-dotcom@y..., SandraDodd@a... wrote:

>
> I didn't think you knew lots of unschoolers. Where do you live
again?
>

I'm in Ohio. I am part of an inclusive homeschooling group locally.
There are, oh, about 40 members now, I think at least a third of them
are unschoolers - maybe more. The rest of them range from eclectic to
almost school-at-home.
There are others I know here and there, not part of that group too.

Bridget

[email protected]

In a message dated 4/28/2002 6:09:06 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
rumpleteasermom@... writes:


> Now her concern with Wyndham is not in teaching
> him things but in offering the stability and structure that he needs
> right now and that I can't offer (not because I don't want to, but
> because it just is so out of my nature we would come to a point of my
> mental health or his and that isn't a choice I want to have to make!)

Bridget -- just because you use Wyndham as an example fairly frequently, it
might help to explain further what happens at your mom's. I truly don't have
any comprehension of what she's doing with him in terms of providing
stability and structure for him, but still is unschooling. I can't envision
what this looks like, in practice. Obviousy, you don't need to explain it -
but I just thought that it would help, if you do want to refer to his
situation, if you explained it more.
--pamS
Some of what is said here may challenge you, shock you, disturb you, or seem
harsh. But remember that people are offering it to be helpful and what feels
uncomfortable to you might be just what someone else needed to hear.



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

rumpleteasermom

Yes, there are a lot of new people here who don'tknow my son yet. For
those of you who think you've heard it all already feel free to delete
now.

Wyndham is a child with many problems. He has lots of
allergies/sensitivities. He hasn't been diagnosed by a pro yet, but
we suspect Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The therapist he is seeing
today (who has seen me alone once) thinks he may have Anxiety Disorder
too. We are also going to try to rule out Tourette. There are enough
symtomps to make us take a closer look.

A year and a half ago, Wyndham was a mess. Always unhappy, always
frustrated because he couldn't do the thing he wanted to be able to
do and couldn't learn how. I was not able to help him with some of
the things he wanted either. The things I did with the girls that
worked so well for them, seemed to make him worse. Things like
letting them be. Letting them choose their own everything from food
(except corn in Rachel's case) to books to sleep times.

Then my mom moved into the other house on our property. She started
coming over in the morning and getting him. She would make him
breakfast, and then 'teach' him the things he wanted to learn. In the
beginning, he was just going for the food. But within six months he
had structured his entire day around his time with her and his
favorite TV shows. That's when I realized that what he had needed all
along was the one thing I am simply not capable of giving - structure.

What she does over there with him now during his so called 'school
time' varies. She has textbooks and workbooks and such but they skip
over the parts he isn't really interested in and focus more an the
stuff he is. He went from not being able to read anything at 9, to
being an above his age-level reader at 10. Part of that had to do
with being more ready, but part of being more ready had to do with
finding his structure. That plays into the Anxiety Disorder suspicion
that the therapist has a lot I think.

Anyway, they go for walks, they do experiments, they read his train
books (although as I said before, she threw that one back to dh and I
- can't blame her, I'm sick of trains too!)

The reason I still consider him an unschooler is because I think he is
still doing exactly what he wants to be doing and I KNOW he is loads
happier now.

Bridget


--- In Unschooling-dotcom@y..., PSoroosh@a... wrote:

>
> Bridget -- just because you use Wyndham as an example fairly
frequently, it
> might help to explain further what happens at your mom's. I truly
don't have
> any comprehension of what she's doing with him in terms of providing
> stability and structure for him, but still is unschooling. I can't
envision
> what this looks like, in practice. Obviousy, you don't need to
explain it -
> but I just thought that it would help, if you do want to refer to
his
> situation, if you explained it more.
> --pamS
> Some of what is said here may challenge you, shock you, disturb you,
or seem
> harsh. But remember that people are offering it to be helpful and
what feels
> uncomfortable to you might be just what someone else needed to hear.
>
>