Amy

Hi Becky,
I am an unschooling mother of 3 girls, 7, 4, and 2. We spend our days just
going through life lke a lot of people. Cooking, cleaning, running errands,
ect., but we do it with the twist of turning as much as we can into a
learning experience. I agree with Sue that it's hard for us to spend time
talking about what we're not doing. Even an a homeshooling (not unschooling)
list I don't think you'd find people only talking about "school". I'm on 4
lists, 3 of them unschooling and the topics are about things like extended
nursing, vegetarianism, the family bed, food allergies, organic gardening,
music lessons, and so on and so on.....Homeschooling is a way of life and it
encompasses a lot of our days. I hope this is helpful.
Amy
----- Original Message -----
From: <sue.m.e@...>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2000 11:28 PM
Subject: [Unschooling-dotcom] Unschooling lives [was... Need unschooling
input!]


> > Hello! This is my first day of being on this unschooling e-mail list.
> I'm
> > not familiar with e-mail lists and I know I'm behind on
> discussions, but I
> > have received 14 e-mails today and none of them were related to
> > unschooling. Is that a typical day? I can talk about other stuff
> with all
> > the people I see in person, but I can't talk about unschooling with
> them.
> > I'd love to hear what your children are doing and learning so I
> might not
> > feel all alone in this lifestyle and so that I might get some new
> ideas and
> > perspectives--especially from those of you with young children.
> Mine are 5,
> > 4, and 3. Thank you! --Becky
>
> Hi Becky,
>
> The problem with unschooling is that it is basically not doing
> something; i.e. not schooling, so it is very difficult to spend a lot of
> time talking about what we are not doing. However to me
> unschooling is more of a lifestyle than a method of education, so
> this makes any topic at all relevant to an unschooling mailing list,
> and pertenant to unschooling itself.
>
> For example my children follow no curriculum & have no
> worksheets, they do nothing purely for the purpose of learning, but
> after saying that I must add that nearly all of what they do
> encourages and fosters learning. Home is a 175 acre farm, with a
> 600' hill, a valley with two trout stream, ponds, animals etc. They
> have a microscope, many books, pencils, paper, computers with
> all kinds of programes and they have responsibilities. Right now
> my 11 year old daughter has gone to Chicago with a family who
> visited the farm two weekends ago, their daughter ended up staying
> here last week and when her Mother came back to get her Rhianon
> went with them. This is amazing to me considering that I only met
> these people 11 days ago, but we meet some really great people
> and strong friendships are sometimes formed. Anyway where I
> was heading was to say that with Rhianon away, Madeleine [6] has
> to take the responsibility of milking the goat, Stephanie [4] is
> helping her and they collect the eggs from the chicken coop
> without being remended. Milking the goat was Rhianon's descision
> as she wanted to bottle feed some kids, so I told ehr that to bottle
> feed kids she would have to milk a goat so they could be reared on
> fresh goat milk, she took this responsibility on the first day of
> February and until she went away yesterday has only missed one
> milking when she was sick one day. Nathan [15] bottle rears three
> dairy calves at a time and takes care of most of the feeding of the
> animals, he can drive a truck, tractor, van and is just getting the
> hang of a 4 wheel drive pick-up that we bought from auction a few
> weeks ago.
>
> Some days are too long for all of us and the children all help out
> with whatever tasks they are capable of, mostly for the girls that
> involves care of the chickens and chicks, assisting with candling
> eggs and checking the incubators [I'm guessing that we have at
> least 1000 chicks that we have hatched this year]. We have 4
> cows, 5 heifers, 3 bulls, 12 steers, a boar, 2 sows, a ram, 24
> ewes, 26 lambs, a buck, 8 does, 8 kids, 6 turkeys, 6 domestic
> geese, 5 Canada geese and their 9 goslings, 4 ducks and 23
> ducklings that we have incubated with 10 more due to hatch today
> [along with about 230 chicks] and of course about 200 chickens &
> at least 1000 chicks with around 200 more every six days. So for
> my children between the wild creatures living here and the farm
> animals biology lessons take care of themselves(-;
>
> When the daily tasks are done the kids have the freedom to do
> what they want with their time, Nathan spends a fair bit of time at
> the computer on web design or designing cars for GTA, the girls
> watch about 1 hour of television but prefer to spend time writing,
> drawing playing legos, playing in the sandbox or out exploring. I
> am not actively teaching Maddi [6] and Steph [4] how to read, the
> only reading lessons they get is having people read to them and
> giving answers when asked what a word says or how to spell
> something. I am not activelty teaching math, day to day life and
> expenses does that, for more advanced math if the need for it
> arises such as for Nathan with work on the computer answers are
> found by asking or researching. My children who were in school
> [Rhianon for 1 1/2 years and Nathan 6 years] have regained their
> love of learning that school all but destroyed with it's mind
> numbingly boring games, Madeleine and Stephanie will never have
> to endure the hours of sitting at a desk being force fed
> unnecessary information [which is mostly forgotten anyway] just to
> pass some stupid test, they are free to learn at their own pace, if
> they don't read fluently 'til they are 12 it won't matter in fact it may
> be good for them as once we become literate the world changes,
> yes it can be for the better as we are then able to find all the
> information we need in books or on the 'net, but by having the
> ability to find what we need from books it partly kills off the
> scientist [who has to find his/her own answers] that is inate in all
> new-born babies.
>
> Maybe if a few others on the list describe their lives it may help out
> any newbies who are looking for answers, we were all there once.
>
>
>
>
> Sue
>
> The Winona Farm in Minnesota Welcomes Unschoolers All Year Round
> My website: http://members.xoom.com/sue_m_e
> Farm website: http://members.xoom.com/winfarm/
> Farm newsletter: http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/Winonafarm
>
> "To believe in something, and not to live it,
> is to be dishonest." -Mahatma Gandhi
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> CLICK HERE***SPECIAL OFFER***$60 in FREE calls
> ***SPECIAL OFFER***CLICK HERE
> http://click.egroups.com/1/4127/7/_/448294/_/960208754/
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message boards, timely articles, a free newsletter and more!
> Check it all out at: http://www.unschooling.com
>
> To Unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]
>
>