Learning Life Through Unschooling

Aug. 10, 2006

Unschooling God

I sell Usborne Books. This is not to make extra money (though that would be nice). The real reason I sell them is because I love good books...and if I sell these, I get a discount on the fabulous Usborne books I buy. Sure, a party or order now and then is great, don't get me wrong! But I'm a book-a-holic (especially when it comes to my kids) and Usborne appeases that in me.

I recently placed an order and got a few new books for my kiddos. One is called Time Traveler. It's a bind-up of 4 different books about Knights, Vikings, Romans and Pharoahs. Hubby has been reading through it with Matthew each evening for a while now and Hubby likes it because, "It tells it like it really was - that gladiators were really slaves that fought to the death. It doesn't gloss over the real history just because it's a children's book." He came downstairs tonight after putting Matthew to bed, his face paused in sheer bewilderment.

"You know, when your kid does things that are out of the ordinary - like reading at a young age - you don't think that he's a genius. You figure that ok, he's ahead in this area - but not that he's a genius. But sometimes, you find it really hard to not be blown away."
I patiently eyed him suspiciously.
He continued, "We were reading about the Romans tonight while I was laying down with him. After lights-out, he asked me if they left real food for the gods. I told him they did and I told him that they only thought they were gods - there is only one true God. The conversation went like this..."
Matthew: "How do you know there is only one God?"
DH (dear husband): "Because He told us."
Matthew: "That's right - 'thou shalt have no other gods before me'."
~I must pause here and say that while we are definitely a Christian family, we don't push bible stories on the kids, just like we don't push anything else. We like to let them explore God in their own way. We do take them to church and we discuss God throughout our daily life. But this quote from Matthew took DH back a bit.~
DH: "Right. Where did you learn that?"
Matthew: "Daddy, turn on the light!"
Matthew grabbed one of his many Bible story books, flipped open to the page and showed DH. "See, it's one of the Ten Commandments!"

This leads me to thinking about more along that line...
Last week in VBS, Grandpa said that when he introduced the Bible story, Matthew was the only one who knew anything about it. But surely there were kids there who've attended church much more regularly than mine. I've had 3 kids in 6 years - we've spent many Sundays with at least one of us sick, I assure you. lol

I've always had issues with the way Bible stories are told to kids. You know that scene in the movie Contact (a fabulous movie, btw), where Ellie says something like, "I always asked too many questions in Sunday School - like where did Mrs. Cain come from? - after that, they asked me to stop coming back." I learned at an early age to take the stories at face value. I didn't really learn to explore what the stories meant to *me* until I was in my 20s. I also heard the same stories over and over and over again. SO many stories - good stories - are left out of 'curriculums' these days. It's *very* hard to even find a children's bible that doesn't have the same 50 stories as the next one...trust me, I've looked! What about the story where the young men were making fun of bald Elisha and he commanded two bears to come out of the woods and kill them? I never heard that one as a kid (I bet you didn't either! LOL). What about when Jesus curses the fig tree until it withers? My gut tells me that adults have trouble understanding some of these stories and instead of not knowing how to explain it, they shy away from even telling them to children. But my gut could be wrong. ;)

My brother is involved in a Montessori-based program called, Godly Play, which seems, to me, to be unschooling God. From what I understand, they have a playset for the kids - we'll use Noah's Ark and animals as an example - and they present the story with the facts along with the playset. Then, instead of saying, 'this is what this story means to you...' or 'the morale to the story is...' (as was usually said/implied to me), they use a bunch of "I wonder..." statements and help the kids brainstorm and explore the story and leave the sets out for the kids to re-experience the stories over and over. I think this is a good program for a group setting.

But taking things a step further (as I often like to do...lol), I like the unschooling God that we do around here. I'll leave you with a brief conversation we had today...

My kids had their first ever Blizzards today (for you non-USers, it's a treat by Dairy Queen that is basically ice cream with candy bits mixed into it - yum!). DQ was running a "proceeds to your local Children's Miracle Network" today for all the blizzards sold so we splurged. As an added bonus, I decided that it wouldn't kill us if we just skipped lunch and went straight for the ice cream - hey, they got peanut butter cups and ice cream - protein and dairy - not too shabby. ROFL So as I told the kids the plan, I expected them to be totally on board. Rose coudln't have been happier. Matthew however, thought about it for a few minutes before declaring, "I think it's a sin to not eat a healthy meal before having a sugary dessert!" This opened up a huge discussion about food and what God says about gluttony and how this is a one-time-deal-special-treat. In the end, he was more than happy to indulge, 'just this once'.

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Jul. 20, 2006

Unschooling Carnival

Posted in Unschooling

Joann over at A Day In Our Lives has started the Unschooling Carnival again! Yippee! I had to jump right in with the first question. And, as is typical, I'm a bit long winded. ;) Her question this month is...

How did you and your family come to unschooling?

The honest truth is that I was asking myself this question recently and couldn't come up with a detailed answer. How could *we* have come so far from our origins? Let me back up a little.

My mother taught pre-K for 20+ years at our church. She still works there today but has moved to office work where she (get this...) writes the curriculum, among other duties. [Yes, I'm pausing for the unschoolers to laugh at with me.] Actually, she's been much more understanding of our unschooling than I originally expected. After all, the proof is in the puddin'. ;) I have an uncle who is a retired professional teacher, another uncle who is a superintendent, a brother who went overseas and taught English as a second language and a sister-in-law who teaches college English, not to mention the cousins and other family members who are also in the teaching arena. For an even greater laugh, I'll even admit that I taught preschool myself for a few years. I worked in the day school throughout high school and college. I even played with the idea of becoming a teacher for a while but I just wasn't passionate enough about the subject to pursue it.

So my background is thus: I went to school. I hated it. I couldn't stand the social part of it ('you actually wear WRANGLER jeans?? Ewwww'). I couldn't stand the learning-just-because-I-said-so part of it (as I stated before, when has that frog dissection actually helped me in life, other than provide a somewhat humorous blog entry for which I'm not paid?). And I couldn't stand the pick-a-career-now-and-love-it-for-your-whole-life because it's-too-expensive-and-timely-to-change-your-mind-down-the-road of college. But I went to school because that's what we sheep did. Baaa. I paid my dues at two years of college and came out with a B average, something that was very beneath me but I just wasn't giving it my all because it felt, more than ever, like it was learning-for-learning's-sake.

Enter my husband. He also did school. I don't think he deplored it as much as I did and he actually has very fond memories of college life even though he was a 4.0 student and not a partyer at all. (I had to say that because I've never heard anyone else say they really enjoyed college who was NOT a hard partyer).

So here we are, two fairly intelligent people, both having done the college route and were in decent jobs. We went through several years of infertility before starting our family. When our son was born, life changed drastically, as it does for most people. Our son was a hands-on baby. And I mean that in the most literal way you can mean it. He. never. let. me. put. him. down. Ever. We quickly adapted to the attachment parenting style, simply from the fact that my son would have it no other way.

Sooner or later, we began talking about schooling. Preschool? Yay/nay? My husband had mentioned homeschooling within the first couple months we dated. Pictures of me hulked over the sticky jellied kitchen table, finger pointed out at the kids who were crying because I said, "Just DO the math worksheet N.O.W.!" sprang to mind and I immediately said I wasn't interested. He said he was open to either but knew it would be a major commitment for me and wanted to leave the decision to me since I would be most directly affected by it. Over the years though, that image had relaxed some and I had an idea that maybe, just maybe, I could actually DO homeschooling.

When my son was three, I was online (where else?) looking for worksheets for him. The typical pre-K coloring page with the letter A surrounded by smaller pictures of an apple, airplane, ant and alligator. Of course, he refused to pick up any writing utensil, especially a crayon. He didn't know his letters yet and I was concerned we were behind. True, he had a September birthday and would be one of the oldest in his class so there wasn't any reason to truly panic...yet. As I continued to research curriculums and remember what I used with my three year old classes, somehow, somewhere I [gasp] clicked on an ad.

There, I said it. I unabashedly admit it. I clicked. Once. Once in my life, I clicked on an internet ad. (I really hate to encourage those advertisers and I have since declared myself a non-clicker.) Fortunately for me and my kids, it was probably the best click of our lives. It led me to the book, Christian Unschooling. I found the ideas in that book like a breath of fresh air from the stuffy ideas I had in my head about homeschooling. So I did what any other computer junkie does - I found a message board about unschooling. ;) Then I found The Unschooling Handbook and entire websites dedicated to unschooling. Why had I never heard of this?

As I read more excerpts out loud to my husband, we realized just how different our learning could have been. This was what we wanted for our children. We've never looked back. And my three year old who didn't know his letters? Well, he's five now and has been reading chapter books for at least six months with no help from worksheets or curriculum or books with cheesy titles about 'teach your kid to read in 12 days'. No, he learned on his own. He learned because he wanted to. He wasn't forced to sit through hours of phonics lessons before he realized the big picture about reading. He wanted to learn and he learned...when he was four.

Proof...in the puddin'...that's all I'm saying.

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Jun. 23, 2006

Fishing

Posted in Unschooling

We met friends today at the local park. They have installed new playground equipment and the fancy schmancy rubberized ground cover. My only complaint is lack of shade but if I'll just look back a few posts, apparently I haven't yet learned that you can't please all the people all the time.

After we played a while, we decided to take a walk and went around where the beautiful pond is with the fake blue-green tinted water. My friend bought some fish food from the self-serve gumball machine and, after freaking out about the ants now firmly entrenched on her hand, flung it out into the water. There it bobbed on top of the water like a...well, dead goldfish. No one attacked it and the food just floated. It reminded me of that line from Jurassic Park, "T. Rex doesn't want to be fed, he wants to hunt. Can't just… supress 65 million years of gut instinct." I suppose the fish agreed with me because, as much as our kids waited patiently, nothing happened.

Meanwhile, I see this as a great photo op. Kids feeding fish = cute, right? So I go on the other side and snap snap snap. Cute. Then I see the fish right near the edge of the pond where I'm standing. I point them out and the kids get very excited.

I must pause here and ask WHY do kids always think fish are really dumb and will eat anything you throw in the water? I've never been around kids who say, "Hey, that stick isn't fish food - they won't eat it"...but I digress.

So the kids start picking up pieces of grass and bark and twigs and tree leaves and throw them in the water. And shock of all shocks, the fish actually start jumping for the bark! They're splashing around and the kids are estatic about it. Meanwhile, the "fish food" that the city just made .50 off of is still bobbing around like pieces of styrofoam 5 feet away. Great city planning! Who knew fish would actually prefer bark?

My friend is handling the 4 mobile kids and the two strollers with our babies in them while I'm still snapping pictures away, trying not to fall in while getting the perfect angle. And I hear her say, "You'd better stop throwing in the bark. They might realize it's not food. After all, they *do* swim in schools."

Point taken.

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Jun. 22, 2006

Tunafish salad for lunch

Posted in Unschooling

DD3: "What *is* this?" (turning her nose up)
DS5: "TUNA!!! YEAH!!"
DD3: "I don't like tuna."
DS5: [happily]"Tuna is a type of fish."
DD3: "I don't like pickles."
DS5: "Well, you'd better get used to it."

DS5: "Thank you for the tuna, Mom!"
Me: "You're welcome." DD3 starts to munch away.

"You can please all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you can't please all the people all the time." End of lessons for today.

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Apr. 20, 2006

The Socialization argument

Posted in Unschooling

A little girl had just finished her first week of school. "I'm just wasting my time," she said to her mother. "I can't read, I can't write and they won't let me talk!"

This was a joke passed on to me a while back but I have to agree with it in all sincerity. My report cards always said, "Laurie is a good student but she needs to quit visiting with her neighbors so much." What kind of socialization do people think their kids are getting at school anyway? Socializing with other kids their own age.

My kids talk to adults at stores, libraries and restaurants. They talk to adults and kids in our neighborhood and family members and playgroup friends. They talk to their grandparents. My kids will talk to whoever will listen...and many who won't. Socialization...hmmmmph.

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Apr. 7, 2006

What's Up?

Posted in Unschooling

I admit, it's been a while since I've blogged. I found that my own interests have been keeping me busy. I have discovered a love of writing and have been working on a children's book and a novel.

But my lack of blogging doesn't mean the kids haven't been busy learning. Matthew is fascinated with jokes lately. I can see that he's trying quite hard to figure out what is funny and why certain jokes are funny and some aren't. He's also been playing with math quite a bit lately. It started with that Math Flap book that I blogged about and that led to me finding that great livingmath website. I started checking out many of her recommended books from the library and leaving them in our pile of library books on the counter. It didn't take long for him to find them. He loves the Math Monsters series though and has been doing a lot of, "Mommy, what would you get if you have 7 chickens and you get 4 more?" After I answer, he double-checks my answer in his head to make sure I'm right.

Rose has been working on her language skills again. She is also doing that 'testing everything' that most 3yr olds do. She loves her gymnastics class and it's fun to stand back and observe her interact with others. Yesterday they told the class of 20 kids to go sit by the wall while they prepared the next activity and Rose tried to help the instructor move the balance beam back to it's normal spot. She's a great helper.

Matthew and Rose also have vast imaginations. M's been working his way through the Wallace and Grommit Xbox game. It's a series of puzzles and he loves the problem solving aspect of it. R tries her hand at it too but she's not quite coordinated enough yet. But when the Xbox is off, they're still in character. M is Wallace and R is Grommit, the dog. He says things like Wallace, "Would you like a spot of Winsleydale?" and "Hey lad", etc. It's very fun to watch and listen to.

Jade is probably close to walking. She cruises really well and has taken her hands off the furniture (or me) and will stand for a few seconds before realizing she's not holding anything and gets scared. Though, being a mom of three kids, I know there's absolutely no reason to rush her into walking. ;)

Hopefully I'll be blogging more regularly but learning might just get in the way again. ;)

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Mar. 23, 2006

Public School and Voting

Posted in Unschooling

I received an email today from a friend whose kids go to PS. Her son is in K this year and is enthusiastic about learning and loves going every day. He gets excited about the bus ride, lunch time, recess but also about all the new things he's learning.

I taught at a dayschool for 5 years. Most of those years I was an aide but I did teach the pre-pre-K class for three year olds for a year and a half. Those kids also were exuberant about school and learning. But we know that by the time they hit middle school, they're complaining and dragging their feet. When does that change occur and why?

I remember my own experiences in school: at one point, it was no longer cool to ask questions and be a know-it-all. When did that change take place? Somewhere around 1st or 2nd grade for me. I suppressed my curiosity in order to fit in with my peers. Peer pressure isn't only for sex and drugs...it covers all aspects of living. We know it exists...so why do we continue to put massive groups of same aged kids together to learn?

I realize not everyone has the opportunity to homeschool their kids. I realize that our family has been given this gift of free learning from God and we don't take it lightly. However, a vast amount of my tax money goes towards public schools and therefore, it is still my concern, regardless if my kids attend or not.

My DH has instilled the importance of voting in me. Growing up, politics were a major source of family quarrels and I did everything I could to ignore my civics class and history classes and stayed out of political conversations. In this respect, I find myself very uneducated. But I do make a point to attend each election, no matter how small it seems. And I make school votes in the frame of mind that my kids might attend one day, all the while hoping they don't because I see so many blatent problems. We all see them. How many of us have been asking, nay shouting, for school reform? How many 20/20 specials have we watched with our mouths gaping open in shock...or sadder, nodding in agreement that we've seen those horrors with our own eyes?

My thoughts are wild and random this morning so I suppose I'll step down from my "Homeschoolers need to vote too!" soapbox.

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Mar. 21, 2006

A Day In The Life...

Posted in Unschooling

So many things to write about today. What a great Day In The Life of An Unschooling Family...and I'll miss a lot because I'm sick and going to try to make this quick before I collapse on the couch waiting for DH to come home.

The morning started off with Dh taking Rose to her first dental appointment. Her being *just barely* 3 years old limited her re-telling of the experience but she was quite excited about her new toothbrush and sugar free candy and bouncy ball and oh yes, "Mr. Thirsty" - that straw shaped thing that sucks your cheek off. ;)

The kids were very excited about playing in the snow. Dh got them some snow in a bowl to play with before he left for work. Unfortunately, the kids didn't realize it was to share so I quickly remedied that by sending Rose out for another bowl of snow. They played with it for a bit and then I brought out the markers and they had fun drawing on the snow. That started to wear off after a while and I got out my measuring spoons and cups and they had fun packing the snow in all sorts of things. Then Matthew started talking about science experiments so we put a lump in one of my measuring cups and tried to guess how much liquid it would make when it melted. We guessed it'd be just over one cup. We also got out my new digital kitchen scale and weighed it. After 10 minutes, Matthew was ready for it to be melted so I stuck it in the microwave and we watched it melt. We were right - it was just over a cup of liquid and the water weighed the same as the snow. Of course, Matthew wanted to know if we put more snow in the water, would it turn back into snow? That experiment led to an interesting discussion about snow and weather. They also patted the snow down into a cookie sheet and used cookie cutters to make snow cookies.

After lunch, they decided to go play outside in the snow. With my pneumonia, I could only watch from the window with Jade, leaving strict "don't go near the street" rules in their heads. We live on a cul-de-sac so it's a safer area than some but they're still quite young. At one point, I saw Rose run down the driveway, trying to chase birds in the cul-de-sac. I was getting ready to open the door and stop her when I saw Matthew run past her, stop and hold his arm out so she couldn't run past him. He's a great big brother and is always looking out for her. :) They played for a while *just* out of sight but I could see them every minute or so as they moved around. They were by the trailer that DH uses for hauling compost or the lawn mower, etc. When they came in about 30 minutes later, I asked them what they were doing by the trailer. Matthew said, "Oh, we were just cleaning the snow off the tail lights and the rest of the trailer so it wouldn't freeze."

Matthew had a lot of fun with his new flip flap math book during rest time while the girls were napping. He is a spirited child and needs his alone time during the day. So when the girls go down for naps, he goes to his room to read or play Legos or something else relatively quiet. He seems to recharge during that alone time and when we're on family vacation and around each other all day with no breaks, you can really see the difference. He was asking me math problems during dinner and correcting me when I guessed wrong. We've gotten a lot of great math ideas recently from www.livingmath.net...mostly we're just using book titles for now. ;)

After nap, Matthew wanted me to be a knight and he was the King and he wanted us to fight the bad guys together. I pointed out that usually the kings don't fight. He informed me that he wasn't that kind of king. ;)

Dh went to a hockey game tonight (a very rare occurance as he's not a sports fan at all but it was a company freebie and they had a great box) and Grammie stopped by with Chinese take-out in the nick of time. Matthew was excited to show her his new Transformer toys. Rose begged for several stories to be read while Jade just wanted to play peek-a-boo with her. And of course, a short game of The World Is Coming To An End.

So today we did quite a few math things, read several stories, discussed science (snow and weather), had art class (drawing on and sculpting snow), music (The kids love to sing - and they do so almost every day), geography and even a little history. All with no curriculum while I have pneumonia and am coughing up my lungs. Almost makes me wonder why so many moms tell me they "aren't creative enough" to homeschool.

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Mar. 20, 2006

Why Unschooling?

Posted in Unschooling

Someone recently asked, "Why Unschooling?"

I have been asking myself lately how I came upon unschooling. I can't remember. Dh has always been pro-homeschooling but knew it was me who'd have to do most of the work so he left it up to me. My mom has taught pre-K for 20+ yrs and I taught preschool for a couple years too...and worked as an aide in the preschool for 5yrs. I was thoroughly entrenched. ;) I hated school when I was a student. No, hate isn't strong enough of a word...detested? There were many reasons, some good and some not so good. I wasn't sold on homeschooling though. So I said what the other people say when they really don't understand homeschooling, "I would worry that he'd miss the socialization". Somehow (and I really don't remember how or why), I started looking into homeschooling. I knew the thought of standing over my kids at the kitchen table, baby in one arm, a pointing finger in the other, threatening them to finish that worksheet...'or else!' was completely unappealing to me. I suppose I'm a realist. I knew that picture everyone has of overly cooperative, smiling, well dressed and mannered kids doing their work quietly and asking interesting questions of me was not going to happen. ;) Somewhere I stumbled across unschooling. I read a few books, read many websites, tried to grasp the idea. I thought about my own learning through life...when did I learn the fastest and easiest? Sign language class.

I took a signing class through the college over the summer when I was 15yrs old. Technically too young to attend, I snuck in. ;) I loved every single moment of it and it came in really handy that next fall...the first deaf person to attend our high school and I was the only student out of 2000 who could sign. We became best friends. ;)

I got stuck on some thoughts about unschooling where I didn't totally agree...maybe discipline...or food/tv issues. But I finally stepped back and said, "Hey, I like this big concept...we can tweak it to fit our family needs". So I'm somewhere inbetween hard-core unschoolers and school-at-homers. This is how my kids have learned from birth - why change it now? Who says they have to have formal education? I'm no dumb bunny and I don't need to be a genius today to teach my kids how to add and subtract. If they ever want to learn, say, physics...I'll find a resource for them (maybe a co-op or pre-college course) or perhaps have DH help them with it. But for now, what's stopping me? Dh is stoked on the idea of unschooling and has been onboard since I first mentioned it to him. He immediately started thinking about how different his life might have been if he'd been allowed to learn this way. Instead, we both learned how to play the school game and get A's. And while Dh retained all of it and then some, *I* just learned how to get by without really learning or remembering any of it. Study the chapter for the test, take the test, forget about the chapter. Repeat for 12 years and go to college and repeat some more.

Well, that's the semi-short answer anyway. ;) So I read about unschooling a lot. The Unschooling Handbook. Holt has great books that talk about learning styles. And John Taylor Gatto (NY teacher for 40+yrs and Teacher of the Year) talks about how bad the education system is and why schools were created in the first place (quite eye-opening for me). The book Christian Unschooling was a great read! I have found many Christian homeschoolers and many unschoolers but finding Christian Unschoolers seems a hard thing to do.

And when it comes down to it...I didn't teach my kids to crawl. I didn't even really teach them to talk. I didn't send them to school to learn how to put a fork into their mouths or walk up the stairs. Learning is so much like this...baby steps. You wait forever to hear that first "mama"...then a few other words show up one by one. And one day, you realize they're talking in sentences. How did that happen? You modeled it. They learned that speaking in sentences and more clearly helped them get what they wanted/needed. And they learned to speak. No matter how many hours you spent saying, "Say 'mama'", they didn't do it until they were good and ready.

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