Seasons are a changing.

Spring.. Man I love Spring.

I feel like its been a rough start in homeschooling.  I guess I'm a little jealous of those that can get a curric and it works.  Not only has none of the books I've gotten worked, but failed terribly. LOL  Anytime I would try to get DS to "sit for a bit to work", as soon as I turned my back he would disappear.  If I was able to watch him the whole time so he couldn't "escape", we could sit for hours not getting a thing done.  This is definately a pattern I want to avoid.  So, its been back to the drawing board.

I guess, since I was a PS kid, learning to me looks like workbooks and textbooks and such.  That's just how it looks.  So, I've been allowing myself to deschool as well.  Its pretty funny, but the one style of homeschooling I never expected to do in a million years, is the way we seem to be heading (sort of).  We are heading in nearly an unschooling style.  I'm not completely comfortable with that, so I guess we are leaning to eclectic at the moment. 

I've been doing a unit study approach.  I find that I realy like Valerie Bendt's style of unit studies.  All 3 of the kids love me reading to them, so her literature base unit studies are fantastic for me.  Currently we are studying plants/gardens.  We have planted each our own garden and a family vegi garden.  Soon we will also mix in some butterflys since the season is right around the corner for it and I am also making a buterfly garden for myself.  I have allowed math to take a backseat for a while, but I hope to get him back interested in it.  Math seems to come easy for him.  I tried to get him to do a little today, but he wouldn't.  I also haven't started in with any writting yet.

I am begining to wonder if I can pull together and stick to some sort of daily schedule.  I've never liked such a structured day.  It always made me feel guilty if I strayed from it.  But I do wonder if it would help with the learning parts of our day.

I think one of the reason I dont feel comfortable letting completely go of the learning, is that I feel like I have been doing that for months (not making DS do anything and waiting for him to want to start doing something, anything.).  I don't see any sign of him wanting to.  I don't expect him to want textbook learning, but any interest would be cool to me.  I'd love for him to want to dive into a subject deep and learn learn learn about it.

I have noticed with all the book I've been reading lately, that if I read a book to the younger 2 say for bedtime or something, he will usually come join us.  If he happened to miss the begining, he will read what he missed to himself.  This is (to me) a big step in him reading.

I really want to find that one ignition switch that would just turn the fire for learning on LOL. 

At least, I can say for myself.  I have been learning.  I have borrowed from the library or bought many books lately on unschooling style and unit studies and gifted kids.  I am teaching myself.  I am seeing that unschooling is a fairly good option for us.  It's not going to happen overnight, but I think we may end up getting there.  But Shhhh don't tell My mom. LOL  I'm sure she wouldn't agree with the approach.