We are entering our 4th year of homeschooling. It is hard to believe considering my children are only 4 and 7. But we started early and have been going year round since. We have consistently done the "traditional" homeschooling, whatever that it, but I think it was generally what the majority of homeschoolers do. It is a little relaxed in that it is sitting close to each other on the couch or staying in PJs until after lunch but still with structured curriculums and co-ops. When I first thought or considered homeschooling I was quite interested in the unschooling and Charlotte Mason methods. I loved the idea of a holistic environment where a child learns because she loves to learn and not because someone sat her in front of a desk and fed her information.
We've spent countless amounts on curriculum only to return or resale those that did not fit with us in an effort to get back the money needed for our tight budget. After that first year, I finally felt like I could get my head around homeschooling and what we really needed/wanted to achieve. I guess we are a little Charlotte Mason, a little eclectic and a micro amount secular but definitely not unschooling. We do have desks to sit at to do written work, calendars to helps us keep track of all the endless socialization events, and schedules that while I wrote them every semester we've yet to stick to any exactly.
But all through our little homeschooling journey, I find myself continually intrigued with unschooling. I researched it a lot in the beginning and came to the conclusion that it is essentially living life just the way you would everyday all while allowing the child to learn at his own pace and seek out what he wanted to learn with no guidance or instruction. So I guess a typical day would be: get up, make breakfast (math/science/chemistry/home ec), then head outside just in time to see the kittens being born (science, bible), then taking a trip to the grocery store keeping track of the grocery list, cost of groceries, and combinations of food groups to stay healthy by (sociology, math, organization, home ec, nutrition), and so forth. No structure or guidance but a hope that your own kids would be able to seek out the learning experiences and grow from it. I am still trying to get my head around how this would work with the kid who just wants to sit in front of the TV all day or has no drive to learn.We still hear, although, about those unschoolers that play video games all day, sleep until noon, are not instructed/educated about saying sorry (because you don't want to force your child to do what he doesn't want to do), begin reading at age 16 just because it was needed for the driving test .etc. There is the idealistic unschooling and the outrageous unschooling, as if schooling could really apply here.
And all through these ideas and examples, I still want to see in my kids what I consider the purpose of unschooling. I want them to discover a topic, get excited about learning and lead themselves to learn something new. I want them to ignore the TV and video games and go in search for the family of squirrels she saw running through the yard running to hide nuts. I want them to pick up a book (on their own motivation) read it and come to me excited about how awesome the book was all the while summarizing it for me. I think children could sometimes do the ideal but I think the majority, left to their own ambitions, would do the video game and TV all day.
Still feeling the pull to unschooling, I thought I would try some structured or guided unschooling. Yes, all the hard core unschoolers are yelling at me in their heads saying that I just did not get the idea of unschooling. Really, I do, and while there are those families out there that are the exception, from what I have read and seen it is more of the TV all day long version.
What about planning an excursion or event, giving the children a topic and then inviting them to learn about it in their own way an at their own pace?The following example is an idea of what I have been thinking about: plan a trip to the zoo but before the trip ask the children to choose an animal or two and find out all you can about it from eating to pooping to babies. Tell them we can go to the library, we can search the web or even seek out a person who is educated about animals. The unschooling I see in this is that the children are gathering information at their own pace, at their own abilities, at their own comfort level and for as long or little they would like. I would put no stipulations except it must be shared with the other members of the family and it would need to be done before our trip to the zoo tomorrow.We would, however, need to continue with one part of our traditional homeschooling. We use Sonlight. The lessons are broken down day to day for 36 weeks. In order to stay on our current plan we need to complete it as we had the others so we will do the five days over 2 days each week. Thankfully it doesn't take too long so it will only invade in our unschooling time minimally.
These ideas I have are still in the planning stage and I have yet to write any of my ideas down but I plan to chronicle it here on my blog. Our experiment will go through the month of September, 1st to 30th. I can't say I will write an entry every day but I will do my best to discuss all the details. I would love a partner in crime so if you want to "unschool" for a month with me I'd love to share experiences. Just send me a note. Or if you just want to follow my blog entries, sign up with your email.
Day 1: We went to the park for fun play time (AKA exercise). I asked the children to find as many different leaves from different plants, trees, bushes, weeds, flowers, etc. We gathered these leaves in a basket and went to the library. Utilizing their resources (books, magazines and the internet) we set forth to identify and learn about the plants that we picked leaves from. While we couldn't identify every plant we still had so much fun. And, to my amazement, many of what we learned stuck so much that as we walked out to our car the children were pointing to plants/trees we had identified.DAY 1 OF UNSCHOOLING: SUCCESS!
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