I was just curious how many of you are unschoolers....the scheduling thread made me wonder. I believe I would lean more that way myself. Too strict of a rigid structure is what I am really trying to avoid by homeschooling. Yes, my little guy will only be in Kindergarten at the moment....but seeing forward, if I continue with HSing I think Iwill be closer to the unschooling, child led side of the learning. So please tell me your methods
I would love to be an unschooler but unfortunately my children do not have enough unschooler qualities to make it work. If I wasn't telling them what to do, believe me it would not get done. So they require a structure that would ensure they were learning what they need to know. I think unschooling is more about the child's ability to perceive their surroundings and turn it into a learning experience, than it is about the parent being willing to let go of the schedule because the whole premise is that the child decides what to learn and when. My kids would have never learned to read if it was left up to them! :lol:
This sounds just like my oldest two and my youngest. My 3rd ds is the only one that I have that would do well with unschooling. I am glad though, because I know I couldn't do unschooling, but am always interested in it.
I dream of being an unschooler, but I have learned that if I don't encourage my oldest to get off the sofa and lay down the game controllers he will do nothing else. I have given much thought to requiring him to do something science related X days a week and something history Y days a week, but I feel he would say things like I just don't know what to do or where to look or what ever... soooooo we are mommy led
I am a strong believer in unschooling. I'm a part time unschooler. I unschool up until Kindergarten, during school breaks, and before and after school. In other words, I utilize unschooling to create a lifestyle of learning. At the same time we are doing structured parent-led schooling. I've explained our philosophy here.
I would agree with you formal instruction doesn't have to take up your whole day or life. My kids only have three hours of formal schooling maybe more if we are having a lot of fun. It's a lifestyle. And we use everything to learn and add lots of reference books and so on to the kids library. My son actually prefers those to any other reading material. Who am I to tell him he HAS to read a chapter book with a story? I think it's great that he is learning a tonne of information about everything from Space to animals all on his own from reading. Sometimes when I make a unit study he will add information to it that I didn't lol. It's him teaching me some days and I love it that way. My daughter who is five is only starting and falls into the category of needing more structure to lead her down the path of education. By the way are you North or South in Ont? I am North obviously lol
My kids do learn so much on their own and then I wonder "Where do you learn how to do that?". We don't have a video game consul but my son would get sucked into computer games if I let him. Although the game he plays has taught him a lot of history, economics, and organizational skills. He plays Age of Empires and it's offshoots. I simply limit the time. It used to be twenty minutes a day and he saved games but then I started letting him combine times and have days he skipped it altogether. I'm leaning towards just focusing on Bible,spelling, grammar, and Latin and my own version of math (lots of living books, games, etc.) this year and letting each child pursue their interests with help. They choose an interest and I give them ideas or guide them and help find resources and materials. Although I would like to have a family fun time where we do something together that they might not otherwise do. This would be more exposure/fun time. I would want them (especially my older two) to pursue their interests to the best of their ability without being hampered by young ones.
EXACTLY!! I currently Unschool, and I think it's great! I'm not a fan of schedules anyway, and I think i puts alot of pressure on me and my son is my clone, so it makes him uncomfortable as well. I would agree it's very much child led. When we go out, he observes things, and then we talk about it and he absorbes it like a little sponge AND can apply it to other things as well (which I think is important so matter what route of education you take). For example: he is INCREDIBLY into locomotives. Steam locomotives. He wants to know how they work, so we go on youtube and look it up. How are they made? What are the different parts? What makes them move? How many kinda are there? And he can apply it to his favorite show, Thomas the tank Engine. "Mama, those are THomas' buffers/wheels/axels/coupling rods. etc. As with some things, they might lack in a certain area, but you apply what they like into the subject. I love unschooling and I want to do it as long as possible!
I am in Toronto right now....but about 1 wk -10 days of the month is spent in the sault (that's home-even though we have been in Toronto since 98). Infact we are heading north tomorrow until Sunday
I would love to be an unschooler, but I'm ,uh, let's just say I can be very undisciplined without set things to do. My kids would probably sitting in front of the TV or building with Legos all day every day if I didn't plan some actual schoolwork.
Well, I guess we are pretty close Are you in the city or on the west or east end? I'm on the western side of the city.
I am a true believer that we are all learning all the time. We have unschooled off and on. Mostly because of my son mental condition. Sometimes it's all we can do. It all comes down to his stability.
I am in the west end (south Etobicoke) We lived for 11 years at Eglinton and Mt Pleasant before that.
I am another unschooler. I think each one of us has our own interpretation of what it is. We make it fit to our needs. My definition is that I have a set schedule of which topic is covered at what time each day. We set a time limit for each slotted thing. The unschooling comes in when DS says, "What about?, Where?, When? Or any other variance. We then go off on a tangent to discover the answers. He does his own searches, or I will look at a way he can do something differently. This usually means he spends more time on a subject and makes it up the next day on the other topics by skipping the subject for the day. We just track the scrambling, and go with the flow. I have learned a lot of additional things on the topics. Sometimes here it's the student teaching the parent, lol.
I prefer to unschool with a child who can read very well and maybe just keep tabs on their math and writing progress. I really want to unschool my students 3-7, provided they become strong and capable readers before. Unschooling, as in allowing the child to follow their interests and helping them to learn independent of their Teacher, would be a lot more successful for a student who can read any book in the library, any article in a magazine, etc.
This is how I'm afraid I would be too I need to have some sort of daily lesson plan to guide me but I try to be flexible with my schedule, adjusting it according to my kids' interest and attention levels. *I* need a plan to feel comfortable. However, I do really try to create a lifestyle of learning. We "play" outside as I teach them about science, build with blocks as we do math, or sing songs to teach letter sounds. I try to keep learning fun and natural, so I guess I do lean toward the unschooling philosophy in that sense. But my kids are preschool and kindergarten age so they need more guidance and exposure to new things.
I've always considered myself an unschooler =- since 2005. The philosophy involves trusting your children to learn what they need to learn when they need to learn it. And this could be in all different ways. Many people think it has something to do with the materials used. It doesn't. It also includes the understanding that everything counts as learning. Another major unschooling theme is that parents lose the academic expectations and demands and coercion. This is the hardest part for most parents. Again this is where trust comes in. When it was time for dd to take a standardized test, I explained to her about what it was and what would she like to do. She said she wanted to start practicing for it. So at the bookstore, she chose a grade-level prep book and breezed through it in about a week. I didn't have to nag her about it once. (kids do better when they feel that they own their learning and have choices and freedom) When we started unschooling, I enjoyed watching what the kids came up with next. They really did keep themselves busy all day and much of what they did could be considered academic. We went on lots of field trips and spent lots of time with the homeschool groups. I read to them, we gardened, they made collages and homemade books, cooked with me, played board games and cards, etc. After a while, the kids came up with their own daily schedules. It included all the things they loved to do. They both enjoyed having a guideline and a bit of structure to their day. It started out as more of a list of maybe 20 or so ideas that they could pick from. After another while this list did become more of a daily schedule. It was loose and fun, yet surprisingly productive. Then about 2 years ago, ds (then 7) asked me if we can do more "schoolwork" like his friends do. My dd (then 11) agreed that she'd like more "mom-imposed" structure to her day. It was more like, "YOU make me a schedule, mom". So I went with it. The kids had always enjoyed the activities in the Charlotte Mason method (copywork, narrating, nature and artist study, dictation, readalouds, wall timelines, etc) . We did these things the very first couple of months dd came out of school and she and ds always had these activities on their daily schedules. So, I spent a few days figuring out what kind of Charlotte Mason -based schedules are out there, when I came across Ambleside Online. I read the whole website in 2 nights and then went over it with the kids and they loved it. Dd lasted less than a year with it (and went back to a looser schedule) but ds really took to it. We started him with Year 1 at 7 years old, then Year 2, and soon we'll start Year 3. Dd just turned 14 and will be going to a performing arts high school for dance here in NYC in September. This school is heavy on the academics and has a very strict admission policy which includes test scores, a writing sample, and a math placement test (as well as an audition). Dd met all of their requirements and was one of the 6% admitted (out of over 10,000 children). Unschooling works. Am I still an unschooler? Yep. The kids have always had the freedom to choose their own educational paths. The unschooling philosophy has always been there. My kids just happened to choose a curriculum (whether at school or at home). Sorry about the novel. Unschooling is a favorite topic of mine.
I totally agree with this. I never planned to be an unschooler, it just happened that way. When ds was starting k, I had a plan. Then he would be doing something, playing with the chickens, building marble runs, playing with lego's, and I just couldn't make him stop those things to do school. I decided I'd start in 1st. Same thing happened. I had a plan for second, less of a plan, but a plan nonetheless. Didn't work. Now he's starting third and I just didn't bother planning anything, now this is just who we are.
