Lately, my dd has been doing 'academics' on her own. For example, I bought her a journal, and she has written two 'stories' in it in the last two days. Although the spelling is atrocious, I love that she's practicing her story creating, and practicing writing her letters. This was bought at her request, and is NOT for 'school' at all. Is this sort of like Unschooling? I ask because she's been putting up a horrid fuss about school lately. My ds is doing MUCH MUCH better, but she has completely done a 180 (it would be nice if they would BOTH get on board at the same time!) and started crying over the idea of doing school work. On the other hand, she is FULL of ideas of what she'd rather study. I know my own energy and ambition is down as well, which isn't helping the situation, although we are still moving (slllowwly) forward. I really love the idea of my children pursuing their own interests, but am worried that they won't cover certain subjects (dd would trade her math book away for a nickel just because she doesn't want to do subtraction.) Is there a way to balance her wants with what I feel she needs?
I would say absolutely...especially at 6 years old! If a 6 year old is writing stories on her own, don't do anything to squelch that! She's have plenty of time to learn the mechanics of writing. The hardest part of teaching writing is getting good content and that comes from lots of practice. The spelling/grammar/punctuation is the easy part. As a former school teacher, I think the mechanics are stressed too early and the creativity part suffers greatly and in many children never gets rediscovered. For example, kids will worry they can't spell a "good" word and their teacher will correct them, so they "play it safe," choose something they know they can spell and make a short, dry, boring sentence. :cry: My girls were the same way. They loved to write...in a journal. I didn't start spelling "instruction" until 4th grade and just this year (6th and 8th) we are doing some formal grammar and writing instruction (like writing a research paper.) They've picked up everything very quickly and they are able to understand *why* they need to know how to do it right (especially my 8th grader.) As far as not wanting to do subtraction (math) you can either insist she do the math work daily (which is what I did before letting them work on their own stuff) or you can come up with as many ways to get her to have to subract things in real life. Mine loved history, so we spent alot of time on that. I mostly directed it, but they stayed engaged and the things I taught were often a springboard for their own ideas. They didn't really love science, but every now and then we'd do an experiment that was fun and they would repeat on their own. Now that they are older, they have alot of projects they come up with on their own. We have a minimum list of assignments that I require daily, then they are free to explore their interests and that's working. When my oldest starts high school next year, she'll need certain courses for college admission, so we're getting used to that this year. They have learned some valuable skills through their own projects. Skills I never would have though of including in the curriculum. If she has stuff she wants to explore and study, go for it! :wink: I'm sure you can involve reading and writing activities for the topics of her choice and that (with some math skills) is plenty for the early elementary grades. It doesn't really matter if she learns about sea turtles or electricity for science or American history or community helpers for social studies at that age. Is she learning and loving it? Don't be scared! Best wishes!
Oh we do this because sometimes I don't feel like sitting down have a knock down drag out lesson and neither does DS. I let DS do what he wants at times, then there are time when he can do what he wants with a little direction, and then there are times where he has to do what I say. I found that this has worked so much better for us and DS enjoys homeschool so much more. Doing it this way makes everyone happy, because he’s not being forced to do work that he’s not interested in all the time. We use Calvert but we aren't always in the Calvert books. We are behind in the program actually but DS isn't behind. If that makes sense. The other day he told me he wanted to do a lapbook on Nascarr and engine mechanics, it's not part of the program but I say go for it. DS hates lapbooks but now he tells me that he would like to do all his learning this way. Meaning if they are talking about Native Americans in Calvert he wants to do a lapbook on the subject. Then we may take a trip to DC and learn more.
Yep-that's unschooling! We unschool. But we are not radical unschoolers. We are Christian unschoolers. The difference I see between the two is parenting. For us, unschooling is an educational approach only. Radical unschoolers often aren't very excepting of me because I'm a strict parent in other areas. My kids have chores, bedtimes, etc. Unschooling doesn't mean you never suggest things to your child. It just means you don't force them to do math or writing, etc. IT doesn't mean you never take a class or use a textbook or workbook, it just means you offer you child the opportunity to take a class in an area of their interest. We did co-op classes last semester cause my son LOVES science and there was a science class offered that he was excited about. We use apologia science textbooks, we use Abeka handbook for reading, my youngest is into worksheets right now and wants to learn his letters and how to write, so we're using Teach Me Joy with him right now. My 7 year old loves documentaries, so I add documentaries to our Netflix Q and sometimes he'll watch them, sometimes he won't. Sometimes he'll watch a documentary if I am watching one. For math, we use manipulatives. Fraction circles, dice (his fav), abacus, LeapFrog Math desk, or just real life (shopping, money, telling time, etc) For grammar/spelling-you can often times just explain it as it comes up. Let her type her stories and print them out into a book-spell check will point out misspelled words-then you have an opportunity to help her with spelling....Mad libs are fun and offer a way to introduce parts of speech. Vocabulary can be built by read alouds from older/classic books (make sure if you get a newer edition of classics that they haven't been edited to be dumbed down sad but it happens-I read about this somewhere where they change like antelope to deer because kids didn't know what antelopes were-well how will they ever learn if you change antelope to deer-make them look it up! sheesh!) If you're reading of watching tv or talking whatever and you use or hear a 'big word' you think you child might not understand, ask them if they know what it means, if they don't, then explain it-tada, unschooling vocab My oldest LOVES cut and paste worksheets-he'll do a cut and paste worksheet on any topic!
I guess we are more schoolish than unschoolish, but in reading some of the comments here I see we are sort of combining both as well! We use workbooks for writing, grammar, math, etc. but we also follow interests and try to allow time each week for whatever they are interested. I guess we get the core stuff out of the way, then on to our true hearts' desires. If we had started with kids from the beginning I could see us totally being unschoolers, but adopting older children who are 8, 10 and 11 coming to us, we feel so far behind we don't feel we have quite the freedom until we get some core stuff like reading a little more solid, then we will definitely be more "off the grid". We also use lots of movies, etc. for our schooling, and real life experiences...today we had someone come to our home who is helping one son learn about weaving, because he expressed an interest in it. We are going to the Butterfly Pavillion in Denver soon because my youngest loves bugs, and we do what we can to unschool a little. Cindy
My son (6) is getting the hang of trading sit down school work for learning in other ways. He will ask me if we can play a game and then he will go into detail as to what he will be learning/practicing by playing that game. He of course loves trying to convince me that if he is learning, we do not need to sit down and learn. I usually go with it since I know that I throw stuff in all day long. I am learning that sit down and school = battles for us, but random learning is easy to sneak in. I say let her go for it if it feels comfortable enough for you.
