August 2014

Grace finished all seasons of Dr. Who and is anxiously awaiting season 8. She was going to participate in a "Dr. Who Through History" class but it was full - boo!

Polyvore - binder cores, running her tippers groups

Volleyball

Grace auditioned for Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing at Wichita Children's Theater - they had too much talent so they are changing the show to Charlotte's Web which has more parts - new audition Sept 2

Sonny

Skateboarding 

Listening to Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets

Flag Football

Top 10 Lists

Skrillex

Mae

Daniel Tiger's Baby

Letters (M A E)

Numbers on Montessori app 

Counting 

Gymnastics Class

FLICT 

Writing & Filming a Movie

What THEY Want vs What I Want For Them

Something hit me out of the blue the other day and I celebrated it as an unschooling epiphany (aka one of Oprah's "aha" moments). I was thinking about the kids and the different things they enjoy: fashion, music, design, video games just to name a few. I was trying to think of ways I could help them "enjoy" these things more. "You like fashion. You must want to be a designer. Want to learn to sew? What about drawing classes for sketching?" and "You love video games. You must want to be a game designer. Want to learn to code? Want to build your own computer?" And my children, deeply in touch with who they are responded with resounding...maybes. Hmmm...that's a let down. Or is it? Does everything they enjoy have to be fast-tracked into a career path? That's very traditional thinking. And my hope is that they never buy into traditional thinking unless it's what they choose. Can I let the kids have interests and hobbies without me projecting some type of skill-honing mindset onto everything? I have to. For all of us to reap the immense benefits of this lifestyle I have to let them BE. Not hands off, not uninvolved, not uninvested, not doing my own thing all the time. I have to support their interests without pushing an agenda. I think it's always ok to suggest and offer interesting things but I also have to accept rejection of those things with no let-down or emotional attachment. It's their life, not mine. They are free to spend their time as they please. Doing things for pure enjoyment is a skill that most adults I know I have lost. Or if they do things they enjoy they apologize for those activities or try to monetize them as justification. I hope to provide a space for my family to become adults who do things simply for the enjoyment of the activity.

Well, Here We Are! Re-Dedicating Myself (again) To This Blog!

Another year gone. Wow. We are all just trucking right along. Another year of unschooling. Attempting it as radically/whole life encompassing as we possible. Not as radical as some, way too radical for others. All good.

G-Lo is 12. She has developed a deep appreciation for Dr. Who and Once Upon a Time this Year. Netflix is amazing for immersing yourself in a show. We get our money's worth from our subscription. She spends a lot of time on Polyvore. She has taught herself design. People request that she make design projects for them. It is an amazing creative tool. It also has taught her time-management, customer service, and marketing. Critical skills for a young entrepreneur. Here is here work: Personal Page Her "Business" Projects G-Lo plays volleyball and soccer. She acts in local theater productions and is planning to take guitar lessons so she can write songs. 

S-Boy <still> loves video games. He is a master minecrafter. He has been playing other sandbox and role-playing games via Steam. Roller Coaster Tycoon, Papers Please and Surgery Simulator to name a few. He loves watching youtube videos called "Let's Plays" in which other gamers play a game and provide commentary. He also really enjoys "Top 10" list type videos. He has been inspired to start making his own videos in the same vein. S-Boy Youtuber! Other interests include Pokemon and Magic the Gathering which he plays with friends. He is also a big fan of dub-step music especially Skrillex and DeadMau5. He played baseball in the spring and that continues to be his favorite sport. He is playing flag football now and might take up boxing this fall. 

Baby Lady isn't so much of a baby anymore but since she's my last she'll never NOT be a baby to me! She is still the best unschooler I know. She just loves life. She is always up for anything! She likes to draw, play barbies and babies, go to the park, read, sing, dance...you name it! She recently learned to use the potty very quickly. She took her first gymnastics class and liked it. She is interested in a ballet class as well. She loves Peppa Pig and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. 

We spend time weekly with a group of free learners. Families with beliefs and values similar to ours. I know how difficult this lifestyle can be without others by your side so I am grateful for these families. We are undertaking a huge project together to create a community educational resource center. Life learning at it's best. 

Enough catching up. In my next post I am going to tackle what WE want for our kids vs what THEY want for themselves and what I've learned about that topic.

I Guess We Got Busy Doing Summer!

(Originally written August 2013)

Lazy summer days combined with kids who want to minecraft on our only laptop equals not much blogging. Add a nursing toddler in the mix and I think I'm excused! Time does give me the ability to look back and see where we started and where we are with a little perspective though.

I started this blog to document our unschooling journey. I guess I thought we would "get there." But the thing is unschooling wraps up your whole life. It changed my parenting and my thinking and continues to do so each day. We are not going to "get there" because the work is never done. We simply have to "be here" with all the successes, failures, regrouping and do-overs.

Six Month Blog Silence

It wasn't my intention to neglect this blog but a few LIFE things happened and with unschooling sometimes you have to just let things percolate for a while before you understand them fully (or not). So I am committing to write more because I love it.
The major LIFE thing - we moved to Kansas in January. Moving across three states is jarring and exciting. We have a strange semi-nomadic existence. We move every couple of years. Sometimes it's just houses and sometimes it's across state lines. Hopefully one day it is to an island. The positive attributes of this lifestyle are each one of us is more flexible and open to new situations and people. We put ourselves "out there" more and are not afraid to make connections with other people. The negative is that you must sometimes you have to leave great people behind which hurts. So the past six months have been spent mourning who and what we left as well as meeting new friends and learning our new surroundings.

The YES List

If we are all about the "yes" here (see blog title) then I should really keep a list of things that I say yes to that in another life would've a resounding "NO!"

G-Lo wants to put some color in her hair. Pink or teal or purple highlights. YES

G-Lo wants to use the Jesse Tree I bought last year for a Christmas tree for her Barbies. YES
S-Boy eats pizza for breakfast as often as possible. YES

These aren't big things but they let the kids have more control over their lives. Learning gentle parenting and living in concert with the kids is new and foreign to me. I am not the boss here. I try to give them respect and they give it back. We aren't adversaries. I pray for a spirit of cooperation in our home.

And the Little Toddler Shall Lead Us...

Baby Lady is the best unschooler I know. Think about it...in her short time here, without curriculum or intentional teaching, she has learned to sit up, walk, communicate in words and gestures, climb, dance, sing, scribble and hug. How did it happen? I didn't say "Baby Lady, it's time to learn to walk." She showed interest, we encouraged it, she practiced, we encouraged some more, then she had the skill. When she wanted to attempt it she did it. We didn't force her to do it a certain times. Toddlers and babies are great at internal motivation.

So I think God sent us Baby Lady at the right time (of course). We needed to meet an autodidact (a self-taught person) to trust unschooling. And it's not about everyone running amuck doing whatever they want at the expense of others' peace. Although Baby Lady does do that sometime. She's new. We give her grace. She just teaches us to follow your interests and passions and you will learn what you need to know in the right time. 

iPad Love

We finally got an iPad. It is wonderful. And as I imagined it rules for learning and exploring.

S-Boy loves the Google Earth app. He lives to think of locations or landmarks he knows and then have the app find them. The U.S. Capitol building, Cleveland Browns Stadium, and the wreck of the Titanic are just a few of his searches. The app "flies" from one place to another and swoops in very dramatically.

He is also playing "Smurfs Village." He plants vegetables and fruits and then harvests them for coins and points. He uses his coins and points to buy houses, more Smurfs, tools, etc. All in an effort to build a thriving village. The game has a reading component (directions, quests), math component (How many coins do I need for X? How many hours until my raspberries are ready?) and most importantly a fun component. G-Lo enjoys similar games like "Fashion Story" and "Bakery Story."

We play other fun games like "Ticket to Ride" and "Minecraft." I've been trying to restrain myself from buying a ton of new apps every day. It is hard!

I like blogging from the iPad. : )

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Curriculum Purge

I packed up all our curriculum and textbooks at the beginning of the
summer. That was scary but freeing. I have two math-ish books that are
still around. Life of Fred and Murderous Maths.They are
story books and present real-world examples which hold more value. My
kids had started to despise math and see it as dreary and repetitive and
boring. I hope these books get us back to seeing that math is fun and
useful and interesting again. We don't use them everyday and we only read them as long as they interest us.

We read what we want. Books, magazines, comics, instructions, websites, blogs. I have stopped freaking at the library. They check out what they want and if they try it and don't like it they move on. My kids are encouraged to read the way I do. They read what interests them. We listen to audiobooks in the car. Right now we are finishing "The Sisters Grimm" series which is a modern take on The Brothers Grimm. We might not do all or any of "the classics." I have read a lot of these books and I can't remember most of them because they did not resonate with me. If they do with the kids great. But there are too many great books that aren't considered classics to get bogged down with what we "should" be reading.

We write what we want. G-Lo writes articles for the co-op newspaper. She also has a few novels in the works. She has a blog she updates sometimes. She told me her spelling has improved a lot since she started working on the computer ( love spellcheck). S-Boy likes drawing illustrations and writing descriptions and titles for them. If he asks how to spell something I tell him and don't say "How do you think it's spelled?" He wouldn't ask if he knew!

We talk about current events. We talk about historical events. They process and sometimes come back with insights we didn't consider. It is a conversation. The election has sparked so much discussion. I loved talking about the electoral college with them because they are so quick! "So sometimes the person with the most votes doesn't win?" I know adults who don't get that.

All this to say I am slowly learning that even without me pulling out books, handing out assignments and following a schedule they are learning. I am a guide, facilitator, partner, chauffeur. They are learning who they and what they want to know in their own time. The most important part of this to me is our relationship. I value that over any arbitrary subject I could insist they learn right this minute.

How?

We are still in the process of "de-schooling." (Aren't these words so fun?) It means that we are still in the process of removing the barriers in our minds between learning and life. When I say "we" I mean "me" because kids don't put those barriers up until they go to school. I have 16 years of de-schooling to accomplish. I have to learn that worksheets and volumes of paper do not equal true knowledge. I keep the following principles in mind as I go through the process: (1) Learning is not separated into subjects and (2) ALL activity has value.  We no longer have math time, and reading time, and science time. We do what needs to be done plus what we want during the day and take opportunities to learn as they present themselves. Number two is harder to swallow (for some initially). Television and video games are tools for learning. I am not talking about "educational" shows and games though we do some of those too. I am talking about honest to goodness popular, mainstream games, movies and TV shows. Initially, there was a binge which was to be expected. But now I am seeing that kids get bored with TV just like adults and move on to other things without prompting. Or I can offer something as an alternative and they usually bite. Some days they just want to veg out. I get that - I am the same way. So are you! Everyone has to learn to self-regulate. I offer guidance but ultimately they have to learn personal responsibility in all areas of life. I won't always be there directing their choices .

Why Unschooling?

Unschooling? It describes what we AREN'T doing but doesn't address what we are doing. I think it is better defined as "life learning." We are no longer creating a school environment in our home because it's an artificial construct created to serve the Industrial Revolution, and I'm not interested in creating more cogs for the machine. My goal is to create an environment where the children can become free-thinking, inspired, and compassionate.

G-Lo started public school in 2007 and we started homeschooling in 2010. Seems like longer. Through the years we have tried different methods, curriculum, plans, groups, and styles. But it got to the point where we weren't having any fun. Home schooling was as much drudgery as going to school. That was never my vision for home education. After researching I found that unschooling resonates with me. Which was disappointing because the version of unschooling in my head is not pretty! I'd never really met any unschoolers (or anyone who admitted they were unschoolers ). I envisioned dirty kids who couldn't read at 18 because they played video games and ate Cheetos 24/7. But reading more about real unschoolers showed me that my ideas are just as inaccurate as the idea that all homeschoolers are unsocialized, conservative Christian misfits. I dug deeper to see that unschooling ultimately lets kids keep their innate love of learning by letting them go and do and be in the way God made them.

It starts with a paradigm shift in the way I see the kids. Are they incapable of learning without explicit instruction? No. Children find everything interesting. That's why three year olds ask "why?" constantly. Curiosity and necessity collide in children if you don't impose your will (or society's standards) on what they must know when and in what order. And the knowledge gained is in my opinion more valuable and usable when it is initiated internally.

So I am on easy street, huh? No more planning or pushing or stressing. Well, unfortunately no. This is more complex because I have to offer opportunities and materials and conversations that may spark an interest. I have to facilitate ways to encourage their interests. And here's the biggest, hardest one of all (for me): I have to let them say no. They can say no to anything they want, and I have to be accept that choice. I trust that when the skill or subject or project is useful to them they will pursue it. Just like adults do. In real life.

Another Blog?

People will think I have a lot of free time. I have another blog that I used to record our home education path last year. I decided I need a new place because I am going in a completely different direction. This will be more about our life as we tiptoe (DIVE!)  into LIFE LEARNING. Also known as "unschooling" which is a strange and word that doesn't tell exactly what something is rather what it isn't which I find a little awkward.  I'll do a post on the "whys" and "hows" soon. As soon as I get them straight - this is a work in progress. For now I will say that my philosophy starts with the simple idea of saying "yes" as much as I possibly can. It is a paradigm shift because I have been a "no" parent forever. The "whys" of that are (again) another post but I will say that since I say "yes" most of the time we are a more peaceful and content family which is something the culture of "no" never gave us.