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Monday, September 11, 2006

Are we unschoolers at heart?

I had one of those moments this weekend... you know, those "duh" moments, where something is suddenly so obvious yet hasn't been obvious before. I spent part of my weekend devouring "The Unschooling Handbook", and realized (not sure how I missed this before), that essentially we do unschool. Until recently, I haven't done workbooks, or any kind of planned education with my kids. We just follow what they want to learn, and try to give them the tools to learn about everything. I had been worried, this year, that maybe this approach was too relaxed, but in all honesty, it's working! The kids remember all kinds of things we've talked about and/or shown them, often times surprising us with how in-depth their gained knowledge is.
 
C.O. is currently enjoying the workbooks, which honestly don't take much time, and only cover math and phonics/writing, and everything else is just an offshoot of living our lives. For example, yesterday we discussed volcanoes and earthquakes - C.O. showed C.J., using his hands, how the plates in the earth shift, which I taught him months ago after a minor earthquake. Then we dug out our fantastic illustrated one-volume encyclopedia and looked at the Earth's structure. This led to a discussion on planets, so I got out my Planets-in-a-Pouch (only mine has Jupiter instead of "The Universe", and Mars instead of Venus), and now both kids know a bit about Mercury, Earth, Mars and Jupiter. I think this subject might be something they'd be interested in pursuing further - we'll see! I am using the workbooks because I want to give him a strong foundation in math and reading skills to work from.
 
I decided to give unit studies a rest right now, unless they are truly child-initiated. I asked both elflings what they want to learn about right now, and C.O. answered "r.c. (remote control) stuff", and C.J. wants to know about sheep and pigs. So, I guess we'll plan field trips to Hobby Town and a farm!
 
Since we do sit down to learn a little from workbooks on a regular basis (well, 3-4 times a week), can we still call ourselves unschoolers?

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What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Emerson

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