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Credit is given, unless the poster wishes to remain anonymous.
Mind you, I'm not totally against workbooks -- I just would never, ever, want to limit my children's education to filling in someone else's blanks.
This is a very simple quote, but for some reason, I always say it to myself:
One way to look at unschooling is to live your life in your home and day-to-day adventures without adding a "School in Your Home". Don't play teacher, don't tell your child what to learn based on a teacher's manual. Instead, recognize that children are learning as they are breathing in air. Relax and realize that your eight year old IS learning about all sorts of things that COULD be classified as science, math, english, etc. Is he/she helping you at the grocery store? Lots of math skills there - estimating, comparing, rounding off, adding, subtracting, multiplication/division. Cooking with you - both science and math are covered. Gardening is science. Observing a spider's web, drawing pictures, making maps for a treasure hunt for the younger ones, reading books from the library and talking about them, listening to tapes, watching videos, learning to use the camera, building a treefort, starting a compost pile and/or worm bin - there's a million and more things to do that are educational and part of daily life. Sometimes unschoolers use workbooks and textbooks - if they are a help and useful for the subject or topic at hand. But younger children, by and large, don't need texts and workbooks and mom pretending to be a teacher with a globe and a pointer (unless you all are having a fun time playing pretend!).
<<how do you know from year to year where they need to be...or is this another "delusion" of public school?>>
I have believed for a while now that the *only* reason there are "standards" of what children should know when is what boils down to crowd control. A mass education system cannot possibly deal with children who are allowed to grow and learn at their own pace, so they need some kind of uniform curriculum. *We*, on the other hand, are specially designed to meet our individual child's needs. :-)
>I have believed for a while now that the *only* reason there are "standards"
Oh, yes, I agree. Crowd control is a big part of it. But also--think about it--all children of the same grade who live in various parts of the country are NOT learning the same things! There is really no *uniform* curriculum even within the ps system itself, so don't let it scare you! There is no *Magic Curriculum*!!!
>On the days that I have energy and low pain levels, I am so much happier with
We have lots of "down days" lately too. I have a new baby and it's hard to find the time and energy. I think that's okay though. Life is like that. Cycles and seasons. I think that even when kids aren't actively learning something new, though, the down time is letting some of the old stuff sink in. So give yourself and your family permission to just hang out without guilt now and then.
I think "unschooling" is a rather peculiar word, because it implies that we don't use school-type methods, but it doesn't really say what we do. Even though we don't use *schoolish* methods, does that mean we never *teach* our children anything? Of course not. Parents are teachers from the time their children are born -- even before!
<<But the fact of the matter is, most hs kids test well above average>>
<sigh> I think that the whole system is missing the point (at least my
point). I am not here to raise a group of rocket scientists to make the
homeschooling community look good (or to make ps look bad, for that matter).
I am here to raise children who have good values and good character. THAT is
my priority. I think sometimes people get too caught up in the testing
aspect out of fear and forget the point. It saddens me to see so many people
at the end of the "school year" fretting over testing or evaluations (not that I
have been exempt). I am not saying that it is not important for our children
to learn things other than good character, but it is my opinion that if I do
my part in training them, God will help take care of the rest.
> i keep hearing people say "but there are some
This again, is the assumption that education is supposed to be unpleasant and
something you DON'T want to do. So if your kids are enjoying it, you're
doing it wrong???? Puhleeze. This is such a silly thing to say. It's hard
not to laugh when they do. My kids don't want to obey me. But they have to.
They want to have video games, but they aren't allowed. They would love to
watch TV all day long. But there are limits. They want to buy all of
the latest toys, but they have a limited allowance. Learning is so much fun.
When we started this "interest-initiated" learning about a year and a half
ago, my then 8yo dd was reading the Addy American Girl books and started
reading other books about the Underground Railroad, slavery, Harriet Tubman,
Abraham Lincoln, etc. She was so excited, and it stuck with her. She did
lots of "oral book reports", too. You know, "Mom, guess what I just read!!!"
As for worrying that you will not be covering "everything", or doing things
in a "certain order", phooey to that idea! Where is it written that things
have to be learned in a certain order, and anyway, who in the world will
learn everything??? Only God knows everything. Each of us will learn only a
small subset of a subset of all available knowledge. Who's to say which
subset is better than any other subset? I would much prefer my
kids to love what they're learning, and remember it, than to follow someone
else's scope and sequence and learn facts to pass a test. >choking sound< |