Our Adventure

*Disclaimer: I don’t claim to know everything about homeschooling or mean to be making any all-inclusive or all-exclusive comments about it in ANY part of my blog. I’m simply sharing what WE have learned for OUR experience and OUR family. I’m not an authority on homeschooling. I will be putting links to helpful books and websites on the page GREAT WEBSITES to share with anyone who wishes to look at it. These our *our* experiences only! *Whew* I feel better now.*
 
 
We are often asked “HOW do you homeschool?” Often this comes right before or after the comment of ‘I could never do that’, or ‘I’d love to, but I have no idea how’. Well, to be honest with you, neither did we . There’s a lot of trial and error involved. It’s a huge thing, taking responsibility for your child’s’ education, when ‘the experts’ in the schools are the ones who usually do that sort of thing. It requires that you trust God, trust yourself, and trust your children. It requires that you take some risks and do some learning about yourselves and your kids’ learning styles.
 
Some people choose the ‘school at home’ route. We did this for a time. We started with Kindergarten ‘letter of the week’ curriculum with Nicholas when he was 5. That included Pace work in your basic subjects, (Math, English, Science, Social Studies) That’s as far as we got with the ‘school at home’ idea. [grin] Some people continue this route and purchase packaged curriculum and sit down at set hours each day and cover the material exactly as outlined. At this point, if we’re going to do that, we could send them to school. Nicholas became so bored with this. He just wanted to sit down and finish his *goals* – and really wasn’t *learning* -
 
On the other end of the spectrum are Unschoolers. This style is also called ‘child-led learning’. A good resource for learning about it is http://www.unschooling.com/. Unschoolers don’t do any formal, sit-down work at all, believing instead that if a child is raised in a rich environment with lots of learning materials, supportive and caring adults who will answer questions and help the child pursue their interests, the child will learn what needs to be learned.
 
This approach is considered somewhat radical. Having done a lot of reading over the past few years about how our brains develop and function, and how children learn, I am going to go ahead and be radical and say that I agree with the concept of unschooling. It makes sense, from my point of view. People learn and retain what they are interested in, so kids will learn better if allowed to explore things that interest them. Rather than being forced to sit down and learn about the Civil War because you’re in 2nd grade and that’s what 2nd graders do, you might choose instead to learn about the migration of butterflies. Who says that the Civil War is more important than butterflies? Well, the school system does. But if my kid grows up to be an entomologist, those butterflies are a lot more important than the Civil War, to him!
 
Unschooling leads the child towards his interests, which fosters more learning and growth.That said, one argument against unschooling is that there are basics all kids need to learn. Math is the biggie. How do you learn math when you’re unschooling? You do learn math, but not in the linear fashion of the school system. Doesn’t everyone need to know their times tables? Maybe. But isn’t it OK to learn that two 4-pound pineapples equals 8 pounds by measuring them at the grocery store, and three 4-pound pineapples equals 12 pounds……rather than sitting down with the printed grid times tables and learning them all in a row? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question. I never said I was giving all the answers here . Just presenting various sides of an argument. The other argument against unschooling is that children will not learn to sit down and do things they don’t want to do. That’s another loaded one, isn’t it?
 
Do we really WANT to teach our children that they should sit at a desk and do a half hour of workbook pages, completing all of them, even if they *got* the concept halfway through the first page, just because someone tells them they have to finish it all? I’ve heard people say ‘you have to prepare them for the real world, where they have to do what a boss says no matter what’. That’s a good point……the real world lurks………but my reply is, first of all, do we need to prepare them for the boss NOW, when they are under ten years old?
 
Isn’t there time for that later? And, not everyone ends up at a desk doing busywork for a boss….there are leaders, artists, inventors, creators, business owners, countless people who have to be self-led and accountable for their own actions and success.
 
I’d rather raise a leader than a follower.
 
But on to the third popular homeschooling concept…..eclectic homeschooling. Eclectic homeschoolers tend to create their own curriculum to fit their child’s’ interests and abilities rather than using a packaged curriculum that might not ‘fit’ on all levels. Eclectic homeschoolers don’t just stick to the book, they add their own materials and experiences. It’s a little bit of ‘school at home’ mixed with a little bit of ‘unschooling’…..eclectic homeschoolers might learn their science all hands-on, their language by using it in the home rather than using a book, and their math using a traditional workbook method with repetition. It’s a balanced approach.
Eclectic homeschooling lets the family cover material in their own way and on their own terms, but also ensures that ‘the basics’ are covered. Since most homeschoolers have to account to someone about their activities, this is a great way to accomplish that. I would classify our homeschooling style as eclectic, with leanings towards unschooling.
 
We use an approach called Unit Studies, where we choose a topic and study it for a period of time. When I say we have leanings towards unschooling, that is because we have found that some things kids really will just learn on their own. Like everything covered in traditional kindergarten, for example. I seldom sit down with flashcards or worksheets and taught neither kid their letters and numbers, but they know them.

More soon

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