Unschooling Update

I feel like I am still trying on that label, like a new coat I've brought home from the store--but haven't removed the tags from yet. I keep trying it on and deciding, again, whether it fits, whether I like it enough to keep it. The conservative part of me wants something a little less bold, like "eclectic" or "relaxed." Is it really accurate to call what we're doing "unschooling"?

Because I'm not letting them play all day. We have certain subjects that we do every day, whether they want to or not. I'm not radical enough, yet, to "trust that a child will seek out and learn what he needs to know, when he needs to know it, without coercion, without school or school type methods....." There's just too much of the teacher in me to eschew "school type methods," and too much experience with my kids needing coercion guidance, frequently, to use their time wisely.

But we are not using a curriculum. Despite my intentions to do so--compulsively, I'd really like to finish up at least our spelling and grammar workbooks from last year--we haven't cracked a workbook or a textbook, not even a math book, yet. I haven't drawn up a schedule, or a checklist; we're not getting to every subject area every day. Yet Bantam13 said to me yesterday, "I'm learning more this year than I ever have before."

So what have we been doing? On a daily basis, we're focusing on reading, writing and 'rithmetic. We're working in other subjects almost daily too, but they don't even seem like school to the kids--like music (piano and guitar practice), PE (running with Dad, dance class), Bible (reading aloud), reading comprehension and speech (learning/presenting new magic tricks). We have enrichment classes starting up soon, and their theater classes have already started. We've touched on history and science when these subjects have arisen, and we've pulled out a couple of activity kits we could never get to before, to study meteorology and crystal formation--but we're keeping our main focus on the basics.

Writing, for example, has always been our bugaboo--I love for my kids to write, but it's time consuming. Rewriting and polishing is so frustrating to a kid who's got a whole checklist of other subjects he needs to get to. But if I say, "Would you rather go back to a grammar workbook? A spelling workbook? Remember that's what we're covering when we edit your writing"--then they're considerably more cooperative about spending that time correcting errors and rewriting. And they're rewarded--and get keyboarding practice, too--by publishing the results, along with pictures, in their own blogs! (see sidebar)

For reading, for the first time in years (since we've done Sonlight for the past two years), I am not assigning them their reading books. So they don't have a "school" book and a "pleasure" book going--they're focusing on one that they've picked. Bantam13 has been reading the fifth Harry Potter book and is enjoying it so much that he keeps choosing to go read--even over going out with the neighborhood kids, one time. I don't recognize this boy! He always complained about the Sonlight readers--too hard and/or boring, he usually said, and he wasn't a fast enough reader to have much time left over for his own selections. But he is amazing himself with his ability to concentrate, stay awake and lose himself in the story--something it seems he's never been able to do before, even with Harry Potter, because he keeps remarking on it. That's worth gold to me!

We're also reading aloud from a book that I picked just for them--a favorite of mine when I was their age, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. We are reviewing vocabulary as we come across words which I feel need explaining; I am also pointing out writing style items of note, such as how she builds suspense and intrigue. The book has raised questions of science as well. They are loving it.

Math was the scariest subject to teach without a curriculum, since I'm not really a math person. But in my "back to basics" approach, I knew we had to start with the simple facts that my oldest son had never really mastered. With Saxon Math last year, I'd observed repeatedly how long it took him to do problems, and I'd prescribed daily time with the Flashmaster. But his is not an independent learning style, despite my urgings to develop one--which did not coincide well with him frequently finding himself third in line for my teacherly attention, last year especially.

So it's been addition and subtraction flashcards, for him and his 4th grade brother, for the last month. Part of me wants to freak out because, how will we ever get him through that Saxon 76 book this year? The other part of me is watching him grow by leaps and bounds, in confidence and in his ability to do mental math, as he notices patterns and develops strategies, especially for numbers in the teens and above (our flashcards go up to + 12, and begin with 24-). The practice is exactly what his brother needs as well. I've looked at MathUSee's Intermediate book to remind me what else we could be reviewing, and we've also worked on place value and reading and writing numbers up to one billion and down to thousandths. My plan is to keep following our noses through the math world--after multiplication and division come fractions, decimals, percents, basic geometry and algebra, right?--and eventually look at the Saxon book and see what we left out. Or maybe we'll switch to MathUSee--we'll see.

So what do you think? Are we unschooling?

We're not following the school's scope and sequence for 7th grade, but my 7th grader says he's learning more than he's ever learned in a school year, so far. He's loving reading, writing daily without complaint, and gaining so much confidence in math. (His comment was: "It was always too hard and I hated it, so I didn't really learn it.") We're focusing on what they want to learn and what I think they need to learn. And it's surprising how many extras we're fitting in around those "big rocks."