I’ve been thinking a lot more about unschooling lately (well ever since my 9yo decorated an entire page of Singapore with the phrase “I want to be unschooled.” Yeah, she’s a funny one..
I have both publicly and privately stated that I’m an unschooler at heart – I like it. It feels comfortable, but it scares the hell out of me too. But the fact is, we really don’t use curriculum – the girls do 15 mins or so of Time4Learning every day, they practice piano for 15 minutes, and they were doing a lesson or two of math every day (although we are on a break from math) – and that was it. The rest of the day is filled with playing, activities, classes, fieldtrips, videogames, etc. So we aren’t that far off from unschooling, right?
wrong.
I think I was wrong. I now think that I never understood unschooling – well wait, I take that back, I understood it at face level, but I am now thinking I never really got it.
Anyway, I have updated this blogs through other crisis-of-faith revelations and thoughts, and I just wanted to let you know what was going on here…and maybe someday, when I have the time, I’ll write a real post about what’s in my head. I’m still not sure that unschooling is for us, but some of what’s in my head, and some of what I want for my kids has been certainly interesting to ponder.
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Hey Deanna,
Not sure if you will remember me but I am one of
Gina’s friends. We went on that field trip to the nature place with you guys when you came to visit. Anyway I wanted to see how you were doing on your blog since Gina left our hs world :.-(
I too have been doing not so hot in this caegory. I also like the idea but don’t think I can commit to it, kwim? I love all the blogs about unschooling and it makes me feel that we will be okay even if I did goof off alot this year. We do our Math, read literature everyday, do science and history alternativley every other day. We have been working on Native americans since November but it’s more to do with slacking then really delving deep. For science we just pick whatever sounds neat for an experiment and such.
I’ll be back around some time to see what else you are up to.
Vanessa
Don’t know if you’re still blogging or unschooling or what? I always stop by to check and see if you have a new post. I too have thought about unschooling but I’m scared. Scared the kids won’t turn out ‘all done’, kwim? Schooling is so ingrained in me its hard to walk away from. Any advice would be great. Would love to hear how your homeschooling is going.