Posted on 1st September 2010 by Mish in homeschool | unschool
homeschool, homeschooling, radical unschooling, unschool, unschooling
“School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn’t take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.” -H. L. Mencken
This quote makes me think about the argument against unschooling that says, “children need to learn how to do things that are boring or things they don’t like because that’s life!”
What a sad way to think of the world. I believe that just by living life, children learn that sometimes you have to do unpleasant tasks, but if they are in the context of an overall joyful life, then it doesn’t matter. For example, I’m a writer and I like to make my living by writing. I enjoy it and the research that goes along with it. Sometimes, I have to write about boring things or things I don’t necessarily enjoy, but I know that if I want to get paid, continue to support my family as a writer and have all of the freedoms that go along with that, then I need to write about running shoes sometimes. Kids don’t need to be subjected to boredom and menial tasks day after day for years to learn this.
If they are allowed to find the things they enjoy, explore their passions and learn at their own pace while living life, this is something they will do naturally. When you’re doing something you love, doing the “grunt” work that comes along with it doesn’t seem so bad. I love having kids and while changing diapers or cleaning up other unpleasant messes isn’t appealing, I do it because I love my children – I didn’t have to learn how in a school!
Technorati Tags: homeschool, homeschooling, radical unschooling, unschool, unschooling
Posted on 29th August 2010 by Mish in homeschool | unschool
homeschooling, large families, radical unschooling, unschool, unschooling
I’ve recently visited a number of websites that have inspired me and given me excellent tools and resources for homeschooling. Here’s a list. If you have a website that helps you with your homeschooling routine or just inspires you to muddle through on some of those “not so great” days, then let me know – I’m happy to add it!
Almighty Dad This is a really good site that, while a little more curriculum-based in the homeschooling area than I am, has excellent resources. Keith is also a good writer and his posts are funny and informative. I also love that he’s not afraid to tell you his real opinion (I think!) about what has worked for his family and what hasn’t.
Sandra Dodd Her whole site is just amazing and constantly reinforces my belief that my children will learn, I just have to provide the conditions for it. Which often means backing off instead of plunging in and forcing things to happen – especially important now that my 5-year-old is learning to read. He’s doing so much on his own, but I feel like I have to get in there and help him out and “teach” him something. Really, I know, I need to leave him be…I’m trying. Sandra’s site is unschooling world. Any question you can think of is likely answered here! And just so you know, Sandra’s three kids were unschooled their whole lives, are all now “grown-ups,” and making their way in the world just fine.
Free Homeschooling 101 A great site full of links and ideas of ways to home/unschool for free. Unless noted, everything on the site is free and helps even old homeschooling moms like me see that you don’t have to spend money to educate a child!
Unschooling Rules Clark Aldrich writes: “This blog, whose name is both an oxymoron and a double entendre, seeks to identify and frame some of the guidelines that these home and unschoolers are uncovering in childhood education. To do this, Unschooling Rules is organized by The Seven C’s of Education.”
Life Learning Magazine is a whole magazine dedicated to unschooling. It’s a support-system for self-directed learning and, according to publisher Wendy Priesnitz, you can “read all about how other people just like you and your children have learned without being taught…what helps and what hinders, and what they have achieved in their lives as a result. Laugh, cry and identify with parents who are helping themselves and their children learn from the real world…and learning a lot about themselves along the way. Think about how we are limited by a society that believes in coercive education…and how we can transcend those limits in our daily lives. Find support and reassurance for interest-based, learner-directed education (for all ages) and non-coercive, natural parenting.”
Explore these websites and you’re bound to find even more!
Technorati Tags: homeschooling, large families, radical unschooling, unschool, unschooling
Posted on 2nd August 2010 by Mish in homeschool | unschool
homeschooling, unschooling, unschooling math
Liam has struggled for years with math. I tried for many years to force him to do it. We spent hours, weeks, months trying all kinds of homeschool curriculum. I sent him to school, hoping they could do something because he just didn’t get it. He would stare at a worksheet forever. He wouldn’t even try sometimes. Other times he would just get upset. Finally, about two years ago, I gave up. I decided that God made calculators for a reason and left him alone for a while.
This morning, I gave Liam a piece of paper with some multiplication problems on it. He wanted to learn some harder math, so I said we had to go back to some of the basics. He’s older now, so I thought perhaps he would be mature enough to not get frustrated. I figured we’d have to start from square one. We didn’t. He completed a full page of multiplication and division problems in about 3 minutes with little help from me.
It’s not like we haven’t done math stuff, though. We play plenty of math-related games; Liam cooks a lot following recipes; and he’s always figuring stuff out with his dad – whether it’s a weather thing, an astronomy thing or a carpentry project. We just haven’t forced him to sit down and “do math.”
His interest was piqued, I believe, because Alex got a big, new Algebra book in the mail recently. Alex likes math, is good at it and is working towards getting into college – so this is something he includes in his day. To be honest, because of Liam’s learning disabilities and the inability of even “special educators” to help him “get” some academic subjects, I thought we would just be happy with the basics. But Liam and the unschooling process have surprised me once again!
All of that cooking and talking and playing and doing really does work. He just got it this time. I should have trusted it all along…but until you see the gears turn in person, I think sometimes we wonder if we’re doing the right thing…at least I do. The best part? I haven’t had to cajole, force, or holler my way through a math lesson in a long time. Learning doesn’t have to be proven on a worksheet for it to happen. But it’s nice to see, once in a while, that it does…
Technorati Tags: homeschooling, unschooling, unschooling math
Posted on 22nd July 2010 by Mish in homeschool | unschool
einstein quote, radical unschooling, unschooling
Courtesy of the Riesenbergs, an unschooling family with 9 kids in Ohio…
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” –Albert Einstein
Technorati Tags: einstein quote, radical unschooling, unschooling
Posted on 15th July 2010 by Mish in homeschool
homeschooling, how to unschool a large family, john holt, radical unschooling, unschool, unschooling
“Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how.” -John Holt
I love this quote. It helps me when I think we’re not doing enough “homeschooler” things. The only problem I have with being a homeschooler is that I occasionally feel like I’m inadequate for the task. Sometimes I don’t want to try and make everything we do a “learning experience.” Then I remember, living and learning go hand in hand. That if I answer the questions my children have and if we look things up and discover things together – that’s learning. I don’t have to try and push and make them journal all of their experiences or create experiences just for them to learn things. We follow our curiosity and we follow our passions and eventually we learn what we want to do and what we don’t want to do.
A process of elimination. I tell my children frequently that they should explore and do things that interest them. “But what if I don’t like it?” my son asked. “Well, then, you can cross one more thing off the list of what you don’t want to do when you grow up.” Sometimes, I think, it’s important to explore things that you might have a small interest in if only to learn that you don’t like it. If you don’t explore it, though, then you’ll never know and you may find yourself always wondering…
Technorati Tags: homeschooling, how to unschool a large family, john holt, radical unschooling, unschool, unschooling
Posted on 8th July 2010 by Mish in homeschool
david albert, homeschool, homeschooling, john taylor gatto, joyce reed, natural life books, unschooling, what really matters
“What Really Matters” by David Albert and Joyce Reed is a remarkable conversation between two homeschooling parents and advocates. Joyce Reed is a retired Associate Dean at Brown University and homeschooled her five children. David Albert is a writer and homeschooling father of two.
Reading through their experiences and thoughts on life learning is a breath of fresh air. This isn’t a book about how to teach your kids. It isn’t about which workbooks to buy and which curriculum to follow. It doesn’t give you a schedule, or worksheets or tell you that kids need a gold star at the end of each day.
Imagine you are a new homeschooling parent (or even an old one like me), and David and Joyce sit near you at a restaurant. They start to have this amazing conversation about homeschooling and what they did and what they think and you get to hear all of it (much to the annoyance of your partner sitting across from you).
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Technorati Tags: david albert, homeschool, homeschooling, john taylor gatto, joyce reed, natural life books, unschooling, what really matters
Posted on 30th June 2010 by Mish in homeschool
curriculum, homeschool workbooks, homeschooling, radical unschooling, unschooling, workbooks
Do workbooks equal good homeschooling?
As a kid, I loved workbooks. I loved workbooks in school and I loved the ones my mother bought me at the store. I also loved the activity books they sold around Christmas time. I loved to color the pages, do the word puzzles and answer the questions. It was something I was good at and I felt a sense of accomplishment at the end of each page. However, I have had a lifelong issue with seeking validation, perhaps related to my love of workbooks!
My boys don’t like workbooks. Not even a little. They don’t like activity books or workbooks. They think they’re silly and a waste of time. If I suggest getting out one of the expensive workbooks I purchased at the school supply store (a favorite place of mine), they sneer and hem and haw. They sigh heavily and bargain with me about how many pages they have to do before they can go back outside and play.
My oldest, who is now off on his own and no longer homeschooling, liked workbooks as a small child. Or maybe he didn’t and just learned that if he did them quick I’d get off his back! Either way, I thought for a long time that the only way to teach kids things was to get them a workbook. Weird, huh? Well, we live and learn.
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Technorati Tags: curriculum, homeschool workbooks, homeschooling, radical unschooling, unschooling, workbooks
Posted on 7th June 2010 by Mish in attachment parenting | frugal | homeschool
cable TV, commercials, no TV, TV free
Add another mark to the “Mean Mommy” post, because I have thrown our TV into the garage! Yes, my friends – now my children must suffer without cable TV AND a microwave oven! Oh dear Lord someone call social services – how will we survive?`1
I have had a love/hate relationship with the television for quite some time now. When I was a child, it was a love/love relationship. I would have watched all day everyday. I will say, I was addicted to television. I’ve done a lot of research on TV. And I appreciate its benefits, really I do. I believe that there are some very interesting programs out there. As a dedicated unschooler, for the past year and a half I followed the “go ahead and watch what you want when you want philosophy (obviously, with some guidelines for younger viewers). And do you know what I discovered? Not that my children were turning it off and going to play with their Legos or do other things (although often they did), but that usually, they would just watch it. Once, I turned it off and they still sat there and watched it. Waiting.
We turned off the cable TV. We hadn’t had cable TV in many years due to our rural location in Vermont and only watched DVDs and videos there. That was better by far. I still found, though, that even with ample library books, playground equipment – heck, they have a climbing wall in the play room – they still preferred to watch movies ALL OF THE TIME. I would even watch with them sometimes, so used to having the TV on was I. Kiara couldn’t get through a morning without at least 2 episodes of Dora and a Ni Hao Kai Lan. Jack was starting to watch everything Cartoon Network had to offer. Once the cable was gone they found every movie we owned and watched marathons. Unbelievable. This has to end, I thought. While I appreciate that TV can have its place, I also appreciate that it can be a severe addiction.
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Posted on 3rd June 2010 by Mish in attachment parenting | homeschool
abc news, attachment parenting, dayna martin, martin family, radical unschooling, unschooling
I watched an ABC “news” report on the Martin family of New Hampshire. Mom Dayna Martin is the unschooling mom of four. What I found so interesting about the report was that despite Juju Chang’s pointed questions about “shouldn’t your kids know who JFK and FDR are?” Dayna’s replies were, while confident, not what people want to hear. I think this is where the misconceptions about unschooling begin. What point I wish Dayna had made (and really, I’m a fan of hers, I love a lot of her stuff), is that we unschoolers do know who FDR, JFK and all the other presidents are. We know who Shakespeare is and we know all about Nathanial Hawthorne and Goethe and all kinds of stuff. We just don’t sit down at a desk and “study” them for hours a day.
We go to the library. We get real books and documentaries and then we talk about the things in them. We talk about who these people are and how their actions in their day affect the current events we are facing now. I subscribe wholeheartedly to the Sandra Dodd notion of strewing. For example, I subscribe to the newspaper and while it’s not the greenest thing I could do (we do use the newspaper for numerous other projects however), it is a good way for the kids to see national and local events and read about what they are interested in.
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Technorati Tags: abc news, attachment parenting, dayna martin, martin family, radical unschooling, unschooling
Posted on 21st May 2010 by Mish in attachment parenting | food | frugal | homeschool
food, food budgets, frugal living, homeschool, inc. controlling food, large families, large family budgets, unschool, unschooling
I don’t really control what my kids eat. That’s not true. I control what comes into the house. I am very label conscious. I won’t buy anything that has high fructose corn syrup or BHT. If there is an organic version, I’ll buy that. I don’t buy prepackaged foods. I don’t buy pre-made cookies and other treats. Although the occasional bag of Oreos does work its way into our house. We also eat frozen, pre-made pizzas if I have forgotten to make dough in the morning!
I buy a lot – and I mean a lot – of fresh fruit, cheese, all-natural granola bars, applesauce, frozen fruit for smoothies, milk, juice, some types of crackers, carrots, and cereal.
And then I do this crazy thing – I let the kids eat it. Pretty much whenever they want and in whatever order. I’ve had kids who have requested peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast, cereal for dinner and all kinds of stuff in between.
Why do I do it? Because I still can’t take more than two cookies out of the cookie jar without feeling like I’m doing something bad. Because I still need to “clean my plate” even at the detriment of my own weight (and I’ve had some issues there) every night at dinner.
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Technorati Tags: food, food budgets, frugal living, homeschool, inc. controlling food, large families, large family budgets, unschool, unschooling
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