Unschooling? Chasing happiness

Are we Unschooling? I really don't know. The way I understand it, Unschooling is about letting the child direct their learning, not making them do school work they don't want to; providing them the means to learn what they want to learn, when they want to.  It definitely takes away pressure and adds a lot of joy to our lives.  Our unschooling looks like this:

I've given up on "structure" in general. We have "learning time" in my bed, reading Life of Fred, doing MadLibs, and for my little guy, doing Language Arts from a "1st grade everything" kind of worksheet book. I don't force writing on PJ, but I compromise with "I'll write this sentence, you write the next." He does all right with that and seems very happy with an approximate hour per day of studies. He's only 6 and pretty brilliant, so I'm not too worried. Especially when Daddy comes home and goes to give them kisses and PJ pipes up with some comment about what comes at the end of Daddy's sentence. Or when he's adding 8+8+8 while driving to meet friends at the beach. Clearly we're learning.

I am wishing for more social time. We haven't had enough. This past week we were able to spend time with PJ's BFF, Henry and his sisters Keely and Sadie. I had to share this picture because they are just so freaking cute. They were winding down to a little Scooby Doo on a Friday afternoon.



"Essay" on Sea Monkeys

As for the T Man, age 8.5 and going on 14, trying to tell this little bugger anything is a challenge. He shut me up in the car the other day when I asked if he knew where the word "riviera" came from. He said "No, and I don't want to know. I'm just not interested in it." Well alrighty then. I think he's being a disrespectful brat, but then I guess he knows what he doesn't want to learn about. I just wish we had a better, clearer idea of what he does want to learn about so I could feed his thirst for knowledge. I'm pretty sure that he thinks he knows everything already: just like a bratty teenager. (sigh) The boy's reading and Science is middle-school level, he has an amazing grasp on History, his sense of humor and understanding of the world is outstanding. His math is coming along - Dreambox just moved him into pre-algebra, so he's definitely on the right track.

T will do a minimal amount of formal study time without a fuss: a couple of lessons on Dreambox, rapt attention to Life of Fred and MadLibs, and will occasionally do a paragraph of writing. Outside of this, he's doing what he wants. He reads voraciously, researches things on the web, and does any kind of web games he can find that are free. These past couple of weeks I rebuilt a couple of old desktop PCs for the boy's exclusive use. (T had already broken my laptop screen hinge and downloaded malware and I really need to make this laptop last for another 6 months or there's no Christmas gifts under the tree!)   So now they each have a PC that is fast enough to accommodate Dreambox, Ooka Island and whatever kind of malware or virus they wish to experiment with. I can easily wipe and reload.

Lately T has figured out how to download maps for Minecraft and load them, he has been downloading Google Chrome apps, and then he found Wizards 101 which has turned out to be fairly educational. The important part is that he become comfortable with the computer and confident installing software, learning the file system, and also researching fixes on the web. This is where the future is, barring zombie invasions or the loss of electricity ;-)

I'm feeling so much better, so much more confident that this new direction of less formal study is the way to go.

We are happier. Shouldn't we chase happiness? I am sure many agree that chasing A's is better... just maybe not for us. My loving
sister, Aunt Mimi, says "This is OUR TIME NOW."   She's right - we need to make the most of it. So... in case their is an outbreak, a Zombie invasion or the lights go out and all hell breaks loose on 12/12/12... we've certainly had a good time while it lasted. ha ha

So, what do you think? Should I be worried that what we're doing is enough for now? I'm just curious if I'm delusional... 

Hellacious Weeks 5 and 6 of Home "School"

Something broke last week.  We lost our groove.  T is punching his brother.  PJ is asking to go to school.  T is getting anxiety over thinking about a family trip mid-October.  Just shoot me.

We started off the week last week with optimism and some drive.  They each took a turn on Dreambox for math.  T was struggling with sorting 10s and 1s and the all the possible combinations of that.  I reached for the base 10 blocks and showed him how they could group.  He resisted even looking at the blocks, and then conceded that it made sense.  Whenever he hits something that he doesn't know, the boy freezes up!  Ugh.

PJ asks to play math games on the tablet and the next thing I know he's playing Angry Birds.  Busted.  He's grounded from screens for the day.

By mid-week we were bustling around getting ready for PJ's 6th birthday party.  He just wanted to have his few friends over for a "messy party" that consisted of a dinosaur dig (sand+plaster of paris), silly string fight, shaving cream play, cornstarch and water and flour and water stations, and a slime center.  It was messy.  His cake was a custom Mommy Creation - Minecraft.  He loved it.

I also had to use up those beautiful apples we got up in the mountains the week before.  While I peeled and sliced, PJ searched for recipes on the tablet and read me the ingredients.  He learned cup, tsp, tbsp.  I was quite impressed he had the patience to review it with me.

The T Man was assigned a fact-finding mission.  I asked him to choose a country and find five interesting facts about it on Google.  First he chose Asia - and I explained to him that Asia is not a country and we walked over to the World Map on the classroom wall for a quick review.  I think he was embarassed, but isn't this what "school" is for?   In the end he chose Brazil, specifically Rio.  Here are his findings: 



 

We did this video, because T really hates writing anything down.  This is apparently pretty typical for gifted boys.  Even so, during the last few weeks, I have been able to coerce some writing out of him.  He tries to get my requirement from 5 sentences down to three.  This week's writing wasn't from one of the prompts in his book.  He just wrote some lines down on the back of the book and wrote:

"One day i was attacked by a ... taco.  It tried to eat me. {wait shouldn't it be the other way round?}  lucky me I had a knife. {I don't know why}  Then I sliced him (or "it") in half.  I had defeated him.  

the end 

Note: The braces were conversation bubbles on the opposite page.  

I don't know whether to be impressed or horrified.

PJ produced this little beauty today.  He flipped through his First Grade workbook after studying sentence formation, "naming words" and periods, did a little math and decided that counting the dots and decoding the colors was an awesome idea.  Ohhhhkay, I'll go with that.  T would have cried if I asked him to color anything at age 6!!

    

This week PJ and I moved onto double digit addition.  There weren't any tears because we quit 12 problems into the lesson, after seeing the horrified expression that came over PJ's face at the problem:  23 + 37.  We'll see those again in a day or two.  Ha ha

 

PJ has asked several times to go back to school but I refuse to put him into the local LAUSD school just out of sheer fear of what could happen.  (In case you are wondering why, you can check out the earlier blog on our experience with the school system here).  I was feeling so down about our effort to homeschool, I did actually try to place him in his best friend's school this week, as much as I didn't think it was a great idea for the whole family.  But I was turned down for financial aid and I don't think it's SUCH a great idea to turn our lives upside down trying to pull the money together for it each month.  These are the days I shake my head and wish we actually had a CHOICE of where we put our tax money.  And I question - if we aren't using this money for my kid's spot in school, where does it go?  And then I move on.

 

It hasn't been easy to motivate these two lately and I am wishing they were more self-motivated to do anything other than play video games. There are days I want to just want to look at job ads. But maybe tomorrow will be better?   I am ever hopeful.  I am not afraid to change my strategy.  And I also happen to really like my boys, so that helps. A lot.  

 

Week 4 of the "School" Year: Nature and Lessons Abound

Oh dear, where to begin?  We had a LOT of nature this week and frankly I am feeling every one of my forty-two years.  Chasing after little boys and trying to weave educational opportunities into our every day lives can be a bit tiring.  But I am NOT complaining!  This week has been a whole lot of awesome.

We packed a lot of learning in on Monday because we had a big Geocache Expedition on Tuesday with our Gifted Kids Meetup friends at the Botanic Garden on Tuesday.  It was hot.  It was a trek.  But we finally won our little (nano) prize on our third cache attempt at the garden.  Viola!  A nano log!  Woot!  I think we hooked our friends on this fun little hobby.

Wednesday we packed the car and the pup and headed to the San Bernardino Mountains to Aunt Mimi's Family Cabin.  It's a hidden little valley owned by a small group of people for about a hundred years with a wonderful history attached to it.  It is cluster of cabins nestled between two streams and separated by fields of apple trees.  It is my version of Heaven.  I had visited the cabin when I was my kid's ages and this orchard contains some of my fondest childhood memories.  Now my children are very privileged to get to experience it too. 

We arrived, unpacked our cooler and headed directly to the stream to play.  The weather was perfect, around 78 degrees and the fresh stream water chilled our feet.  Of course the boys have to go neck deep whenever possible.

My original plan was to build rafts and huts for GI Joe, to test speed and flotation, to make bows and arrows and test speed via bow tension... Lots of plans for these trips to the river.  You know what they say about Best Laid Plans?  Yup...the kids had their own plans, which included doing what they do best: playing.  And who am I to try to force them to do this stuff anyway?  Ha ha, jokes on me, Teacher Mom.

There was lots of learning happening anyway.  Aunt Mimi surprised the boys with Golf Cart driving lessons, which must have turned out to be pretty funny but I missed the lesson and that's probably a good thing for the state of my heart health.  Apparently T Man nearly rammed them into an apple tree!  He got better on the next lesson :) 

We gave Aunt Mimi a lesson in Geocaching and we were all happily surprised to find an awesome cache within a mile of the cabin. It was an old ammunition case filled with lots of toys.

On the way back to the cabin, we got one of our greatest lessons of the week: finding a baby bird that fell out of its nest.  T was vehemently against taking the baby home and thought we should leave it flailing in the dead grass next to the road.  Mimi and I were all for attempting to save its life.  We put him in a shoe box and immediately queried our Facebook Friends to see if they could help identify it so we could feed it.  Duckling?  Heron?  We were given a number to a volunteer organization that works to save wild birds and got some very valuable advice on finding baby birds like this:  Put it back in the tree it fell out of, watch for an hour and hope and pray mama bird finds it.  Essentially my little T was right.  We shouldn't have messed with it.  I found this out too late.  By the next morning the baby couldn't peep anymore and was quickly on his way to birdy heaven. I feel awful about it, but isn't that how we learn lessons?  Today Mimi said her son thought he was a Vulture.  I'm pretty sure that is correct.  (sigh)

Near the end of the day, it was clear that the golf cart was the boon of the visit.  They boys obsessed on it.  T pointed right at Mimi and said "You need to take us out in the golf cart."  This got an eyebrow raising!  Mimi explained that she is a Communication Expert and that she's pretty sure that this is not the way to convince someone to do something for you.  She coached him on how to properly ask someone for something.  This was an invaluable lesson and I am so grateful to have her do this because it doesn't matter how much mama harps on her kids for their behavior, coming from Mom it sounds like a regular nag session.  Coming from Mimi, however, makes all the difference in the world. 

I am, for the most part, solely responsible for the complete education of my children. Not just reading, writing and arithmetic, but life skills, communication, social skills, manners, self-care, reproduction, respect, love, logic and common sense, caring, you name it.  It is a daunting task that I often try not to think about, but live in the moment and make every situation count to the education of these boys.  It is a wonderful gift to be given when someone steps up and helps in this journey.

We got a little sit-down work done during our full day at the cabin...the kids use dice to do addition (PJ) and multiplication (T) and they wrote on their Favorite Thing about the Mountain Cabin.  (the golf cart, of course)  We started reading Life of Fred Butterflies and it covered the life cycle of the butterfly, and moved onto Astronomy and the Orion constellation, specifically Betelgeuse, the super-sized star that makes up Orion's left shoulder.  Apparently this star is the size of a football field compared to our Sun, if you can imagine our Sun as the size of an orange.  Crazy Big. 

One of the awesome things about getting to visit the apple orchard in September is that it's Harvest Time!  Mimi took us into a separate orchard where we got to bag up all kinds of apples.  And of course, in the Harvest tradition, we had to bake a pie.  By this point in the day, around 4:00, the kids were pooped out, so they watched TV and I poured a glass of wine and started to peel apples.  I'm proud to say, it turned out to be one FINE apple pie :)

 

On our way out of the mountains on Friday, the kids were able to jump out of the car and play in a real, honest to God, mountain waterfall.  What a way to end an amazing few days in nature.   

Home Sweet Home brings us pictures of the Shuttle Endeavor flying piggy back on a 747 on it's way to LAX and its final resting place, the California Science Center.  We are looking forward to visiting it when it opens.  During the week without the crowds, of course, because we have that freedom now that we homeschool.  Just like the freedom to explore nature whenever we are invited to the Heaven that is the Mountain Cabin.  And the availability to spend these precious times with Aunt Mimi and learn from her too.