Do you unschool your young children?

**Valerie in WA** · 09-14-2005, 11:52 AM

Please tell me about it!

I've been watching my dd's this week and they are very self-directed and I'm thinking that I'm interrupting their learning with all these silly academics.

My 6yo reads VERY well and 4yo asks to do math. Tell me how you would unschool these two.

**zakity** · 09-14-2005, 04:20 PM

We just started really doing "schoolwork" this year. My oldest is 9 and the twins are 7 (one twin is ADHD and the other has developmental delays). We unschooled because it was "leveling" and because it would accomodate all of our differences. We have the ADHD twin's diet modified so he can concentrate (eliminated dye and corn syrup) and the developmental delayed twin is now working at Kindergarten level (Woohoo!!!). Alot of what they learned the last few years was just what they learned by living and by discussions about things (how people lived, if they thought things were right or wrong and why, etc).

We worked on history and how people lived (day-to-day life) alot because of the leveling aspect and because it was easy to unschool. It also accomodated our short attention span issue. The delayed twin also is really into Medieval weaponry and it was easy to compare how they lived to the different time periods. We avoid this century somewhat because of alot of the horrid things that we have done to each other and I am just not prepared (or think they are either) to explain things like WWII to them.

We had a blow-up globe (it died finally, need a new one!) and we were always getting that out to see where someplace was. When we would take local trips (in the state), we would get out our local map and show them where we were going and have them follow along (by looking at mile markers and exit numbers and such-we have a truck driver map so it shows those things).

Play math games with them. We had a container (old sour cream container) of pennies and a die. You rolled the die and counted out how many pennies and then rolled the die again and counted out pennies and added them together. You can make it as simple or hard as you want and create new rules as you go. We have Smath (oh man is it boring!! - like Scrabble only with addition and subtraction - there is multiplication and division tiles also, we just aren't there yet). Chess is a good game for them to learn.

My kids helped me:
-cook - fractions, chemistry, counting, reading, life skills
-grocery shop - counting, counting by two's and by three's, budgeting, how to manage money, how to choose the best deal, the worth of a dollar, where food comes from, different cultures (from the different foods available), geography (where the different foods are grown), colors, reading (the labels, your list, etc), social interaction, life skills.
-clean - baking soda and vinegar for cleaning out the drains and getting rid of the smell (discussion of base and acids), how people use to clean in the old days, what they used to clean with in the old days, how other people clean, why we clean (germs, bacteria, etc), life skills.
-laundry - colors, sorting, blending of colors (when you mess up and wash something red with white undies and socks), how they used to wash clothes in the old times.

My kids are really into Antiques Roadshow and alot of the programs on PBS (Scientific Frontier, Nova). They beg to watch anything sciency or historyish. We also watch alot of travel shows (Rick Steve's, Globetreker, etc) because it shows the culture and gives the history of the place (and we look where it is on our handy-dandy globe).

Life skills are things that they need to learn to live (cleaning, cooking, laundry, sewing, etc). We work on alot of "home economics" type of stuff, but Life Skills includes working on the car and fixing things and such. I classify Life Skills as anything they need to live, so whatever isn't "schoolwork" is still "schoolwork".

My outlook on their learning is that they need to learn this whole list of things. It doesn't matter what order they need to learn it in. I figure if they learn how to balance a checkbook now instead of in "high school" then that is out of the way now, even if they are behind (ugh, hate to call it that, but by school standards) in reading or math.

PS: Where are you near in Washington? I am near Portland, Oregon.

**peanut** · 09-16-2005, 12:03 AM

I unschooled my girls when they were young. One is in university now and the other just finishing high school at home.

I used to facilitate their learning by including them in my activities, doing things with them (field trips/outings, whatever you want to call them), playing games with them, etc. We had family councils and family nights. We read to each other, wrote stories and made books for each other, played math games with raisins and chocolate chips...and ate the results.

We also used alphabet cereal to learn to spell. We played a game where dh would team up with one child and I with the other. We time ourselves to see how many words we could come up. The team with the most words won...and shared the alphabet cereal with everyone else who played the game.

We used to do nature studies down by the park. We'd take the kites and fly them (phys. ed.), talk about what keeps them up there (science), watch the clouds go by and try to figure out what they looked like (hmm...creative thinking?), ate lunch, played in the creek, look at bugs and plants with magnifiers, tried to identify them, tried to draw them, recorded sounds of the creek in different seasons, wrote stories or poems by the creek while snacking or sipping our drinks, walked quite a ways (phys. ed.) in the process of doing all the above!

If you think they may need some more formal bookwork, try using Golden Step Ahead activity books instead of actual schoolbooks for them. They are short on repetition but get the point across. My girls used to love them!

Oh, and take them to the library and show them the non-fiction collection for kids. Lots of activity and experiment books in there that are related to school subjects. Then supply them the space and tools to do the projects.

And don't forget carschooling! Have educational tapes in the cassette player in the car when you go places. Even if it's just children's music. You can get all kinds of stuff on tape.

HTH

**Valerie in WA** · 09-27-2005, 10:21 PM

Thank you both for your replies. Sorry it's taken me a while to get back...my mind has been off in other areas. First of all, I'm in Western WA, up north.

I seem to be able to find a lot of information about unschooling kids who can read, but less about pre-readers. This reminds me of when my 4yo was a baby. I was practicing Attachment Parenting, but I didn't know that others did it or what it was called. I just forged my own way - the way that seemed best to me. That's what we'll be doing with our schooling.

We are now into our 3rd week of unschooling. It just started with me being really busy one week, but it's gone so well that I'm going to stick with it. Basically, we get up every day and we live. My kids play. They are actually watching MORE tv *gasp*. They are watching a few educational shows - averaging a half-hour per day. I've spent a lot of time observing the girls. One day, I 'caught' them conducting science experiments based on a show they'd seen. They used the teeter-totter (see-saw), a few bricks, and their different body weights to experiment with the lifting power of a lever. Another day, I 'caught' the little one counting the cans in a case of pop. Given the opportunity, I do believe that they seek learning experiences.

The biggest difference is in me. I had noticed that I often put them off when they asked me a question or for information during time that I had designated as 'mine.' This made me sad. Now that I don't have 'school time' and 'my time,' I am finding that I am MUCH more patient. I am happy not only to answer questions, but even to offer explanations about what I'm doing. Y'know what I learned today? I learned that an almost 5yr old needs very little training to learn to hand wash dishes.