Deschooling, Unschooling, and Homeschooling- What do they mean, and why should we consider them? Part TWO.

Stephanie says:

I am still super new at unschooling and am learning what it means! I by no means claim to know everything about it! However, I chose to begin using the term to show the stark contrast from where we started in our homeschool, 3 years ago, and the journey it’s been and the direction it is heading.

My definition of unschooling is embracing the learning lifestyle and trusting our children and ourselves that life is full of learning, children are full of curiosity, and have natural curiosities that spur them on to learn. It’s believing that children gain knowledge organically! They don’t need systems, methods, curriculum or teachers to impart knowledge to them and move along at a certain pace. Each child is an individual with a natural curiosity to learn, with interests and desires of their own. The world is full of innate wonder that children organically want to learn about, when we give them the freedom, time, and space to do so.

Unschooling removes the fears we often have about our children and questions like “Are they behind?” “Do they need to be doing more right now?” “What if they never learn to ____?” etc. Unschooling gives full joy in learning because we as homeschool parents don’t force children to participate in things that do not interest them or things they aren’t ready for. We aren’t overwhelmed by specific schedules or methods, instead, learning happens organically through living. The beauty of this is we can “strew”, expose, and continue to immerse our children in rich education and “spread a learning feast”, but let them partake in what they desire. The more I do this, the more I am overjoyed at how my children show me when they’re ready for things! Unschooling changes our minds and perspectives and makes us aware of how natural learning happens and how children truly learn best. We just have to be willing to be present, ready to observe and support them as it happens. Children learn best when they feel empowered, are given autonomy, trust, time, and space! When a child finds value and meaning in what they are doing, they will find the intrinsic motivation to learn and to acquire the skills they need to carry out the task. Unschooling breaks down the traditional view of “school subjects” and instead sees reading, math, writing, science, social studies, etc. in everything!

Stephanie says:

Oh phew! This is a hard question, as you can imagine, because every day looks so different! I think I’ll start with talking about how I used to feel like such a failure or like I was drowning in overwhelm because I couldn’t stay consistent in our school work to save my life! Between the resistance I would get, sibling squabbles, out of the box ways of learning that didn’t seem to fit any curriculum, rhythm, or style I tried, I couldn’t figure out what would work for us! It turns out, I wasn’t failing, we were just unschoolers! Not sticking to a school rhythm is what works for us.

We have familiar pillars that give pattern and consistency to our days, but they revolve around our needs, not our school work. We have slow mornings on our home days and the kids get what we call first breakfast (cereal, granola bars, yogurt, toast) while I sip coffee and wake up. Then we typically have “second breakfast” as the baby naps and this is where we often make waffles together and do a quick morning time, usually Bible time. As soon as the kids are done eating they’re typically ready to run off and play. Sometimes this is indoors, sometimes out. We eat lunch together and will often play math games over lunch, read aloud, or do a short reading lesson like word building or something along those lines, if they’re up for it.

Sometimes we don’t do any of that and we just eat and chat and enjoy one another’s company. I do ask my oldest children to do handwriting 2-3x a week, but this used to be one of our biggest battles and I won’t make it one anymore. If they’re in a mood where they really don’t want to, I don’t force it. I also observe whatever writing they’ve done on their own during the week and if they’ve already been writing when they write notes/make crafts or other things, I don’t think they also need to do their handwriting book! Something new I have started to do is to ask them to help me write our grocery list or a list of supplies we need for an experiment, etc. or they can type this on the notes of my phone. We are also about to hopefully start penpals soon, too!

We usually have quiet time after lunch and I often rest as the baby naps or get a few things done while the kids play or watch shows/listen to audio books.

Sometimes we reconvene for a late afternoon “tea time”. We often enjoy some kind of treat together, whether it be something we baked together or just something small. On Fridays, we often do a science experiment or art project, one we have picked out together. The difference between now versus how it used to be is that it isn’t required. I used to show a list of things that needed be done during the day and while I gave choices within those, I still expected them to get done. Or I would say it’s X time (science, math, reading, etc.) and ask them to gather around and do the lesson/task together. Now, I ask and invite and see what they want to do.

Some afternoons we meet neighbors at a park or take a walk together before it’s time for dinner. Other times we play games together, the kids play while I work, or sometimes we watch something together that they’re interested in learning about, or a new educational show we have found, or we read more.

Then it’s dinner and some down time or a family walk before we get ready for bed.

We often read aloud before bed and often read a book on their level and then read aloud the chapter book they’ve chosen. Oftentimes different children have picked different chapter books, so my husband and I tag team and we read 1-2 chapters out of the chapter book out of the different books. I’m learning to let go and not require my older children to read if they don’t want to. Sometimes they want to help me read the books that are on their level and other times they don’t and would prefer to follow along as I read. But they ask to read every single night and this makes me ecstatic!

We are a part of a co-op once a week and our W+F group. The boys participate in tennis and my oldest daughter does dance. We also have field trips with our groups as well!

Stephanie says:

Like I said before and I truly want to make clear is that I’m in the thick of making these transitions and shifting my mindset. I’m still in the process of deconstructing my traditional view of subjects and curriculum. But for the longest time, I kept feeling like no curriculum would work for us! Especially one of my children, it didn’t seem to matter what curriculum I would try, they’d like it when it was new, but sure enough after a week or so, the newness wore off and I’d be facing resistance and refusal all over again.

I still struggle to not feel I have to use curriculum! I still feel the pressure on myself to touch each “subject”, but more and more I’m learning to let go and simply live! And I’m seeing my children blossom right before my very eyes!

So, yes! We do use curriculum, but I’m beginning to see that we use it if it works and if we want to. We don’t feel we have to in order to learn and we don’t feel tied to follow its schedule/sequence/scope. I’m not pining trying to figure out the “best” one when my children show resistance. Learning is far more like spaghetti, than waffles. It’s all intertwined and flows together in a very interconnected way, it’s not separate and compartmentalized, like curriculum often presents learning. Unschoolers don’t believe curriculum is necessary to learn, but it can be a tool when used with freedom and joy.

The other day I put on a song by Tchaikovsky and my children wanted to know where he was from. This lead to showing them Russia on a map. Weeks before that, we learned that the first roller coaster was made in Russia and watched videos about roller coasters because of the interest of one of my children. This child also then went to build their own roller coasters with Legos. We didn’t use a single piece of curriculum for this. I didn’t plan it. But I did reverse plan about it and wrote about how we learned about roller coasters and explained all the learning that happened simply by my turning on a classical piece of music!

Right now some of our favorite curriculum to use is Math With Confidence and it’s math games. The games are about the only part of it that we use right now but the games are staples for us! If I ask if they want to play, two of my children almost always say yes!

My oldest loves the Awesum Detective series from Royal Fireworks Press as well as Life of Fred for math.

Simply reading and playing word games, word ladders, and word building activities has been far more joyful and effective for us than reading lessons or curriculum. We recently got a spelling curriculum called Sequential Spelling and  my oldest two children took their whiteboards and I called our time “skittles and spelling” and I asked them to spell the words on the short list, discussed the homophones, put the words in silly sentences, and discussed phonics/spelling rules. It was literally short and sweet and they wanted to do it!