So…we are considering unschooling this coming year. I have 4 kids from preschool to 7th grade and managing all their activities and school work is a monstrous task. I can’t really keep up. All this year I felt like I was failing everyone because I couldn’t spend enough time with my little ones, I couldn’t make sure my 9 year old actually did everything he was supposed to and I couldn’t provide enough to keep my oldest one challenged. I did little bits of all of those things but it wasn’t ever enough and I’ve just felt like a giant failure all year.
I don’t want another year like this one.
So I’m trying to figure out a way that my kids can be in charge of their own learning and need less one on one time from me so that I can do all the things I need to do (cook, clean, laundry, write, knit, read something, think my own thoughts, go to the gym on occasion, life) and their education isn’t compromised.
I’ve also been pretty frustrated at my kids lack of retention on the things that I’ve spent hours and hours teaching. I will go to great lengths, spend many dollars on curricula, find activities, buy supplies and engineer a great educational experience that they forget a week later. I don’t want to do that anymore.
Added to that, my kids seem to hate school. They always talk about it in a negative way. I don’t want that for them. I don’t want them to spend their childhood doing stuff they hate and I don’t want to spend my life forcing them to do stuff they hate. No one wins with that.
So, we are looking at unschooling.
For those unfamiliar, unschooling is a term coined by John Holt and it’s been around since the 70’s. It refers to a set of educational philosophies that basically boil down to allowing your kid to learn what they need to know by studying the things they are interested in. When they study what they are passionate about they then retain more of what they learn and they don’t have to be forced to learn, they want to. It works with a child’s natural curiosity rather than working against it.
From the reading and podcast listening that I’ve done, it might look something like a student gets really fascinated by Greek mythology so he reads everything he can about it and he might spend some time learning to sew so that he could make a Hermes costume and then he might spend some time studying ancient Greek culture to see where those myths come from and what they say about that culture. Then he might spend some time learning about the geography of Greece which then makes some of the myths make a bit more sense and then he might spend some time learning the techniques of Greek pottery and then move on to the legacies of Greek culture from vocabulary to democracy. So there he has learned reading, history, home ec, vocabulary, art and civics all by studying something that he was interested in on his own.
I love the idea of all of that but…and this is a really big but…I don’t want the inmates running the asylum. I want my kids to have more freedom, but I’m still the mom. I don’t want them watching Netflix until their eyes bleed. I’m not sure how to give them lots of freedom without giving them enough rope to hang themselves with. Also, I want them to know math.
My goal in homeschooling has always been for my kids to have as many options open to them as they want when they get to the end of their schooling with me. If they want to go to trade school and be a mechanic, that’s great. I just don’t want them choosing that route because they weren’t adequately prepared for college so they didn’t feel that it was available to them. Be a mechanic because you want to be a mechanic, not because you couldn’t be an engineer.
So, I want them to enjoy their education. I want them to be free to discover their passions and talents. I also want them to know math. But I want them to feel free to study the things that interest them most. I don’t know how I put all of those things together and still have them ready to take the SAT in 4 short years. I don’t know what that looks like. But I want all of those things for them so I’m going to keep trying to figure it out. This will probably be messy.
This boy decided to learn about the history of boats and he made this presentation for the project fair. I love that it’s messy but he did it all on his own. I helped him look up a few things but otherwise I was pretty hands off. If only every school day could look like project fair day.
Messy Homeschool 