Are there any other whole-life unschoolers here?

[PurpleChicken]

Quote:
You are in the minority for homeschoolers and I'm sorry your experience
wasn't like so many others. People saying "she didn't do it right" isn't
really fair.

Please keep in mind that many traditionally educated people need to do
the same when entering college. Most homeschooled and private schooled
kids (I say most, not all) are actually beyond entry level college courses.

While I am a product of public schools and a state college(2 years), if I
had to go back today I'd need to take Math 98 before taking any college
level math courses and I use Algebra every day in the real world.

Let your anger at your mom flow away from you. It doesn't do you any
good. I've read some of your other posts here and your are obviously
an intelligent person. Someone did something right.

 

[sugarbush]

Quote:
Thanks.... I am talking about unschooling only. Homeschooling can be done hundreds of different ways, but unschooling is a pretty standard, let them live and learn on there own kind of education.

I know I could have gone to a failing public school and been the same off as I was entering college with basically no education other than knowing how to read. However I grew up in a school district that had no schools; so they payed for their students to go to the private schools around the state. Given that; I feel I was robbed.

I am not trying to offend anybody who is a homeschooler/unschooler. I just want to put out how I feel about it being a producted of that system. I was homeschooled long before homeschooling was popular like it is now days. It is very rare to find somebody my age who was homeschooled. So I am just giving you something to think about..... Your childrens futures are completely in your hands...make the most of it for their sake.

 

[TubbyChicken]

Quote:
Thanks.... I am talking about unschooling only. Homeschooling can be done hundreds of different ways, but unschooling is a pretty standard, let them live and learn on there own kind of education.

I know I could have gone to a failing public school and been the same off as I was entering college with basically no education other than knowing how to read. However I grew up in a school district that had no schools; so they payed for their students to go to the private schools around the state. Given that; I feel I was robbed.

I am not trying to offend anybody who is a homeschooler/unschooler. I just want to put out how I feel about it being a producted of that system. I was homeschooled long before homeschooling was popular like it is now days. It is very rare to find somebody my age who was homeschooled. So I am just giving you something to think about..... Your childrens futures are completely in your hands...make the most of it for their sake.

I'm very sorry to hear about your experience with your mother...and PC is absolutely right, it's completely unfair to say "she didn't do it right". No one should invalidate your experience.

However, Unschooling is NOT standard, there is no standard, there are limitless possibilities with how unschooled children learn. What you are describing doesn't sound like unschooling at all. Parents are very involved with the process and pay very close attention to meeting their child's needs and satisfying their interests.

 

[TubbyChicken]

Quote:
I wanted to repost these for anyone who might have missed them the first time.

The following quotes are very helpful in describing unschooling...

Sandra Dodd:

“It’s like “just say no.” Just say no to school years and school schedules and school expectations, school habits and fears and terminology. Just say no to separating the world into important and unimportant things, into separating knowledge into math, science, history and language arts, with music, art and PE set in their less important little places.

Most of unschooling has to happen inside the parents. They need to spend some time sorting out what is real from what is construct, and what occurs in nature from what only occurs in school (and then in the minds of those who were told school was real life, school was a kid’s full time job, school was more important than anything, school would keep them from being ignorant, school would make them happy and rich and right). It’s what happens after all that school stuff is banished from your life.”

Anne Ohman:

“Unschooling is active, not passive. It’s only passive in that you don’t do school. But it requires an active effort on your part to shift your own perspective and your old definition of learning. You need to work on seeing learning happening in what your children love to do. It requires active effort in connecting with your children as they are right now. It requires active effort in finding things in the world that you think would be of interest to them. It requires active effort in giving them as much of the world as you can and letting them choose from it what they love. It requires active effort in basing your life in Joy and Love.”

source: http://anunschoolinglife.com/what-is-and-isnt-unschooling/

 

[PineBurrowPeeps]

I haven't read this entire thread, only about 3/4 of it.

We homeschool our 3 children and for the most part I would say that we are unschoolers, but on the other hand I dislike labels and I don't know that we fit in any one category. We like to take a little of this method and a little of that and make our own brand.

My kids are 8, 7, and 3. At this point we do not have structured daily sit-down-and-do-school time.
My kids can read and write. They know age appropriate things about the goverment. They have friends. They have hobbies. For the most part they tell me what they want to learn about and we do it. For awhile we did themed learning, where each month we picked a different topic or time period and brought it into all aspects of living for that month, it was fun but very time consuming and all about planning. Now we do that every now and then instead of it being the norm.

I have the good fortune of having an extended family that is very homeschool friendly. ALL of my in-laws kids are homeschooled and we all teach eachothers kids. We established early on who was best at each subject. My husband has a degree in science and is awesome with math so he teaches those. My MIL is amazing in English so that's her area. My SIL loves history, and so forth.
I mainly teach the kids things like art, music, cooking, farming, etc. We have been maple sugaring here at the farm lately, so I have had all the kids here teaching them about the process of evaporation, etc. I do the music lessons and my kids and my nephew play the Ocarina, they can read music.
We live by "It takes the whole village to raise a child" in many ways.
We take our kids on a ton of field trips too. They never have a shortage of things to do.
We are always planning the next thing. We're off to the museum of Culinary Arts next week.

My son has some troubles with reading. I have gotten bashed by people who find out that he is 8 years old and still reading level 2 readers, sometimes with difficulty. It's not a matter of us not teaching him, he just needs more time and we feel that pushing him hard to move ahead will result in him feeling less than enthusiastic about reading in the future. His father and I love to read so much. We go the library every Tuesday without fail and we always have a huge stack of books on our night stands. We read to our kids all the time. We want them to love reading as much as we do. There are so many places you can explore in books, we would never want to jeopardize that for him by making reading something to avoid because Mom and Dad pushed too hard when he was a kid. I have adult friends now who almost never read. One woman, when I asked her when the last time was that she had read a book replied "In High School".
That made my head spin. I cannot fathom that.

I was a high school drop out who spent my whole public school career falling through the cracks. I dropped out my first day of 9th grade after I had been held back twice in 7th grade and once in 8th. My home life was the picture of disfunction and it lead to the demise of my education. Because I had been pushed along from grade to grade the way I had with no teacher ever taking an interest in wanting to help me get to the root of the problem, when I left school in 9th grade I probably only had a 6th grade education, except for reading. I was reading college level when I was in 4th grade. But I knew nothing about math, science, history, NOTHING.
Thank god for my husband who is 13 years older than I am and had already gotten his college degree. He basically home schooled me and got me to the point where I can function in the real world.
Just because you go to public school, does not mean that you will have the skills to cope in the "real world". I have heard of kids graduating who can barely read and write for crying out loud! Can you imagine that? And your tax dollars are paying those teachers!

I too, know of parents who claim to "Unschool" who really are just letting their kids do whatever they please. There is a mother locally to me who has a 15 year old who probably can barely read and write. But you'll find the kid, everyday, at the mall smoking ciggerettes and hanging out with other teens. I feel so bad for him.
They actually live in the same town as I do and my town is very lax as far as documentation goes for homeschoolers. Just a letter of intent and a attendance record and you're all set. In some ways it's good that they stay out of our buisness, on the other hand you have that kid who's mother is sending in the attendance record and blatently lying.
It is very sad how a handfull of people doing the wrong thing can make thousands of others doing it right look bad.

 

[PineBurrowPeeps]

Quote:
Thanks.... I am talking about unschooling only. Homeschooling can be done hundreds of different ways, but unschooling is a pretty standard, let them live and learn on there own kind of education.

I know I could have gone to a failing public school and been the same off as I was entering college with basically no education other than knowing how to read. However I grew up in a school district that had no schools; so they payed for their students to go to the private schools around the state. Given that; I feel I was robbed.

I am not trying to offend anybody who is a homeschooler/unschooler. I just want to put out how I feel about it being a producted of that system. I was homeschooled long before homeschooling was popular like it is now days. It is very rare to find somebody my age who was homeschooled. So I am just giving you something to think about..... Your childrens futures are completely in your hands...make the most of it for their sake.

Sugarbush, I am so sorry that you had such a poor experience being homeschooled.

 

[PotterWatch]

Quote:
I'm very sorry that your experience did not give you what you needed to move on. It must have been very hard for all of you, parents included, back when you were homeschooled. There were very few resources for homeschoolers in that time.

I feel lucky that we are homeschooling now as there are limitless resources for homeschoolers. There are so many homeschool groups that meet around our area that we have had to choose which ones we just can't fit into our days. There are classes available specifically for homeschoolers, there are parent led co-ops (we are a part of one), there are field trips and social groups organized just for homeschoolers. Homeschooling is a vastly different arena now than it was 20 years ago (or even 10 years ago). There are just so many opportunities now that there weren't in the past because every year, more and more people are seeing the value of homeschooling.

 

[Andora]

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One kid is not a representation of every kid.

How many kids do you know from public school who have left high school and fallen flat on their faces? The same could be said in any situation, there will always be those who do well and those who don't for a myriad of reasons. It's not at all fair to assume that because one child you know isn't doing well that all children coming from his style of schooling will be like him.

Actually I know several Home/unschooled young people who have had or will have a rude awaking once they're out in the "real world". My niece and nephew were home-schooled until they made the request to go to "real school" (their words, not mine) because they wanted real friends and to be looked at as normal kids....not the odd kids on the block. Luckily for them they are very smart and didn't struggle with that.

You are right there are plenty of kids who go to public school and have a hard time getting their life on track.

I've just seen too many families un/home schooling because they want to protect their kids from what they see as the bad things out in the world. Sooner or later they can't protect them and they'll have to learn to cope.

I think maybe you have missed the entire point of this thread.

1) We are unschooling so as to NOT shelter our children, so that they can enjoy the real world everyday and have a full, robust education. If we wanted to shelter them, we would use a strict religious curriculum and monitor their every activity...

2) Maybe your area is different, but here we have a huge homeschooling group and there are plenty of homeschooled kids and opportunities. Homeschooling doesn't make your kids the odd kids on the block, it gives your kids a chance to be themselves without peer pressure. If my daughter doesn't have self confidence, then maybe I should reassess because we have done something wrong.

3) The original intent of this thread was to meet other chicken owning home or unschooling families and to chat and maybe learn from each other. If you started a thread looking to meet other public schooling or traditional schooling families, I am pretty sure I would not be rude enough to continue posting on the thread how I know some kids from public school who are failures, or who are odd, or how they will have a rude awakening once they get away from the control of school. It's rude to interject in a thread with your negative opinion. If you want to debate homeschooling, feel free to start your own thread.

So anyway. I am excited that there are other homeschooling and unschooling families on BYC! There are more than I thought. I would love to chat about the fun things you all do with your kids! (And I know there was also one person who is currently unschooled, I'd like to hear about the things you've been doing too!)

 

[gckiddhouse]

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My 8 year old isn't reading either. You are right to give your son time. I am sure that you have read all the research showing that kids learn to read at different ages all the way up to 10. And that those who read later rather than earlier are statistically more avid readers than the early readers.
Our daughter is finally making the big breakthrough. She is thrilled. She already has a list of books she wants to read when her skills reach that level.

Yours is a very sad account of what the public school system is doing. Lots of kids fall through the cracks and our literacy rate in this country is shameful.

Good for you for wanting better for your kids!!

I am coveting your farm, and your homeschool friendly family

 

[PotterWatch]

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I love hearing about the things other homeschool families do as well! My kids are big history buffs so we are always doing something with history. Right now, they are wanting to learn to make some things from American Indian culture and I'm hoping to find a pow-wow we can go to. We also recently started discussing WWII, but have gone back to WWI since so much that happened during WWI had an effect on WWII (keep in mind my boys are 7 and 8 years old).

We have some meat birds right now, so we are keeping a journal of how much we spend on them so that when processing time comes, we can determine how much it costs per pound to raise our own meat.

We are part of a local co-op as well. We meet every Monday and my kids take classes like karate, music, drama, science, kid biz (a class where they learn to run a small business), needlework, and brain games. All the kids are homeschoolers and all the teachers are homeschool parents. No homework is required though some classes have optional homework. It is a great opportunity for my kids to learn some things that may not be my forte, and for me to offer my knowledge to others (I teach music and something called adventure club).

We play a lot of games as part of our day. Right now my kids are setting up a game of Clue, which of course helps teach reading and logical thinking. We love playing yahtzee which is great for working on math skills. We listen to books on cd every time we are in the car and that has really given their vocabularies a boost since they hear books that are more advanced than their reading skills.

So what things do you do?