Living Unschooling

Unschooling is a way of life.  Life is school.  Learning happens all the time.

I thought I'd post the notes I kept during the month of March on how Evan is learning.  If you look through them closely,you'll find almost every subject area covered even though I don't categorize it that way; life's subjects always overlap.  If we missed a "subject" this month, it will show up in next month's list.  And of course, it's impossible to capture life or school or learning in a list of notes (which just barely touches the surface!!), but this method of record keeping does a pretty good job, I think.

Living Unschooling :: March 2012

reading ::  Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs;  Disney Tarzan books;  Chanticleer and the Fox;  Spirit: Stallion of Cimarron;  Fairy Tales: Ugly Duckling, Jack the Giant Killer, Beauty and the Beast;  The Courage of Sarah Noble;  The Matchlock Gun;  The Bible: Creation, Adam and Eve

out & about :: Glenwood Park where we made new friends; Ajay's second b-day party with family and friends; the milk farm where we saw a brand new calf not five minutes after its birth (this led to a huge Q&A session with Miss Laurie); the Co-op where he helps gather produce/push the cart/find grocery items; visiting and playing with friends; watching Todd and his helpers tear off and re-shingle our roof for three days; walking around our neighborhood; hiking through Scott Park; riding his new bike all over; playing Car City in the backyard; collecting flower petals while exploring and admiring spring scenery;  running errands with Todd

words :: ingredients, vanity, prattle, flattery, glade, colonel, tomahawk, settlements, cavalry, inflection, flatirons, musket, stoop, unattended, militia;  simple metaphors -- "the puddles were like shining eyes" or "he sat there like a flour sack"

playing ::  Legos -- building a dozen boats to make a fleet;  using colored pencils for blending while doing art stuff;  the game 'Boxes';  being a pretend horse with Chloe and also playing with her toy horses together;  playing 'Dirt' racing game on the computer;  learning the card game 'Solitaire';  making 'villages' in his set-ups with leaders, protectors, weapons for defense, etc.;  playing war in the rice box with army men;  coloring/folding/playing Cootie Catchers with Chloe where all the papers have personalities and names and abilities;  Chameleon Hide-and-Seek where they hide their beanie toy and the other tries to find it;  stuffed kitten families -- building nests for them, taking them out strapped to rock crawlers, and other pretending.

talking about ::  buoyancy when testing his lego boats in water;  estimating -- for example, trying to guess how many trees we passed while driving;  why we wash our hair;  Indians, tepees,reservations and war;  the cow giving birth at the farm;  horses and herds;  the roof, insulation, shingles, dumpster and tar;  liver -- since we eat it a lot, it is a conversation topic;  why chicken broth has glassy bubbles in it;  "play on words";  sarcasm;  color names on the colored pencils;  numbers -- 80 hundreds makes 8 thousand, etc.;  why the oven heat makes cookie dough flatten out

watching & listening ::  watching the movies Spirit and Cinderella; listening to Skippyjon Jones books on CD while drawing;  listening to the Carmen Suite CD (classical music) and dancing or horse-racing with Chloe to the music;  listening to the 'thug song' on the Tangled soundtrack CD while playing 'Flynn and Rapunzel' with Chloe

baking :: oatmeal muffins, brownies, chocolate chip cookies -- helping to  measure accurately and mix batter; learning to make our breakfast porridge on his own by following the recipe -- working with fractions and the concept of 'doubling' a recipe too

crafting ::  began sewing a tepee out of felt squares and thread; drawing new patterns and cutting out snowflakes;  designing and building a space shuttle from cardboard and paper

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So there you have it:  literature, history, science, vocabulary, health, math, music, art, phys. ed. and the all-important socialization.... I think we are missing writing.  (My boy hates writing, but he will do it when the need arises. His fine-motor skills are exercised frequently though playing the connect-the-dot Boxes game he loves and his detailed coloring with colored pencils.)

If you had any doubts as to the kind of education we are giving our son, maybe this helps you to see we are not "Lazy Schooling" (as a person I am no longer friends with once called it).  It takes a lot of effort and attention to make sure learning happens here.  And, as you can see, it does.