Somewhere Between RU and WTM

[Leta]

I bet there's a lot of you out there who fit this description.

I have nothing against unschooling, even of the radical variety, but I don't think I can do it- those are my limitations as a teacher and parent. OTOH, I don't want to shove my kids' noses to the grindstone and keep them there, either.

One of my primary goals is to get my kids to take one college class during their high school years. (We are very fortunate in that their tution is fully funded through DH's employer, so that is not an issue.) I want them to do this so that they know how to schedule a class, if an academic environment is for them, would they be interested in something more vocational, etc., etc. so that they are not thrown to the wolves, lost and confused like I was.

This goal could be accomplished within a schooled setting, I know, but I also know that if one or more of my kids really takes to college or trade school, they are more likely to just go ahead and keep taking classes as a homeschooler rather than "drop out" of high school to go on to post secondary education "early". And, frankly, I think most bright and/or motivated kids are better off in college starting from ages 13-16 than they are in high school. (Feel free to disagree with me on this, but please don't try to change my mind. Please.) So this is a check on the homeschooling side.

Other than that goal (and raising happy, literate, healthy children- but that one's pretty much a given, no?) I have no real goals or even clear thoughts about homeschooling.

Everything I read seems so extreme- either tons of structure or none, packaged curriculum or none... how do I navigate my own middle ground? I know I will need some structure, or we will live in chaos. I need times to do laundry, dinner, etc. How do you do outside activities? I have the potential to be an extremely organized person, but I'm really out of my depth here, as I want my kids to have a chance to spend lots of time on stuff they think is interesting, and when organizing things, I tend to HYPERORGANIZE them.

Help!

[greenthumb3]

Originally Posted by Leta

Everything I read seems so extreme- either tons of structure or none, packaged curriculum or none... how do I navigate my own middle ground? I know I will need some structure, or we will live in chaos. I need times to do laundry, dinner, etc. How do you do outside activities? I have the potential to be an extremely organized person, but I'm really out of my depth here, as I want my kids to have a chance to spend lots of time on stuff they think is interesting, and when organizing things, I tend to HYPERORGANIZE them.

Help!

I also pored through information from the time I first heard of it (when my first son, who is now 6, was about 2 1/2) about homeschooling/unschooling, which sounds like you have. I was voracious, reading anything I could find. Some appealed to me, others did not.

I read all kinds of books, asked questions of other people online and from various homeschooling groups in my area, and mulled over what I felt good about. In the end, I had to put the ideas to the test. I tried unschooling in the exact ways other families suggested, and guess what? I drove myself crazy trying to figure out if it was okay to introduce such and such or if it was okay to not let one kid hurt another kid, etc. I decided that was not working, trying to copy an idea verbatim into our life.

What I did find at last, after trial and error and a lot of thinking, was this: Fitting ideas from unschooling (and other "schools" of homeschool philosophy) into our lives worked much better than trying to morph our lives into someone else's version of "unschooling", if that is clear enough. It seemed to be really about, for me, how to support my kids in their learning and growth with healthy boundaries and respect. And to see possibilities and freedom and joy in our lives.

There are so many ways to "follow philosophies", that I find that it's not possible to identify a "homeschool formula" and follow it to the letter and have it fit my family like a magic answer, whether it's unschooling or a curriculum in a box or anything else.

I take bits and pieces of ideas I find, and try them out, see how my kids respond, and act accordingly. After a while, I just find a rhythm that works for us, and I am getting the hang of feeling out what the kids need from day to day, week to week. This has been my experience and YMMV.

I think, essentially, it's not something you figure out all at once, but something that takes time, trial and error, failure is actually VITAL to see what really doesn't work and what sticks, and the hope to try something else out, hoping something will be right. It's a really personal experience, and the amount of time it takes will vary per person/family.

And, sorry, no way to avoid it, until you find the balance, you may find that you will swing far from one direction to another. It's par for the course, not an indication you are doing anything wrong.

Above all, I think it's what works for your family that counts. I no longer classify how we learn by using a title as it seems too narrow a way to describe our days and our ways of doing things. I like unschooling, as a term and a philosophy, but my interpretation for our family will always be different than other people's. I think that's how it should be. Because no two families are ever alike entirely.

Hopefully some families who have been homeschooling longer than me will pipe up--even with my experience and what I know to be true, I know it is not quite as convincing as someone who has teens or adult children.

[Karenwith4]

Hi

There are plenty of us that fall in the undefined middle of the spectrum.

In our family we differentiate between skills and content. For the most part the kids drive the content, and we work together to plan how to develop the skills component.

We structure our days/weeks to some degree. I try to keep mornings clear from commitments (Friday is the exception) so that we can do our table time at that point (math and language stuff primarily). That takes me about 60-90 minutes for all 4 kids. Some things we do together and some I work on individually.
We are later risers. Breakfast usually isn't til 9 at the earliest and table time starts at 10. In that window they eat, make their beds and bring down laundry. While they are doing that, I throw in a load of laundry, get stuff ready for dinner, clean up after breakfast, sweep the floor etc. We do table time, kids do their "zones" - each one has an area of the house they are responsible for and they they play. I do lunch, flip loads of laundry or do another chore and after lunch we either read together on the couch or head out to one of the activities, do a field trip, go for a hike, or they do their own stuff, or we work together on a project etc.
They have a favourite tv show at 5 so we do a quick sweep through before that goes on and I get dinner ready, flip laundry etc while they watch.
After dinner we tend to do family games, or science experiments or watch dvds etc.

We try to keep 3 days free of commitments, and we do most things as a family (I can't juggle 4 kids going in 4 different directions.)
I do organize a lot of stuff (field trips etc) so that we can do things we want to on our schedule, or in ways that meet our needs. Beyond that I try to keep up with the kids by find resources, books, field trips etc that expand on their interests, and by keeping a few back pocket ideas for those days when they are bored or need some more direction. Tonight we made spaghetti and tape cantilevers off the dining room table because they were driving me nuts and needed something to focus on for a while.

I think that homeschooling - like parenting - evolves for all of us as we try things on to see what fits, take what works and we leave the rest.

hth
Karen

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by Leta

And, frankly, I think most bright and/or motivated kids are better off in college starting from ages 13-16 than they are in high school. (Feel free to disagree with me on this, but please don't try to change my mind. Please.)

I'm not sure whether this falls into a "disagreeing" with you category or a "trying to change your mind" category or something else - but I've had some experience with this. When I was arranging a panel of college admission directors for a large homeschooling conference, I called some community colleges to try to arrange for one of them to complete the panel that had reps from public and private universities. The admissions director - or she may have been some sort of dean - told me in earnest concern they have a lot of problems with homeschooling parents enrolling their young teens into classes that they're just not ready for. She said it's usually the parents' idea for them to enroll, and the kids often end up floundering because of not being academically, or emotionally, or socially ready, or a combination of those things. And, on the other hand, I've known a number of teens, my own included, who enrolled in classes they were attracted to for their own reasons, and they did just fine - but those were part of the community college's "high school enrichment" program, and weren't as challenging as if they were in there competing for grades with 17 and 18 year old teens who had already had a lot of classroom experience. And once you're enrolled as a "college" student rather than "high school enrichment" student, those become college grades on a college record. My son just started enrolling on the same form for college credit rather than high school enrichment credit once he was ready in his late teens, and later used those grades for a transcript he submitted to the four year colleges he applied to. College admissions directors (as they made very clear on that panel I mentioned) like to see some grades from outside the home - so those came in very handy. And two of my son's friends who went full time to public school also took classes in their spare time at community colleges during their last high school years before college applications - they were taking AP classes, at their parents' urging, in order to get some labs out of the way and have something to look good on college applications.

Everything I read seems so extreme- either tons of structure or none, packaged curriculum or none... how do I navigate my own middle ground? I know I will need some structure, or we will live in chaos. I need times to do laundry, dinner, etc. How do you do outside activities? I have the potential to be an extremely organized person, but I'm really out of my depth here, as I want my kids to have a chance to spend lots of time on stuff they think is interesting, and when organizing things, I tend to HYPERORGANIZE them.

I think it's best to try to ignore most of what you hear and just put one foot in front of the other as you pay very close attention to what your children want and how they function best. You don't need to make a commitment to any full curriculum - you can draw from libraries and catalogs and museum stores and free sites on the Internet, etc., for lots of specialized materials that I think are much more likely to inspire a child's curiosity and interest than books provided by one company who's trying to do it all. Here's one example of a catalog full for great stuff - FUN-Books. And you'll save yourself and your family a lot of money and aggravation if you refrain from buying things until you really need them - you'll buy a lot less and annoy your children a lot less ...

In terms of organization, what works well for some is to just divide the schedule into general categories - such as one morning being a regular time to visit the library, a time of day to play math games, a time of day to read aloud to them, a regular afternoon each week to be the support group park day or field trip, a regular time for a daily walk, etc. And, of course, all that needs to be organized around outside activities, and it's honestly challenging sometimes to keep those outside activities down to an enjoyable amount rather than an ongoing rush around town.


Lillian

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by Lillian J

I think it's best to try to ignore most of what you hear and just put one foot in front of the other as you pay very close attention to what your children want and how they function best.

I guess I didn't really mean "ignore" so much as take with a grain of salt, or file in your mind to occasionally mull over as you go about doing your own thing - because you simply don't need to fit yourself into any niche or commitment, and the best source of inspiration is always going to be relating fully to your own children's feeling about what they want and how they do it best. Lillian

[Needle in the Hay]

When I was first researching, almost everything looked good. I read The Unschooling Handbook when DS was just about 4 and thought unschooling sounded good. I thought Classical education sounded interesting. I thought Lit-based education sounded wonderful, and so on...

As it turns out we've unschooled, but it wasn't so much a concious decision to unschool as it's been a decision not to switch to some kind of other style.

But I do enjoy looking at different curricula and viewing the resources they use. We have nearly all the FIAR books (there are a few elusive OOP ones) and it's great because some of those books I would not have come across otherwise and there are ones I wasn't sure DS would like that he loves, like Warm as Wool. We enjoy some of the books used with Ambleside Online, we are on the 3rd SOTW volume and we have some of the books Sonlight uses too. Oh I have to eta that I've found lots of great resources on Lillian's site too
I think it can be worth looking at the book/resource lists that have been thoughtfully compiled and see what looks good to you.

Also, it's not something that needs to be all set before you can start homeschooling. I think sometimes people run into trouble when they feel they have to hurry up and pick a program and then it ends up not being a good fit for their kids.

[elizawill]

oh yes, i think everything looks great as well!!! i absolutely love researching books, curriculum, methods...the whole nine yards. i love it all! in fact, i've probably purchased everything and anything over the past several years....(only to resell it, lol). finding my style has not been easy, so i've stopped trying.

i would be a big ball of confusion right now, if it was not for my child. thank god she knows what she wants! lol. she definitely lets me know what she likes and what she dislikes. therefore, i base a lot of what i buy on how i think she will respond. it makes it much easier for me. i do have yearly goals, as well as daily objectives - but i always remain flexible in how we accomplish those things. i have a smorgasbord of books, games & activities for my kids to choose from. i am also trying to buy more educational memberships this year (thank you IRS), as we love getting out of the house and exploring.

if you tend to hyper organize, i can tell you what helped me last year. for each subject, i would come up with a master list of activities we could do. then i let my dd choose. this year we don't do that...but it worked great last year. she loved having a choice, while it gave me the comfort of knowing the game-plan. anyway, have fun!!

[elizawill]

Originally Posted by Lillian J

I think it's best to try to ignore most of what you hear and just put one foot in front of the other as you pay very close attention to what your children want and how they function best.

In terms of organization, what works well for some is to just divide the schedule into general categories - such as one morning being a regular time to visit the library, a time of day to play math games, a time of day to read aloud to them, a regular afternoon each week to be the support group park day or field trip, a regular time for a daily walk, etc. And, of course, all that needs to be organized around outside activities, and it's honestly challenging sometimes to keep those outside activities down to an enjoyable amount rather than an ongoing rush around town.


Lillian

oh...you said it better than me. i should have read through first, then i could have saved myself time, lol.

[Leta]

Thanks to everyone who replied. I tend to be kind of Type A, so I need to just back off and tell myself that it's okay if I don't commit to one HSing approach before the formal lessons begin.

I am still on the fence about HSing, period, because we know very few people here (we've lived here four years, and still don't really know anyone with kids) and DD is just so social. So hopefully, we will enroll her in preschool this fall, mostly as a social thing, and will see how that goes.

That, and I am just uncertain about my abilities to multitask- parenting, maintaining and working on this white elephant of house we own, teaching, and possibly working for money... sometimes I just overwhelm myself.

Deep breaths.

(Oh, and Lillian? I agreed with everything you wrote about college for younger teens! I don't care if my kids do dual enrollment or not, that's not the point, at least to me. It's the feet-wetness that I'm concerned about. I have had people tell me I'm setting my kids up for date rape and/or alcoholism by wanting them to experience what it's like to have to schedule a class before they're 18. Which is why I didn't want to invite debate, because it's gotten so nasty in the past IRL.)

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by elizawill

oh...you said it better than me. i should have read through first, then i could have saved myself time, lol.

No! Actually, I was really pleased to see the way you explained it!

Lillian

[sapphire_chan]

Originally Posted by Leta

I have had people tell me I'm setting my kids up for date rape and/or alcoholism by wanting them to experience what it's like to have to schedule a class before they're 18.

Oh no!! Those rampant college hormones! Keep them some place sane like highschool with all those rational teens!

Says a lot for your kids that people think they'll be invited to adult parties though.

[MyLittleWonders]

That's why I call us "eclectic"! I love the Classical approach, but it's not very visual-spatial kiddo friendly, and way too over-structured, even for my taste. Ds#1 loves the unschooling approach, but it's too not-structured for my taste. So, we take what works and leave the rest. I also don't like having to make sure I follow someone else's rules on what we "can" and "can't" do under any one particular umbrella. Being eclectic means we aren't held to any one standard (I wouldn't want to identify as Classical or unschooling or Lit-based even though different parts of our journey has looked like each of those). I actually really like using the term holistic, but the way I define that does not mesh at all with the Waldorf approach, who uses that term as well. So, it stays eclectic.

I think my overal goals for my boys mirror yours. We hope that they'll want to start taking some classes at the community college around 16. Aside from that, we hope to raise well-rounded, polite, compassionate people who love to learn.

I have tried boxed curriculum (Enki and OM). We have tried no curriculum. But, I think I have found what is working for us, at least for now. We do mostly Miquon for math (I have Singapore and really like it, but it's too many problems on a page for ds#1 and he gets overwhelmed, so I put just a couple problems on the chalk board for practice/review). After realizing he's learning to read from a whole-word perspective, we started using the Reading-Literature books, which are working well for ds. I am using the words from the readers for his "spelling", which I am making up as I go along (I make "word boxes" and he has to pick the word that fits in that box; I'm also writing out the words on index cards and putting in an alphabetized index-card holder/box so we can practice reading them, finding rhymes, using them to talk about parts of speech, etc.). I follow the Classical approach to history using Story of the World and the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History. And, we ordered the NEOE Chemistry level 1, which we are using loosely. (Yesterday ds#1 and ds#2 made up their own chemistry experiment with water, oil, and ice. They dictated to me what they did and what they thought would happen, drew a picture, and I then glued their "lab notes" into their "main lesson book" - an idea I stole from when we tried OM.) We've been using Wii Music for some basic music instruction (following a beat, determining pitch, improving ). And, I make sure that we check out a bunch of different books from the library. (I have one Moving Beyond the Page unit on Culture, I think, that had a mini-unit of various Cinderella stories; we don't do all the worksheets, but I used them to get some ideas for us; the boys are loving finding all the different Cinderella stories at the library with our librarian and reading them.)

So, you see ... we're eclectic. Dh and I talked about what was important to us and how we could meet those ideals in ways that worked for the boys. Miquon is working well with ds#1's visual-spatial learning style. He loves listening to stories, so we can read him just about anything. He doesn't always love the activities we do, but I make sure what I ask of him is short (15 minutes per activity with no more than 2 activities in a row), and we do the best we can. Some days are very unschooly-looking. Some look more structured. But overall, I think I have found something that is working for us. For now.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by sapphire_chan

Oh no!! Those rampant college hormones! Keep them some place sane like highschool with all those rational teens!

Says a lot for your kids that people think they'll be invited to adult parties though.

Actually, I hate to have to say it, but this sort of thing actually did happen to a couple of people I know. A young teenage boy who came across as older did get mixed up with some older teens at a community college who were not people he should have been hanging out with - it caused some serious problems. His family had some things to work out, and maybe this even helped bring things to light for all I know - I really know nothing about them except that there might have been some academic pressures, so I can't make any judgments. Not that I should be making any judgements anyway ! The other situation was a young teenage girl who also came across older than her years, and she did get invited to adult parties and grew up much too fast in ways that were inappropriate. It was not a community college setting, though, but another kind of ordinarily wholesome enough community activity. My own son, on the other hand, could have been surrounded by all those people and never have any inclination to hang out with them - and I can say the same about lots of other level headed kids I've known. It all depends on what kind of personalities are involved and what kind of family relationships and closeness the teens have. You obviously have to know your own child well enough to pay attention to signs that things could go awry - and I think it's pretty unusual for attendance at some college classes to bring on those kinds of problems, or else we all would have heard of a lot more by now. It's pretty silly and disrespectful of people to jump to the conclusion that your kids are likely to go off the deep end from taking some college classes. - Lillian

[Leta]

The thing is, I do recognize that early college is not without risk. I just think high school is risky, too. You're just trading one set of complications for another.

[briansmama]

Originally Posted by Leta

Everything I read seems so extreme- either tons of structure or none, packaged curriculum or none... how do I navigate my own middle ground? I know I will need some structure, or we will live in chaos. I need times to do laundry, dinner, etc. How do you do outside activities? I have the potential to be an extremely organized person, but I'm really out of my depth here, as I want my kids to have a chance to spend lots of time on stuff they think is interesting, and when organizing things, I tend to HYPERORGANIZE them.

Help!

We've always had a regular rhythm in our home. My boys have a consistent bedtime, quiet afternoon time (while the little one naps) and regular mealtimes. My boys thrive on this, and I do too, because it helps me stay balanced, and dh loves it because we carry it over into the weekends, so he knows he'll get some downtime too.

That said, we do not follow a curriculum (anymore). Initially, we also had a waldorf lesson time carved out, which included form drawing, circle time, nature walk, and an activity of the day (baking, watercolors, cleaning, coloring, park day with other homeschoolers).

Now, though, I've found that the time is better spent following my dc preferences, which still includes the nature walk, but instead of an activity/lesson, they prefer that I read them books they have chosen from the library.

And interestingly, letting them take charge of their learning has been amazing- my 5yo ds is into dinosaurs right now so we've been immersed in fossils, history, geography, math, and vocabulary that surrounds the study of dinosaurs for about a month. I'll get on the internet and find great ideas on fun things to do while studying dinos and suggest these things to my ds, who is eager to try some of them (paper mache dino eggs, homemade fossils, pasta noodle dinosaur models) and not so into others.

So, essentially, by following his lead, he's learning so much more than before, when I would tell him we couldn't read yet another dinosaur book because we had to get going on our form drawing (waldorf languange arts), or work with beeswax modeling clay (an activity he didn't much care for) or draw a picture illustrating a scene from a fairy tale I'd just narrated (he doesn't care much for fairy tales).

Hope that helps! I certainly relate to you- I need the organization too. Otherwise, we wouldn't get to the library every week, and the market, and get to the laundry, etc.

[LauraLoo]

I thought that unschooling and even RU would be the way my ds would want to go. But over this past year, which is our first year HS'ing, *he* has demanded more structure and specific curriculum content. I picked up WTM over a year ago, and cracked it open for the first time a month ago. My jaw dropped when I realized that ds had pretty much put himself on a somewhat relaxed version of classical all on his own. I just kept adding things/curriculum in as he requested. I would have to call us "eclectic classics" We only school in the morning and afternoons are spent with outside activities or pursuing our own interests (and for me that means housework, planning, meal prep, etc. ) And the great thing is that by having a defined schedule of when we "sit down school," we can all get our needs met. I also make sure that we have no more than 3 afternoons of outside activities so that at least 2 full afternoons are spent at home during the week.

I'm actually kind of wondering if ds is kind of different this way for wanting more structure than I was initially giving him. But I doubt that I could be going wrong since I am definitely following his lead. Or getting yanked along is maybe more like it! Today when math ended, he wanted to do more. And then he asked to take a spelling test. When we were done with his formal studies, he wanted to try some origami out of a book that he got from the library, which was my first time doing origami as well. OTOH, I think that if I had started out with something as structured as classical, he would have balked big time. It definitely had to be his idea.

In any case, I think it is definitely possible to construct what and how you want your HS'ing experience to be for you and your children. And you may not even know what you want it to be until you get into it.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by LauraLoo

I thought that unschooling and even RU would be the way my ds would want to go. But over this past year, which is our first year HS'ing, *he* has demanded more structure and specific curriculum content. I picked up WTM over a year ago, and cracked it open for the first time a month ago. My jaw dropped when I realized that ds had pretty much put himself on a somewhat relaxed version of classical all on his own. I just kept adding things/curriculum in as he requested.

Not that it matters what you call it, but I just have to jump in and say that a lot of us would still consider that unschooling - he's doing things the way he wants to do them in the way he wants to learn, rather than being directed in someone else's predetermined schooly mode. If you were to decide for him, without him, what he should be studying and how, it could be off the track - but he knows himself, what he wants, and how he wants to go about it, and he's been, as you said, putting himself on a somewhat relaxed version of classical all on his own. That's unschooling. Lillian

[Smithie]

My big dream (don't laugh at me, it's my dream!) is to travel all around the world with my family, merrily homeschooling in whatever way best suits each child, until my oldest is about 16, when we will move to upstate NY so he can go here: http://www.simons-rock.edu/about

He can live in the dorm with the other same-age kids if he wants, or live at home, or whatever. When he's 18, I'll bet he decides to transfer to another college and live independently. Ditto for the other two.

Now, to make the millions that my brilliant plan requires...

[Karenwith4]

Originally Posted by Smithie

My big dream (don't laugh at me, it's my dream!) is to travel all around the world with my family, merrily homeschooling in whatever way best suits each child, until my oldest is about 16, when we will move to upstate NY so he can go here: http://www.simons-rock.edu/about

He can live in the dorm with the other same-age kids if he wants, or live at home, or whatever. When he's 18, I'll bet he decides to transfer to another college and live independently. Ditto for the other two.

Now, to make the millions that my brilliant plan requires...

Great dream! and that school looks awesome. I want to go there!
Karen

[LauraLoo]

Originally Posted by Lillian J

[COLOR="Indigo"]
Not that it matters what you call it, but I just have to jump in and say that a lot of us would still consider that unschooling -

Thank you for this. It's encouraging to me to know that if he's choosing a lot of structure, it can still be unschooling. I find so many aspects of unschooling really quite beautiful, and I don't really know why I didn't think that chosen structure could still be unschooling. But then, I don't really get hung up on labels very much so I probably didn't really try to think about it any deeper. I've just been too busy giving him what he's been wanting or needing. It's not broken, we're all happy, so why fix it?