is there any unschooling november thread? :)

[Ekatherina]

we are unschooling, I am not sure if this is the proper way to describe what we actually do or don't in our educational lives. 

just wanted to know if there are others who share the same style, so that we can have monthly threads for some record and motivation and also ideas. these days I am pregnant and have terrible nausea so NOTHING is actually done on the educational level, except for me speaking Russian to the kids. Other than that they help me cleaning and we might build up something of our wooden toys together. what about others??? 

[Dar]

Moved from Learning at Home and Beyond to Unschooling... and, please note, this is the first thread I have successfully moved using the new software, so I am pretty impressed with my technical skillz at the moment,

It sounds like you have a lot on your plate right now. If your kids seem happy then I wouldn't worry about not doing enough, but maybe chatting about what they are doing will make you feel better?

My daughter is teaching the 2 year old she babysits every Friday how to say little things in Russian... it is adorable. He is picking it up much faster than I am, honestly... although I have learned a lot of foods in Russian, so I can say things like, "Da! Ikra! But nyet kvas! Da, halwa! Da, blini!" Once we get past food I am lost, though...

[Greenmama2]

My unschooled children are little. Four and one. But I love these threads so I'm replying anyway

[Ekatherina]

Dar, I like you profile picture! :) I adore the desert, dh is anthropoligist too and his dream is to leave everything and go live in the desert with the beduwins...:) I like too the idea very much but am not sure how far can I go with the it ....cleaning the house everyday is too much sometimes so living in a tent seems like a nice perspective .....

Russian is my native language, while we live in lebanon where the native is arabic......we have been doing much progress in english and french with ds, but after the nausea started the progress stopped......

Greenmama, you must share some of your plans you want to do around the day, anything could be educational....(that's what I say to console myself...)....today we are planning to finish our library books to return them to the library next week.....since tomorrow I teach piano in the nearby city for the whole day and ds has his oriental music class (which he adores), sunday is the play day (I am putting play for the village kids for X-mas) and monday I have piano classes (learning) in tripoli (another city), very much worried about the bus rides with my nausea though.....so kids will be with their dad, planting and taking care of the animals.....

N.B. did you notice that all my smilies are blue??? 

[Greenmama2]

I love Russian! I studied it for two years but haven't been there and there really isn't much opportunity to practice in Australia :( Such a beautiful (and logical) language though.

Plans? At the moment just go with the flow. DD is a child who does a lot of easily recognisable learning (like begging to build stuff with an electronics kit or do experiments out of a science book she found at a second hand market) as well as plenty that isn't so easily categorised (like her Tinkerbell obsession :D ). DS is almost 18 months so his learning is pretty easy to spot too but in a different way lol. As for myself I would like to get my loom working (it needs new heddles) and learn to weave.

[Ekatherina]

Greenmoma! weaving? that sounds so interesting! do you live on the farm too? I never thought of weaving myself though......

at that age when ds was 3-4 I was really obsessed with learning from texbooks, but although ds loves following textbooks, I really hated the method. he always has an experiment book we bought once, it has tons of experiments which he begs me to do but I dont always feel like it.  sometimes I feel like unschooling is not a proper method for me either cause many times I just  dont feel I like to do anything, at least with textbooks you can have some control. we have library book of course which have to be finished before being returned to the library every other week, but still ......

today am supposed to practice the play with the kids. ds and dd will be super-happy to have kids in the house. homeschooling is great but in this village we have kids' difficiency! 

[Greenmama2]

Live on the farm? What farm? I'm confused lol. We live about an hour and a half from Sydney although the suburbs don't actually stop in between. Technically we are in another city but some days it doesn't seem like it.

I know what you mean about the science experiments. I wonder if I'm cut out for unschooling too in moments like yesterday when she was stomping around being completely crazy in that perfectly four year old way and I said "What do you want to do now." She crossed her arms and glared at me "I want to do MORE SCIENCE!" was actually my reaction which of course I feel guilty about.