about the 'we play poker a lot!' That is definitely math and advanced critical thinking. 
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Originally Posted by minxin
 He's been working on learning letter sounds lately, and a few days ago he told my mother "Nana! B sounds like buh. B is for boobies!" He just weaned a month ago (my mother thinks BF is "weird and gross") and she was mortified. I told him he was correct, and he said that B is also for big butts! |
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Originally Posted by lillbeetle
Hey everyone!!
My DS turned 3 in March, and we have always known we would "homeschool". But what it sounds like from this thread is that we lean way more towards "unschooling". I'm not sure, so maybe you all could clear this up for me. I've always thought home schooling was where you just don't send your child to school and allow them to learn in a natural, non-conformist, interest-based fashion. I want my son to experience and learn from life, not school. Is this unschooling instead? Does home school always involve an accredited program? Does unschooling always involve not following an accredited program? If you are unschooling but maybe want to prepare your DC for college (should they choose to go because they want to be an astronomer, film maker, chef, etc.....) How do you make sure they are prepared to enter and be accepted into the higher education system? I'm asking because it definitely sounds like we are unschoolers, but we also want to prepare DS to be able to take things like chemistry classes and such at the local college when he is in his teen years (if he wants to). Is this possible with unschooling? Thanks for your input, and for reading this ramble.  |
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I still remember learning to do that.|
Originally Posted by Ruthla
Whoohoo! We have a bike rider!! We spent about an hour at the park and she's still very wobbly, and can't ride very far, and doesn't have much control over the bike, but she can get it started and pedal about a dozen yards or so before having to stop. And she can stop without hurting herself!
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Yeah! Ds loves riding -- he'd literally ride all day!|
Originally Posted by Nature
My 3 yo dd (4 in July) took a box of unsharpened pencils out of the cupboard yesterday and dumped them on the floor. I figured I'd just let her play with them and pick them up later.
On my way back in the room about 10 minutes later she called me over, "Mama look! That spells Ivy!" (her name) And sure enough she had a clear "I" a kinda confused looking "V" and a very clear capitol "Y" all made out of pencils! Then during our afternoon walk she found 7 branches on the ground shaped like "Y's" (the storms knocked a lot of trees over around here) |
It's such an affirmation of children's innate drive to explore and discover!|
Originally Posted by lillbeetle
I've always thought home schooling was where you just don't send your child to school and allow them to learn in a natural, non-conformist, interest-based fashion. I want my son to experience and learn from life, not school. Is this unschooling instead?
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| Does home school always involve an accredited program? Does unschooling always involve not following an accredited program? |
| If you are unschooling but maybe want to prepare your DC for college (should they choose to go because they want to be an astronomer, film maker, chef, etc.....) How do you make sure they are prepared to enter and be accepted into the higher education system? |
Kids are interested in this from an early age, what it will be like when they are adults, how they can make money, what sorts of things they might like to be doing. My oldest son (age 10) talks about getting his driver's license (we let him drive on country backroads, shhh) and knows he'll have to study and past a multiple choice test to do so, and that it is up to *him* to make that happen. He likes to cook and create new recipes, and he talks often about the restaurant he's going to own some day, his plans for it, and what he's going to do to get the experience and money needed to be able to do that. That's just an example. I expect that if he was inclined towards academia or some type of science career, he would already be showing interest in these things. He might be mathematically inclined, and showing interest in star patterns and asking for a telescope. If an astronomy career was truly right for him, he'd *naturally* want to be pursuing the sorts of things that would set him up for it long before it was time to enter college (whether that "time" be age 15, 20, 30, or 50.) My job is only to be aware of his inclinations and give him access to resources (including myself.)
) phase when he was 8 or so, and he saw a bunch of Godzilla movies at the book store last night, and started reminiscing about all the Godzilla movies he'd made up.
We get about 4-5 bags of books every 10 days or so. I met a lady who had older kids there, I came up to her and asked if she was a homeschooler, and she was and we exchanged phone numbers (yay!) We came home and had snacks, dd played with her "office" ( a box full of envelopes, 1c stamps, papers, etc that she writes me letters with...great noncoerced writing and spelling practice! ) and ds did playdough, we had a quick game of Monopoly JR. before I went to work finishing a coworkers shift, from 4-8pm ( I am a part time RN) Tommorrow we go garage sale-ing, looking for swingsets and such advertised at some of them for our new yard, and of course, pack!| originally posted by fourlittlebirds You don't. They do. Kids are interested in this from an early age, what it will be like when they are adults, how they can make money, what sorts of things they might like to be doing. My oldest son (age 10) talks about getting his driver's license (we let him drive on country backroads, shhh) and knows he'll have to study and past a multiple choice test to do so, and that it is up to *him* to make that happen. He likes to cook and create new recipes, and he talks often about the restaurant he's going to own some day, his plans for it, and what he's going to do to get the experience and money needed to be able to do that. That's just an example. I expect that if he was inclined towards academia or some type of science career, he would already be showing interest in these things. He might be mathematically inclined, and showing interest in star patterns and asking for a telescope. If an astronomy career was truly right for him, he'd *naturally* want to be pursuing the sorts of things that would set him up for it long before it was time to enter college (whether that "time" be age 15, 20, 30, or 50.) My job is only to be aware of his inclinations and give him access to resources (including myself.) |
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Originally Posted by alima
I had to laugh hearing about another Godzilla fan. Ds had a serious Godzilla (or I should say, Gojira, since he corrected me so many times ) |
And that led the conversation to anatomy and she wanted to know how sperm was made. We talked about how our eggs are in our bodies already and she thought that was trippy.
*so* not me as a child. They did a game where you assigned numbers to letters (a-1 b-2 c-3 etc) and figure out your names value. They were trying to find words that would equal 100 exactly, which is hard! One of the moms and her family came up with WIZARDS over dinner later that day, and now I want to figure more out.
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Originally Posted by genifer
On Wednesday I was washing the dishes in the morning and thought, 'Why not just pack up and go camping!!'. We were on the road by 3am that night!
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It seems like unschooling has become much more common since I was a kid (I was schooled-at-home but had a good friend who was unschooled.)
The biggest lesson of the day may have been learned by me . . .
I love camping . . .
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