~ June Unschooling Support! ~

[yaM yaM]

Welcome to June, free thinkers!


A blessing for the beginning of our month ~ Byron Katie (unknowingly) supports unschooling.

For those of you that can appreciate the teachings of Byron Katie, I wanted to share this awesome quote of hers that is entirely relevant to unschooling. I use the word "unknowingly" because she is only just learning about the concept of self-directed learning as a societally-realistic option for educating children. ~



". . . Master or teacher is not a word I normally use. It implies that we all don't teach equally. And that's not true. Everyone has equal wisdom. It is absolutely equally distributed. No one is wiser than anyone else. Ultimately, there's no one who can teach you except yourself."



Happy Friday to all!

[maymorales]

new to homeschooling / unschooling. will be lurking and asking questions from now on.

~May

[Earth Angel]

Originally Posted by May May

Welcome to June, free thinkers!


A blessing for the beginning of our month ~ Byron Katie (unknowingly) supports unschooling.

For those of you that can appreciate the teachings of Byron Katie, I wanted to share this awesome quote of hers that is entirely relevant to unschooling. I use the word "unknowingly" because she is only just learning about the concept of self-directed learning as a societally-realistic option for educating children. ~



". . . Master or teacher is not a word I normally use. It implies that we all don't teach equally. And that's not true. Everyone has equal wisdom. It is absolutely equally distributed. No one is wiser than anyone else. Ultimately, there's no one who can teach you except yourself."



Happy Friday to all!

Was just coming to sub, but had to say, May May, I LOVE that quote!!!

[mama in the forest]

May may, I like her quote too. I saw it in her third book & thought the same thing about unschooling.

I love June! I turn 42 on the 7th & am feeling giddy already.......:

[UnschoolnMa]

Wow, June is here! It's summer. (Well, not technically...but whatever )

My unschoolers are playing Guild Wars (Ds), talking on the phone (Dd), eating macaroni, and listening to music (both). Dd just shredded a whole bunch of paper and old mail. Whew, that spot in the kitchen looks much better.

[RasJane]

Just found this. I am Sarah, mama to 2 unschooled guys. They are currently outside enjoying the sun, water and making up games with the neighbor home-schooled kids. Don't know if I will get over to post much (spotty net access), but appreciate a thread for others like us. Thanks!

[4evermom]

We went swimming for the first time this year, in a lake. Got to see a ton of tadpoles. Ds surprised me by going all the way up to his neck. He doesn't like getting his face wet and it was nice to see him comfortable so deep, instead of his having a death grip on me. I'm sure running around that deep is a good first step to doggy paddling. We were pestered by black flies and no-see-ums, though. Ds also found a caterpillar and is hoping it will form a chrysilis.

[oldermamato5]

I'm subbing!

[dharmamama]

I read some of last month's thread, but I started reading late and the thread was trucking along so merrily I couldn't keep up. But I'll throw my hat into the ring this month.

I'm dm, and I have three kids. One is in school (emergency measure to keep the family from imploding) and two are unschooled. The unschooled ones are Ramona (5) and Efram (4).

Today my kids listened to on tape/played Harry Potter all day. Efram tried to tell Ramona that she couldn't be Harry because Harry is a boy but Ramona put him squarely in his place with a blistering, "Girls can be anything they want to be!"

We also had a discussion about why I have a "fuzzy 'gina" (Efram wanted to know) and who in the family sports a uterus.

My biggest personal struggle related to unschooling right now is wrestling with the desire to prod Ramona in the direction of reading. I *know* that she will learn to read (the kid loves books and last week sat for five hours listening to a book) without intervention, and she can read some, but she's one of those kids who wants to know how to read, not learn how to read, so she gets frustrated very easily. I am not worried about her learning to read ... I just wish she'd do it already because she will be a much happier kid when she can read to herself and not have to wait for me to finish cooking/doing laundry/recuperating from a marathon read-aloud session before I can read to her again. It's just my impatience to get a little bit of a break from constantly reading aloud that makes me long to "teach" her to read. She does want a phonics workbook to work on this summer when her sister has summer work from school (Desta [12] is going into 7th grade but works on a 2nd grade level) so that she can be with Desta while Desta works. I found a Twin Sisters phonics workbook that looks fun and comes with a music cd, so we'll see how that works out.

dm

[majikfaerie]

Hi all..
I've been finding it hard to keep up with all the mails, we are travelling and living in a small van for now, so internet isn't so easy to come by. But I slowly manage to read the list - gee you mamas are chatty

So many times I see something I want to reply to, but usually its a few days (and about 50 messages) past.

I'm really finding it challengind to keep up with 4yo DD and on the road. right now we are desperately looking for a homely home to rent, and to create a local unschooling group.

Still, driving around the country, we managed to stop a lot and look around at interesting stuff, DD is learning a lot, just by living

[oldermamato5]

I'll intro myself too.

We have 5 children,two are grown and three at home. Oldest ds-almost 15 has never been inside a government school. Dd-9 went the past two years. She begged me and we let her. She had alot of fun but is ready to come home now,for good. Ds-8 went and hated it so we pulled him out.
So here we are and my heart is filled with happiness that my children are home!

[mama in the forest]

Hi everyone and welcome!

[3lilmonsters]

I think I chimed in once on last month's thread...but it's so hard to keep up!

I've been teaching high school math at the homeschooling coop for the past month or so and yesterday was the last day of that. My kids have been going with me and usually one mom plays a game with my older two and their grade schoolers and another mom plays with my 2yo so that I have the undistracted time I need. My kids have had such a blast there (as my 5yo has said "If this is what school is like, I wanna go every day!") that we were invited to join them next week on their last day, and the woman who's house it is at (a house that is within jumping distance of a nice pond!) has invited us to go swimming out there this summer...AND provided me with a great solution to a problem I've been stressing about. In the fall I have to take a class that meets three times a week (sadly, since there are only 6 students in the honors program at my university that are parents, they don't cater to them), and I've had no idea what I was going to do with the kids while I went. I was thinking I might have to take out a student loan just to pay for a babysitter . Well, I have been offered the opportunity to leave my kids at the homeschooling coop while I go (as long as my class is during school hours) in exchange for tutoring in math as needed! My kids jumped at that, so it looks like it'll work out.

Since the homeschooling coop is very much a school type environment, my kids have become more familiar with the concept of different grades. dd (5yo) has decided that she wants to be in 2nd grade by the end of the summer and ds (7yo) has decided he wants to be in 6th grade. So we've spent some time talking about what getting to those grade levels entails. They seem to be up for it, so we're going to sit down and make up a plan that they're ok with and see how it goes...but we're flexable

[3lilmonsters]

Oh! I almost forgot! I was looking at free text books online yesterday just for kicks (how nerdy is that?), and found in the listings a geography book from 1850. It had a question about how many contenents there are...the answer was two! We all had a good laugh about that! So then my sister told about a local beauty pagent she went to and when the 17 year old winner of the Miss *small town* title was asked the question "what country would you like to visit, and why?" Her answer was "Africa, because they have groups of AIDS, a need for water, and the children...oh, yes...the children" Ds remarked that maybe that was her geography book :

[yaM yaM]

Originally Posted by Earth Angel

Was just coming to sub, but had to say, May May, I LOVE that quote!!!

Good morning Earth Angel and all you other angels! Earth Angel, have you see the BK thread over in PG?

Originally Posted by mama in the forest

May may, I like her quote too. I saw it in her third book & thought the same thing about unschooling.

I love June! I turn 42 on the 7th & am feeling giddy already.......

Isn't that book A M A Z I N G? Oh my goodness I do love it. For me, it is the quintessential how-to-navigate-through-humanness manual.


And : Greenlee! I love that magical energy space around the anniversary of our entrance to the Earth. I am so glad you're here!


~
We are getting ready for girlbear's martial arts group, today. Last night we made shish kebabs on our copper fire bowl while swimming and jumping on the trampoline, howling at the old blue moon. Then we took the grill off the bowl and made a really big fire in it and did some drumming and chanting. I love that my kids and I can have the wild & free experience of travelling to such far off places (of the mind) without having to leave our own little backyard oasis.

[2 in August]

I had lots of fun reading and posting in May, so I'm back for June!

We haven't done anything exciting yet in june, lol. I did bring some more advanced baby toys up for ds who's going to be 10mo on Monday. They were dd's from long ago so she was having fun reliving her babyhood.

My dh has the next 2 weeks off starting tomorrow. He had to use the time or loose it. We're thinking about going to a museum and maybe Cabellas to see the animals. Plus we're going to try to get stuff done around here too.

[MamaWindmill]

Hi everyone! Just sayin' howdy!

[mommabear]

Hi everyone! Ds is currently outside with friends enjoying a Slip&Slide and lots of water fun! Happy Saturday!

[unlegal]

Originally Posted by RasJane

Just found this. I am Sarah, mama to 2 unschooled guys. They are currently outside enjoying the sun, water and making up games with the neighbor home-schooled kids. Don't know if I will get over to post much (spotty net access), but appreciate a thread for others like us. Thanks!

Hey, RasJane, I live in Newberg, too!

[momazon4]

Happy June, everybody!

Happy birthday, Greenlee!

I am nesting like a crazy thing so we have been cleaning and renovating like mad!

Ds(12) has a 3 afternoons per week job helping a carpenter and he loves it! This is what he wants to do as a profession and he is just in his glory. They were surprised by his strong work ethic but he LOVES it so I'm not surprised.

Dd decided she wanted a pair of shoes from the catalogue and didn't even ask me for them. She asked me to buy iced tea mix for her to sell, instead! So far, she has paid me back for the supplies and is now working on the $$ for her shoes.

We had extra homeschool funding left and ds(5) wanted craft supplies so he is completely in creative mood. My neighbour asked why there are markers on TOP of my wood shed so I will have to ask him about that!:

I am just so enjoying that my babes are following their own pursuits now. We are all enjoying it so much.