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Unschooling for 1 to 6 weeks only

1K views 17 replies 9 participants last post by  lilitchka 
#1 ·
We're in the midst of a teachers' strike here. School has not started, the two sides are very far apart and there's no sign of movement on either side. A lot of parents are beginning to ask people like me whom they know to be seasoned homeschoolers or unschoolers for advice on making do without school.

Some of the requests come from a place of mistaken assumptions: "Do you still have your Grade 4 curriculum? I was hoping I might be able to borrow it from you during the strike."

Some of the questions are a little more open-ended: "I'm wondering if you have any suggestions for things we could be doing as homeschoolers until the strike is over so he won't be too far behind."

And some of the questions are coming from a nice outside-the-box place: "What would your advice be for a family that wants to take advantage of this extra time and promote learning in ways that aren't necessarily part of school learning?"

I think that for the high-schoolers, who are missing the first month of discrete semestered courses with standardized examinations, the "missing out" anxiety may be somewhat justified. But on the assumption that we're mostly talking about kids in the K-8 age range, how would you respond to parents? How would you encourage them to see the opportunity in the lack of school, rather than focusing on the curricular learning they fear they might be missing? What would you advise them to do while the strike continues?

Or if this scenario seems too unusual to you, what specific advice would you give a parent who wants advice on how to enrich school holidays and summers by taking inspiration from unschooling. In that very short window of time, given that there's no chance to go through a deschooling phase, how would you help them get a taste of child-led autonomous learning?

I'll answer my own questions below.

Miranda
 
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#2 ·
Wow. I think my advice would begin as it always does-- start keeping notes as to what the kids are doing in light of it being valuable to learning. Plan a hike. Where we live, we have many national parks that are starting into their fall foliage, visitor centers are still open. Ask the kids what they want to do.

I think all that is easier with the holiday than with a strike that could end anytime. I don't think I would advise much for the younger set because they aren't used to parents being involved in their learning in that way. Older kids might be more anxious and look to parents for assistance in starting their studies, but the K-8 might just want an extended summer. The weather here is gorgeous, and I would take full advantage! If that idea is stressful to the parents, then back to my first piece of advice.
 
#3 ·
So far I've been giving the obvious reassurance and then talking about project-based learning.

The reassurance is sort of three quick talking points.
  1. Children are learning all the time. All they need is a supportive environment with some relative freedom, and caring adults willing to be involved with them in the course of daily life, and they'll learn like crazy. You can't stop them.
  2. All kids are in the same boat. Your 4th grader will be joining a school class which will take into account the fact that no one has had any schooling yet this year.
  3. Self-directed learning is incredibly efficient and lasting. A little bit goes a long, long way. These kids don't need 6 hours a day filled with educational activities to flourish.

I think that identifying a sort of "brand" of child-led learning (i.e. Project-Based Homeschooling) helps parents quickly get a toe-hold on a practice that will be conducive to embracing the opportunity in the school strike. I've been sending them to the Camp Creek Blog and the "10 Steps to Getting Started in Project-Based Homeschooling" page. But what I'm really missing is a succinct guide for parents helping their children identify interests and choose a project or two. The usual platitudes about observing natural interests sensitively over a period of time don't really work for families who are looking for something they can start, like, yesterday, and dive into whole-heartedly for the next week or two or four.

Miranda
 
#4 ·
But what I'm really missing is a succinct guide for parents helping their children identify interests and choose a project or two. The usual platitudes about observing natural interests sensitively over a period of time don't really work for families who are looking for something they can start, like, yesterday, and dive into whole-heartedly for the next week or two or four.

Miranda
This would be a great question to post of the forums there if you are a member. I'd be interested to hear Lori's advice from the PBH perspective. This situation might illustrate the need for houses to be set up to make transitions like this easy ("easily"?) To some degree, houses are set up with interests in mind already. That's one of the main points of PBH-- the house should reflect interests, create spaces conducive to diving into them.

Hmmm, but barring that, what could parents do now without all that preparation? Somehow I'm remembering there is a Camp Creek Blog post that addressed that somewhere. Not necessarily 2-4 weeks but short periods of time.
 
#5 ·
subbing because I've been trying to answer a similar question for a friend of mine. She's sending her 5yo daughter to K in January (family moves seasonally) in another town, and for now has been talking about "hooking her up with you guys because I'm sure you have some kind of great homeschooling thing going on." Would love for the kid to visit to play, but want a way to reassure the mom that she really doesn't need to add a whole bunch of structure to the next few months. Or does she? Does a kid that's planning to slot into school need something more formal?

As for the PBH thing, you might just direct them to the forums or FB page or Lori's email. She's extremely responsive, as are others there, so people could probably ask their own questions.
 
#6 ·
September is a gorgeous time of year in most of Canada. It is one of the best months, IMHO, for most outdoor activities. This month we have gone canoeing, swimming and we may go geocaching soon.

I would encourage people to do the stuff they would like to do while the weather is good, but do not typically have time for because of school.

I don't think you need to observe childrens natural interests for a period of time to do PBHing. You could do the following instead:

1. Ask the kids - lay out some ideas and see what they pick
2. Pick one yourself based on your own or their pereceived interest level interests (most parents know what their kids are into) and invite them to join in.

I don't think picking the project will be the major stumbling block. I think how much parental involvement to offer will be. If you do too much, it becomes your project and not theirs. They can become disengaged, annoyed, etc.

If you offer too little, especially if these are kids whose usual activities are micro-manged, they may flounder.

I would also sort out in my head whether I would like the project to be voluntary or not.

If it is truly voluntary, I would not prod the kids to work on it unless they were expressing boredom, etc. If it was completely involuntary, then setting aside a time each day to do (when parents are available) might be in order. If it is somewhere in between, then working on it yourself and inviting them to join, or putting a cap on "screen time" might encourage them to do it.

I would absolutely keep an eye on resources and guide families towards doing projects they can complete and feel successful in. If the project is too big, too expensive, requires things they cannot get…then it should be a "no." At least for a first project.
 
#7 ·
Thanks for the suggestions, Kathy! People around here tend to do a ton of outdoor family activities just as a part of daily life, and the summer is normally full of bigger adventures, right up to and including Labour Day weekend. With the strike they're still busy with outdoor pursuits. A music teacher friend said she's had to delay the start up lessons in our area because no one is around: they're all kayaking and camping, or at least enough of them are off doing various things that it's difficult for her to schedule lessons. It's just that many of the parents feel like now that it's mid-September they would like to be adding in something that feels like a replacement for school learning, something that's different from what they do all summer.

It's also getting fairly cold here lately, with temperatures at all elevations to the freezing point overnight and snow falling in the alpine and subalpine areas, so people are letting go of the multi-day adventures, since they don't have the gear for cold-weather camping. So there's a natural weather-related scaling back that's happening.

I think your suggestion that ambitious or somewhat unrealistic projects being a no-go "for the first project" are excellent. Given the possibly limited time, it makes sense to direct kids towards smaller projects that stand a greater chance of realizing success. Picking from a range of parent suggestions is also a good suggestion.

Thanks again!

Miranda
 
#8 ·
How about homesteading style activities. I take my kids to pick apples and they help me make sauce. They always help with the other canning/preserving too. I used to be a rarity, no one else seemed to can food. In recent years it seems to be making a comeback. I think I would take advantage of the strike by teaching these skills to the kids.

Other activities -- my kids love dissecting owl pellets. They are fun, quick, easy, etc.
Make time to visit a retirement center or something similar.
My husband has been having fun with the kids by trying to make different colored fire. We have learned a lot.
Build stuff. Get some wood scraps, nails, screws, and let the kids tinker. Use the recycle bin too.

Read a book out loud to the family. Sometimes I think that families don't get to read together at night because of all the homework that comes in.

Amy
 
#9 ·
Some cool ideas, thanks! I also discovered the kids' PBH Tumblr blog, where kids' self-directed projects are shared and there are some good ideas there: http://pbhkids.tumblr.com/

... not necessarily these particular projects, but to give parents and kids a sense of the range of possibilities.

I probably should have said more about the local school. Because it has chosen to focus on outdoor education, community integration and sustainability, a lot of the thing you mentioned get done there on an ongoing basis. At Harvest Festival every year they can salsa, press apple and apple-pear cider, flake groats into oats and so on... and all the proceeds get used for the school breakfast program and soup days. No actual canning, though around here canning is part of the culture. The Grade 4/5/6 normally spends a half day a week at the local nursing home doing school term, interacting with the seniors, building a bit of a curriculum around local history and story-telling. Owl pellets are standard in the science room every year or two and there's always a challenge on Earth Day to bring in something you've built entirely from recycling / garbage.

(Honestly, it sounds like a great little school, doesn't it? It is, in many ways. It's still a school, though.)

Anyway, I love the idea of sharing the reading aloud of a book within the whole family. We used to do this every time we had a vacation, and I would save really special books, those with a wide age appeal that no one, not even the adults, had ever read, for those times.

Some favourites we all remember fondly:

"The True Meaning of Smekday" by Adam Rex
"The Sea of Trolls" by Nancy Farmer
"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak
"The Wee Free Men" by Terry Pratchett
"The Giver" by Lois Lowry
"Tom's Midnight Garden" by Philippa Pearce
"The Search for Delicious" by Natalie Babbitt
"Danny, Champion of the World" by Roald Dahl
"Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh" by Robert C. O'Brien
"Moominpappa at Sea" by Tove Jansson
"The Golden Compass" and "The Subtle Knife" by Philip Pullman
"Skellig" by David Almond
"Wise Child" by Monica Furlong
"Lord of the Nutcracker Men" by Iain Lawrence

Miranda
 
#10 ·
Getting into this thread late, just to say that if I were faced with that (as unschoolers we haven't been; the closest we've come is losing teachers (ballet, riding, music) because we live in such a sparsely populated area), I'd try to entice my children to try something they hadn't before. My kids have things on their wish lists, some of which I can probably grant (a tenor uke), some probably not (raising an emu chick/getting a rescue donkey)...

Deborah
 
#11 ·
This strike is definitely getting people talking about 'missed learning,' isn't it, Miranda ...
Folks have been chatting up a lot of local homeschoolers/unschoolers for 'advice' here too.
People say things like, "He'll be so behind!" or "How do I teach her at home?" or "What are we supposed to DO all the time?"
I haven't been chiming in with any advice, although people have been asking what WE do, and so I talk about that. I really don't think that a family can 'unschool' for an undetermined- and limited amount of time when they're quite happily looking forward to going back to school. So I usually say, "Keep doing what you did in the summer. Learning happens all the time, and your kid will be right on track with the other kids who've been out of school too."

I actually think that a lot of 'deschooling' is happening in BC right now, which is NOT a good time to start purposefully unschooling as a limited time offer.

For folks that are taking this strike as a fulcrum to tip them into the homelearning/life-learning/unschooling that they're already geared towards and enthusiastic about, the conversation is a lot different:

Them: "I'm so done with public school. We're going to homeschool instead, and see how that goes."
Me: "Right on. There's a NBTS picnic next week! Come along!"
 
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#12 ·
Opinion here: if people are suddenly left hanging and the kids aren't learning or starting projects, either the house is not set up for jumping into and out of this kind of thing, or parents need an entirely different lens on their kids' activities. Hopefully parents will see the opportunity to change both. I don't think that you can ignore these things and then when school isn't happening suddenly shift gears if that infrastructure is not there in the first place. "What kind of house do I live in?" However, I don't really know any house devoid of interests, so then I think it's a case of parents shifting their attitudes. Neither can just be switched for an unexpected event like this without some time for preparation.

In that case, something like PBH that focuses on creating the space that is conducive to interests and going deeper (like, setting up the guitar on a stand in the room rather than in the case in a corner) is something that would need to happen in preparation for any future event, or just summer holidays. Creating a space that kids and adults can shift into and out of, whether school is happening or not.
 
#13 ·
I think part of the problem is that this has occurred coming off summer, and parents are feeling like there ought to be something different, something more intentional happening. You're right that many of the parents need to adjust their lenses: although they see the learning in everyday life and play, knowing that their kids are going to resume learning in a structured environment many of them don't trust that this is enough and I think it's entirely understandable.

I do think there's an important third factor at play here, besides that the parents aren't seeing the learning or that their homes aren't well set up for project work, and that is that the children require a period of deschooling before re-awakening and embracing their natural learning inclinations. Some of the kids I know are spinning their wheels in one particular area without really embracing opportunities to go further and deeper. They're in the oft-described de-schooling phase, immersing themselves in time-filling activities that used to be an escape from structured learning (video-gaming, bike-riding, reading, etc.) but now there's nothing to escape from, and they're not yet finding the opportunities in their interests: they're still stuck in the mentality that these things are diversions from what they're supposed to be doing.

I think starling&diesel is onto a good strategy in simply describing what her family does on a daily basis. Especially given the breaking news here that the strike may be nearing resolution. But in any event, a descriptive approach probably does more to open people's eyes and reassure them than any well-meaning prescriptive advice.

Miranda
 
#14 ·
I'm guessing that most of the parents looking for learning opportunities because of the strike are not all that interested in homeschooling for the long term, certainly not deschooling...from their perspective, that's what their kids have been doing all summer. Most of my homeschooling friends (and I grant that possibly they are more structured than most, given where I live and their religious motivations for homeschooling) have a highly structured approach to education, even if more tailored to their children's learning styles and interests than possible in most public schools. Some of my friends are quite openly horrified at what we do...one of the reasons I joined this board is because my kids are examples of unschoolers who have absolutely no trouble managing their time, holding jobs, taking formal lessons, and succeeding in higher education. A couple of relatives absolutely flipped when my dyslexic daughter could not read at 8...or 9, 10, 11, or 12...she's a visually oriented learner with synaesthesia...and likely would not have done better in a public school setting...in fact, has a study buddy at college who went through she public school system with all the intervention stops pulled out, who also needs a reader. All of my children are bright, but none of them (including the most traditionally academically gifted one) met the standard literacy milestones, which leaves a lot of room for finger pointing at "homeschool failure". I know I'm getting sort of off topic here, but...realizing I don't have a dog in the fight when teachers go on strike and leave kids without their traditional fall structure, because I really am an "interest led" rather than a traditionally structured homeschooling parent, and have never had a "convert", despite the long term obvious success of our unschooling approach. I can only offer support to other unschoolers, not give advice to people who are just waiting for things to return to "normal". Sooo...probably time for me to get out of this thread now... :laugh:

Deborah
 
#15 ·
Interesting discussion on the broader components.

I personally find it hard to believe that someone who normally led a structured life and suddenly had 1-6 weeks free wouldn't have a ton of backlog ideas / projects they would want to try. Some ideas that pop to my mind are -

- make a family tree
- some other local history project
- cooking / baking / fermenting etc
- local civic project, like set up a free book exchange system at the local train station (if it is not already there).

there could be so many more.

I understand they want it to feel academic - at least some of them do - but unless they start doing it there is no way for us to convince them of its inherent learning component.
 
#16 ·
don,t the parents usually work? if teh kids can't stay home alone, and parents have full time jobs, how do they do homeschooling.
maybe dumb question. I am just wondering.
we are not schooling our 5y.o. yet (in Ontario he is supposed to be in SK). But we both work part time, so we can do that. If I chose to send him to school and then work full time, it would be hard to change to our current way of living.
 
#17 ·
This is definitely not a double-income culture. Lots of seasonal work like logging and summer tourism industry stuff, small-business-people (things getting very quiet here by the end of September for the most part), part-time contract work, piecemeal part-time jobs, social assistance, rotating schedules and so on. And people live very cheaply here -- lots are living below the poverty line but doing fine with few needs and a DIY mentality -- and universal medicare.

Miranda
 
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