Experiments in Unschooling

I've been experimenting with unschooling on our off days (for example over Thanksgiving week or last week when I was sick).

First: We've been taking extended trips to the library (works best when Charlie can be busy with Dad off site) where we go and set up camp at a table and I let the girls roam the stacks and see what interests them. We spend at least two hours. This works best at the Marysville library where I can easily monitor the entrance/exit to the children's section and the juvenal non-fiction is in the juvenal section (where is should be).

My "rules": I'll read anything they bring to me (as long as it's appropriate); no computer; no play area; no whining about when we go home. If you're bored, find a book.

Makenna is brilliant at this but she's my strongest reader so it is a bit easier for her. I supply her with note cards and a pencil and off she goes. The librarian gave us a list of call numbers and subjects so she can even navigate the stacks with ease. The first week she wanted to learn about sea creatures and settled on octopuses. She stacked up the books, started digging and made lots of cards filled with facts (amazing creatures, really). She took home the books and spent several more days on the subject. The next week she moved on to something else.

Maddie is an interesting creature. She's sullen when she's not happy with something and lights up when she finally figures out how to make it work for her. This week she was bored. After some cursory interest in the globe and the huge atlas she decided she didn't like it that she couldn't check out the reference materials and that there was nothing there that would interest her and that if there was she couldn't read it anyway. As I'm trying to encourage self-directed learning I just sat back and watched over the edge of my book. I sent her back into the stacks when she wandered out and complained that she was bored. I shooed her from the computers. I took her to the bathroom. She half-heartedly listened to me read Maya a book. She thumbed the magazines. Then she followed me to the adult section where I was looking at books on vintage handicrafts. She finally found "it" and I took her back to the juvenal section and she checked out several books on making things.

I figure I'll spend hours there waiting and encouraging if I have to. I've been directing them to such an extent that they need to learn how to follow their interests without me telling them what their interests should be. I want them to find their passion and I trust that left alone long enough they will. I'm willing to wait it out.

Second: On our breaks or in cases of illness we unschool at home. I've made some "unschooling" guidelines. Well, really it's just one guideline: no screen time. Period. No movies, no webkinz on the computer, nothing. They have endless supplies of books and materials I just leave them to their own devices (under my distant watchful eye--ever hear of masterly inactivity) and see what happens. (Last week I checked on Makenna and Madison who were playing in the basement quietly. They were "playing" school. Now I put that in quotes because what I saw looked a lot like Makenna teaching Madison how to spell and sound out words. So I tiptoed out of the room and let them be.)

Beyond that I simply include them in what I'm doing. If it's thanksgiving that means helping in the kitchen and setting the table. Or maybe it's changing the laundry, measuring the detergent, and wrapping up in the warm towels when they're dry. Maybe we sit with yarn and hooks and see what happens. Maybe one curls up in the crook of my legs and reads along side me by the fire. Maybe another practices addition and subtraction as we peel the potatoes. Maybe it's reading a recipe and looking for the right measuring cup. Whatever it is, it's life. And along the way they learn the skills that are meaningful to live it (which shockingly includes reading, math, and science without my contrivance). And it's wonderful.

Now while I'm not ready to be exclusively an unschooler (I do love our Charlotte Mason and the structure she gives to our days and our lessons), I do hope this dipping in of our toes into the unschooling wading pool helps create life-long, self-directed learners out of all of us.