How in the world am I expected to work full time, from home, AND school my children?This is the million dollar question! And while I can't spell out exactly what it will look like for your family, I can offer some insights based on 15 years of homeschooling, over 25 years working with kids, a psych background with studies in psychoeducation and developmental stages, and my work as a college professor. I also happen to be a single mother that's juggled working and grad school with homeschooling. Your children do not need to be schooled; they need to learn. There's a huge world of difference between the two. Stick with me here... school is only one way to facilitate learning. It's designed for 20-30 kids to be educated at one time by someone who does not know each individual well. Talk to any teacher; much of the day is not spent in actual learning but in transitioning from one topic to another. The US public ed system was also designed with the stated intent (seriously; read the history) to quell curiosity and creativity which are two of the driving forces for learning in children. Until kids are taught that learning is a boring chore, curiosity and learning are as innate to them as swimming is to fish and flying is to birds. Self-directed learners or unschoolers - kids 100% in charge of their own education - get into their top choices of colleges. They graduate college at higher rates than their public schooled peers and report higher than average job satisfaction and overall happiness. How is this possible? Because learning is innate. I get that you're probably not ready to unschool your kids and might even want them to go back to school as soon as possible. That's ok. I only want to demonstrate how learning can occur without school while they're at home - or with very little of anything that looks like school. Ok, so how do my kids learn without school?Now, you've got the right question! :) How do you learn something new? If it's a deep-dive for a career you might seek out schooling. Otherwise, you learn through real life, community, and relationships. Think about a topic you were recently curious about. You probably read a book or did a Google search. Maybe you watched a documentary. No doubt you found others with similar interests and discussed it with them. It probably came up in conversation with your friends and family too. Each exploration led to more knowledge, and each conversation gave you a chance to refine your thinking and articulate your knowledge on that topic. This is how kids learn best, according to research - when their senses and emotions are fully engaged in topics they are interested in, that are relevant to their real lives. Finally, remember, your kid learned to roll over, sit, crawl, walk, talk, go potty, feed themselves, dress themselves, and heaps more without any formal education - simply by being in relationship with you and others. They can learn to read, write and explore every other topic in the same way. I think I see the paradigm shift... But what does this look like in everyday life for us?Below is a sample daily rhythm. Adjust it to meet your own family's needs. Use it as a jumping off point to add in your own ideas. Family breakfast On Sundays you have a pancake tradition and you introduced the new "word of the week". The challenge is to use this new word correctly as often as possible throughout the week. Set a good example and make it fun! On other days, you read a chapter aloud to them from Tumtum and Nutmeg or other high quality literature at breakfast. Depending on their age, you spend an additional 5 minutes noting the weather, day/month, and on a math exercise. Literally, you're looking at 5 minutes here.... for littles you might do a counting finger play. For slightly olders you might skip count, or maybe you'll recite the 6 times tables together while banging out rhythms on the table. Kids returning to school? Add in 5 minutes reviewing their spelling list daily. Then you close your AM time with a song. Not morning people AT ALL? Maybe this is best done at lunch time and in the AM you want to let your kids sleep in so you an work before they're up. Or maybe you want to get everyone out for a few minutes of fresh air in the AM. Again, adjust this as needed. Subjects covered: English language arts, math, music, maybe more depending on the read aloud Bonus: Kids are much better at leaving you alone for awhile when you've spent some time filling their emotional banks up. Work time You begin your workday. Kids returning to school when possible should probably spend 5-20 minutes at the breakfast table doing their "work" - a math worksheet and an ELA worksheet to keep them up with the public school curriculum. Next, send them outside to play, run, vent some energy.... Back inside, they can have morning quiet time where they play with whatever toys while listening to an audio book. Choose something with some history or science in it. For example, Magic Treehouse is great for learning history/social studies. Set them up with a community resource in the AM. Maybe they have an online game time with friends or take an out school class or meet with an online tutor for an hour. Have them make lunch. Make a big deal of how big and responsible they are. Subjects covered: math, ELA, PE, social studies Lunch Break You quickly eat your lunch, review what was fact vs fiction in causal conversation about their Magic Treehouse (or other) audio book. Read a short nature story or part of one - fiction or otherwise. Then you go outside for a nature walk. Note what's happening with trees, leaves, plants going to seed, animals, insects, etc. At some point, you do another math exercise. You shout as loudly as you can or use a designated funny voice to recite whatever math facts are appropriate for their level. Embrace the crazy! Get some loudness out!! Shout/spell their spelling words together. They've had to be quiet a lot....! Alternately, end lunch break with wrestling or huge squeezes or whatever form of physical contact your kids enjoy best. Then slow it down with a back rub or something that settles them down for an afternoon rest watching a movie or reading a book or whatever. Again, this is about having a daily rhythm of energetic times contrasted with quieter down times. And it's about filling your kids' emotional banks so they can give you some quiet and space to work. Subjects covered: social studies, science, math, ELA, maybe PE Afternoon Set them up with a fun activity or another community engagement activity online. Designate more outdoor time. Bribe them with extra money or a weekly takeout from a fave place if they can get everything spotlessly cleaned up from lunch (seriously though...these are rough times for everyone so make it FUN, and give them a bit of slack if it's not absolutely perfect; help the to feel like you're all on the *same team* making this work for everyone). Have them explore and watch 3 BrainPop videos. Any school teacher should be able to give you access to this for free; otherwise the subscription is worthwhile. Know your kid's rhythms... do they need downtime after lunch? How about a movie or reading time if they enjoy reading? Realize that after that downtime they'll need to move again. That's a good time for you to take a coffee break, get them outside, and blow off some ENERGY. You'll figure out how it all works best for you... be willing to experiment, to discuss with your kids what did vs did not work about each day, and how to make it all better so that *everyone's* needs are being met. Kids are pretty wise when you include them in this stuff and they feel heard. And they're more likely to listen to you when you say "I really needed more quiet at x time when I was having my meeting, but I think you were needing more activity then. How can we make this work for everyone?" Subjects covered: many, depending on activities After work.... Again, you need to focus on connection when you're done working. Let them help make dinner. This includes math skills of measuring, sorting, dividing, counting, etc. Dinner This is a good time to discuss what they've been learning about. Let it come up naturally in conversation. "What did you decide to learn about on BrainPop today?" After they answer "Oh yeah... I remember when I was a kid and learned about that _____" or maybe "Oh that's so cool! I didn't know that. Tell me more!" or "Wow! you know I read in the newspaper recently that ______." The key here is to be an engaged parent/friend not try to sound like a teacher. :) Evening Take 20 minutes after dinner to check over their breakfast ELA and math worksheets and review anything tricky. Do a family cleanup. (Aim for easy to clean dinners, use of the dishwasher, or use of paper plates.) Make it fun! Let the kids pick the music. Have a cleaning dance party. Then do an evening activity. Maybe Mondays are for baking (math); Tuesdays are family game night and you listen to music of the 50's (math and music); Wednesdays are art night. You share a favorite painting from a book/online. Everyone does an arts/crafts project. You listen to classical music or jazz music.... (art and music). Thursdays are poetry night. You read poetry while drinking tea and eating deserts from fancy dishes (ELA). Fridays are pizza and movie night of course. Pay attention to how many subjects can be learned via movies/fiction. You might be surprised! Documentaries can be fun and informative, but so can historical fiction shows you watch (Little House or Call the Midwife). Sci-fi series can lead to discussions and google searches on AI and physics and space. Keep it casual and adventurous. Subjects covered - all required and more Bedtime A 30-60 minute read aloud at bedtime can calm kids and provides an incredibly rich opportunity for learning to continue. As you can see... with just a bit of intention, your child is learning every subject covered in school and more merely by engaging with real life! :) Hmm... Got any more ideas!When learning doesn't look like school it never ends! Weekends are great for a longer walk, hike, snowshoe, sledding or other nature adventure which counts as both science and PE. And don't forget about things like feeding birds, a weekly trip to the library (ask them what topic they want to learn about; it's great seeing what they come up with!!), outdoor sculpture parks, watching a play/ballet/musical or live music event online, following live-cams online that show their favorite animals in zoos or in the wild, online martial arts or dance or other classes, and so on. There is a world of opportunities for learning just waiting to be discovered. That's why during non-covid-19 times we see the world as our classroom (it's wonky even for us veteran homeschoolers right now!). Kids grocery shopping with you? Teach them about unit prices. Let them weigh produce and estimate cost. Teach them how to analyze your grocery spending by looking at the mean, median, and mode on the receipt. Let kids help plan and execute the grocery budget and menu planning. Gently correct grammar in real life. Play MadLibs and allow all the crazy "potty" words you don't normally allow. Discuss current events. Listen to audio books in the car. The more you think of learning outside of a school context, the more you'll find it happens everywhere. Finally, remember these things: 1. Play is the single best thing for cognitive development through the early elementary years! 2. Neuroscientists have found our brains are wired to remember things in the context of stories. Read to them! Tell stories! 3. Movement should be a part of play and is vital to brain development - let your kids get dirty! Embrace rolling, skipping, dancing, tiptoeing, running, swimming, sliding, swinging, climbing etc through mud, grass, leaves, snow, water, trees, pebbles, etc So that's all I have to do to homeschool?Haha you didn't *really* think NYS was going to be that easy, did you?
You'll need to record and file paperwork to the school superintendent's office if your child is age 6 or older. Check out my How to Homeschool in NYS post which gives you a brief overview in plain English and links to the NYS regs. For more resources and ideas, check the learning resources or homeschooling/unschooling tabs on the side of this page. Finally, be wiling to have fun and be flexible! You won't get your family's rhythms and needs all met perfectly on the first try. In fact, they'll change as your kids grow. Keep lines of communication open and keep being flexible. You can do this!
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![]() You've decided to homeschool. You've figured out the NYS regs (or whatever state you're in). The big question now is what curriculum to use - or not use. Disclaimer. We're unschoolers. I believe strongly that curiosity is as innate to being human as swimming is to fish and flying to birds. Children want to learn about their world and become functioning adults - unless they have been taught by schools that learning can only happen in ways that are boring and that they aren't good at. Check out The Heart of Unschooling, Q&A to learn more and to find out if it really prepares kids for college and real life. That said, I fully support that each family must find what works for them and few will actually unschool. When folks first think of homeschooling they think of replicating school at home. Ultimately, very few homeschoolers stay in this place. There's a very wide spectrum from school-at-home on the one hand to unschooling on the other hand. Most homeschoolers end up somewhere in the middle, finding out that reading/writing/worksheets/textbooks are not usually the most ideal way for their child to learn. In fact, research shows that children learn best when in relationship with others with multiple senses engaged in an activity that interests them. Think about when you want to learn something... I bet you seldom order a textbook, fill out worksheets, and take a test. ;) You probably Google, read a *REAL* book, talk to people who know more than you, and do some hand's on experimenting. You probably talk to people about what you're learning because you're excited about it and discuss it with other folks interested in the same topic. This is the real life way that knowledge gets reinforced and built upon. Most folks starting off want a curriculum at least for reference, but keeping an open mind to how learning can work outside of that curriculum is important too. Ask around on homeschool pages and you'll get 101 different recommendations for curriculums. Go ahead and choose one. Just hold it loosely. Use the wording I recommend in my How to Homeschool in NYS post so you can change things up if you find something else that works better. And be willing to follow your child's lead when they go down a rabbit hole and want to veer off the curriculum. That's the joy of learning happening right there! Celebrate it! See my post on some of our favorite learning resources along with our homeschool/unschool posts over the years for ideas of how subjects can be covered via real life. Here are a few ways learning has happened naturally, over the years, in our home.... in note form for each subject. Math - we skip counted, counted by 5's and 10's and 100's in the car. We made up stupid/nonsense/gross poems for the times tables. We watched the zany math antics dot com and the British Maths Mansion on YouTube. We played the Dragon Box app and the Prodigy math game. We read library story books on math topics such as Multiplying Menace. This got us through middle school math. For high school, my daughter meets weekly with a tutor. I don't do high school math! English - we read 1001 library books; we read books we own; we listened to audio books; usually I did the reading since my daughter has dyslexia and never loved to read. Now, at age 15, she reads just fine, but still prefers an audio book. We didn't label her as "learning disabled" just because her learning style was different from the school-norm. There was no need to label her at home. Vocabulary was learned through real life and reading. Grammar was learned through me gently correcting thing she said with explanations of why one way was correct - plus MadLibs. Everyone should play MadLibs with their kids and allow them to put in as many potty words as they want! ;) Your kid will be an expert on verbs and nouns and adjectives and adverbs in no time and you'll all be laughing hilariously! For writing, see my post on How Unschoolers Learn to Write. Social - we watched Little House and talked about what life was like in those times. We read Native American stories and stories about holidays in other cultures. We read Magic Treehouse and talked about fact vs fiction. Historical fiction - whether through books or films - has always been a HUGE part of learning history here. It's by far more engaging than the dry facts and dates in a textbook, and of course you want to look up a few facts to see what's real vs not real. Liberty Kids is great for little ones (free on YouTube). Howard Zinn's Young People's History of the US book, Crash Course videos (US History, World History, European History), and the Seeds of American Trilogy (books) are all engaging for older kids. We did use Story of the World (SOTW) for World History the first time around, but I have a lot of reservations about it, key being that it centers around "now so and so was the richest and most powerful man in the world". See my Ancient History post on how we used SOTW for discussion of who gets to write history and how we supplemented it. Science - have you ever wondered why kids learn about cells and molecules but can't tell you about the plants and animals in their neighborhood? We started with several years of natural science, focusing on feeding and identifying birds, reading stories about the lives of animals around us, learning about the seasons, learning about the migration of a hummingbird from a fictional story, going to wilderness school, foraging for wild edibles, growing a garden, and so on. Books I read to her featured heavily here - enchanting fictional stories that taught real life science about the world around us. There are so very many wonderful books! From there, Helena branched into topics like biology, regenerative ecology, and now astronomy. The BasicsConsidering homeschooling this year, welcome! To start, here are 6 things you should know in a nutshell.... 1. NYS does not provide or approve your curriculum. 2. You are required to teach specific subjects. The content and how your children learn is completely up to you. 3. Homeschooling does not need to look anything like school; in fact, it usually works best when it looks little to nothing like school. 4. Schools are set up so that a single teacher can assess the knowledge of 20-30 children (s)he doesn't have a deep personal relationship with. Homeschooling can be relationship based where things like casual conversation or telling Grandma what you learned can replace worksheets and tests. You know what your kids know because you know your kids - just like you knew when they were crawling, walking talking, etc. And just like they didn't need formal "how to go potty" lessons, kids at home often learn with no formal lessons and a lot of real-life involvement. If we all sent our kids to school to learn to use the potty, in a generation we'd question if they could learn without a worksheet. Can you picture it? Pick up the picture that shows the first thing you do when you go potty (child picks up picture of pulling drawers down). If this sounds super stupid it's because we've not been programmed to think kids need "school" methods to learn before age 5. Why do they suddenly need them at age 5? 5. NYS requires a Letter of Intent or LOI, an Individualized Home Instruction Plan or IHIP (pronounced eye-hip), 4 quarterly reports, and an annual assessment. They also require that your child is learning for a specific number of hours. Nobody counts those hours; we simply put that the hours were met - since learning at home occurs round the clock and on weekends and holidays too. These all go to your local school superintendent's office unless they contract out to BOCES. Ask around and people will tell you who your local point of contact is. 6. NYS does not approve your curriculum!! Some school districts don't understand this. They are only allowed to make sure you are following the regs - covering each required subject in some way and listing some sort of curricular resource for each subject. The Nitty GrittyNY requires a good deal of red-tape in terms of paperwork, but it's really quite simple once you get your head wrapped around it. You'll need to read the NYS regs for yourself (at the bottom here) but here are the requirements in everyday English.
LOI - First - you send in your letter of intent or LOI which states name, age, grade, and that you will homeschool. Sign and date it. This is due whenever you decide to homeschool. IHIP - Next, you send in an Individualized Home Instruction Plan or IHIP (pronounced eye-hip) that details the annual plan. Regs tell you when this has to be in; it's due so many days after your LOI. This can be very simple. List each required subjects. Write a sentence about what topics you will begin with or the overall goal or plan for that subject; don't be too detailed. Be sure to say "Other topics will be covered as opportunities and resources dictate". Then write "curricular resources will include but not be limited to the following" and list some resources for that subject. Those particular ways of wording things above allow you the flexibility to adjust your plan at any point in time during the year. So, if your child, for example, is suddenly obsessed with opossums and wants to learn everything there is to know about them, you can ditch what you had planned for science next and simply report a sentence or so about oppossum zoology in your quarterly reports for science and include a sentence about research in the English Language Arts (ELA) section. Without the specific wording, you are locked into adhering to your plan or reporting changes. About curricular resources - I always list a specific reference book or reference curriculum, plus videos, podcasts, YouTube videos, games, apps, field trips and things like that for curricular resources. While the book I list includes an actual title and author, I literally write "YouTube videos, podcasts, community professionals..." for the rest. Leaving it vague allows us freedom to uncover and use resources along the way. By the way... starting with things you know your kid is really into (dinosaurs for science or cooking for math) and asking kids what they want to learn about can be REALLY fun! Repeat the sentence or two summary and curricular resources for each subject. Put your child's name/grade and the date on it. Add your quarterly report dates (more below). Now you have an IHIP. (Note: Many people combine English Language Arts (ELA) into one subject; just be sure to touch on each required aspect.) That wasn't so difficult right? Quarterly reports - Think of these like report cards. Pick 4 dates about evenly spread out. For each one, you'll send in a sheet that lists each subject and includes a couple bullet points of what has been covered. State at top of the sheet that you covered the required hours and the child made satisfactory progress in all subjects. Again, less is more. The schools don't need tons of detail. They only need to hear from you that you've met the regs. Annual assessment - You turn this in with your 4th quarterly. There are two kinds of assessments - narrative and testing. Narrative assessments can be done in grades 1-3 and biannually in grades 4-8. For a narrative assessment, state that your child met or exceeded all expectations as set out in the x grade IHIP and will proceed onto the next grade. Sign. Date. Some folks add "highlights of the year included learning cursive" or something similar for most subjects. I never have. A few districts will tell you that you can't write your own narrative. When I moved to my current district, I had to have a certified NYS teacher I know sign off on it. Other times, parents make a peer-review-committee and sign off on each other's narrative assessments. Both are discussed in the regs below. A testing assessment is required in alternate grades for 4th-8th (so 4, 6, and 8 or 5 and 7). They are also required annually in high school. Most folks do the California Achievement Test (CAT) or the PASS test - both of which test basic math and ELA, like very basic. You are not required to do NYS common core testing or to test all subjects. Your child must have a cumulative score of 33rd percentile or greater meaning that they can pass if 67% (100-33 = 67) of the kids the test was normed on scored higher than them. In other words, don't sweat the tests. Below is the link for the much more complicated and verbose NYS regs. They're helpful to let you know required hours (nobody counts them bc learning happens all the time at home) and what subjects you have to cover when. I hope that provides a concise and non-scary summary for you! <3 You might not have chosen to homeschool if not for the pandemic, but this can be a super exciting and bonding experience over the joy of learning if you think outside of the school-at-home box. http://www.p12.nysed.gov/part100/pages/10010.html In truth I suppose this should be titled "How my Unschooler has Learned to Write" or maybe "Can a Kid Really Write Without Sequential Lessons?" Let's talk about curriculum for a second. Curriculum is an artifical construct - something not found in real life - that's created to progress the skill of 20-30 kids at the same time and in the same way in a classroom setting. There's nothing natural about that from the standpoint of evolutionary biology. I'm not saying we should never have classrooms or curriculum. Heck I'm finishing up my 2nd masters and have 40 doctoral credits. I'm familiar with curriculum. Thing is, I chose this path of my own free will because the degrees mean something to me. On the other hand, most kids would not willingly choose any or much curriculum if they knew there were alternatives; and curriculum is by no means the only or most natural way of learning a skill. It's not how humans generally learn. It's not how humans evolved to learn. That's what I mean when I say it's an artificial construct. I mean it's something people have made up for a specific purpose and place. We all accept that each child learns to walk and talk in their own time and their own way. If I were to propose talking classes for toddlers it would sound ludicrous to you. But what's the difference between talking lessons and writing lessons? If humans are capable of learning spoken speech all on their own can't they also learn the intricacies of written speech all on their own? Yep. They can! And unschoolers are great evidence of that. I can hear the arguments running through your head, because many of the same ran through my head at one time or another...
Take a deep breathe! Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple - or more difficult. Difficult, because to trust children we must trust ourselves - and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted. John Holt I find John Holt's quote there eternally inspiring and endlessly challenging. My daughter Helena has dyslexia. Though she could sound out a few words at 4 she didn't start reading early readers until age 8 and to this day letters still flip 360 degrees in all directions sometimes. The biggest mistake I ever made was trying an Orton Gillingham curiculum and forcing reading. She HATED it and it put a strain on our relationship. I backed off because I valued our connection and didn't want her to hate reading. We eventually learned from Davis' book, The Gift of Dyslexia, what a cool process her brain is capable of in shifting things for increased awareness and understandng. It's pretty brilliant actually! The same book also helped her be conscious of the process and able to put her "mind's eye" in the order needed for reading.
In the ensuing years, Helena has challenged everything I once believed about education and how children learn, specifically the role of reading and writing in learning. (Hint: it's super overrated!) Over the years I've learned - sometimes the hard way - to back off my fears, to focus on connection and relationship first, and to trust her. In time she's shown me that she is learning all the "basics" in ways that are uniquely and beautifully her own, on her own timetable, and not at all the way I would have predicted or planned. In 4th grade she came to me wanting to write an APA style research paper like I do for grad school. She decided she wanted to write it on snowy leopards and her primary question was "Do snowy leopards in zoos have more toxins in their blood than those in the wild due to being closer to civilization or are toxins higher in wild cats from environmental pollutants?" Wow! That sounded more like a doctoral thesis than a 4th grade project, but ok. Together we read a few library books on these cats, made notes on cards and organized them into piles of topics, and then delved into Google scholar and peer-reviewed articles. We never were able to answer her question but we did learn a ton and had fun! And her paper impressed our public school teacher/neighbor. I think it's important to note that prior to this Helena had never written more than a couple of sentences. There was on linear progression from sentences to paragraphs to essays to research papers. But what if she hadn't done this paper? No problem, she'd learn APA fomatting and about peer-reviewed scientific literature later - if and when she needed that info. After this project, Helena wrote nothing for a long time. Then in 5th grade she wanted to write fiction. She used voice dictation to write down her stories and met with local homeschool mom and international award winning author Jennifer Roy for a writing club. Jennifer wisely advised "Don't make her finish what she starts writing" explaining that she'd lose the joy in it if forced and telling me that she herself started stories all the time as a child that she never finished. Sage advice even if it did leave me hanging in suspense a number of times when not one story was finished. In 6th grade Helena wrote and published a few articles for iGen21.com and created her website Paws for Herbs. In 7th grade, thus far, she's begun one story. You can read it here on her IG account. I read it and thought, "Wow! This. Without worksheets, grammar lessons, or forced writing...!" It's a great beginning for a story!" Thoughout the years I've exposed Helena to topic sentences, making a heartmap to get ideas out and turning that into an outline, basic parts of speech by playing MadLibs, and other proper grammar and punctuation mostly by noting when it's improper in articles, books, and so on. No worksheets needed. Just living real life. Your own child's path to learning written speech might look very different from Helena's, and that's ok! Bottom line is if you're living life together with an ounce of intention it will happen. And let me tell you from exprience... there are MANY college students, graduate students even, who can't string together a coherent paragraph with a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and conclusion. 12 years of curriculum and they never learned the basics! Trust your child to learn. They mastered the spoken word in their own unique way and will master the written word likewise. Helena has loved animals since infancy and been working with me with herbs for several years now. She wanted to combine these two loves.
www.PawsforHerbs.com is her new website! I'm so proud of her! And here she PUBLISHED an article on how she used herbs to help our recently rescued canine sweetie Lilly. Finally, she's started a YouTube channel to teach herbal skills and knowledge for animal herbalism. Interested in an herbal consultation for your furry friend? Contact us at [email protected] :) What is unschooling?![]() Unschooling is a method of homeschooling, legal anywhere one can homeschool, that is based on two basic premises: 1. Trust in the child's innate curiosity and ability to learn what they need when they need it and 2. Totally non-coercive or non-forced learning. Unschooling is attachment parenting for older kids. Your baby, toddler, or preschooler learns to sit, crawl, walk, talk, feed herself, use the toilet, count, recognize colors, and many other skills without any formal instruction, just by living life and being in relationship with you. And no two kids before school, the same age, will know exactly the same things. They learn when they need the knowledge. In the same way, an unschooled child learns everything they need to know, when they need to know it, by living life and being in relaionship with you and others. Why do we unschool?We've always been curious, whole-life learners. When Helena was an infant and toddler I was always talking to her about life, about things around us, about what I was doing. That's never stopped. In the early days of homeschooling we did some Waldorf curriculum together, and we both enjoyed it. But I never followed any curriculum fully - or even close to fully - because, even then, I could see it would get in the way of living and learning from real life. We tried worksheets on a few occasionas, but neither of us cared for them. We tried a phonics program for Helena's dyslexia, but that ended up being a nighmare (see dyslexia posts for our journey and what's worked for us). From day one, most of what I reported on the required NYS quarerly homeschool reports was real life learning! We visited farms, went to sheep shearings, made maple syrup, learned primitive skills at wilderness school, read and watched Little House, explored Native American stories and history - and put it all down as social studies/history. We read about diverse ways of celebrating holidays worldwide - more history. We planted gardens, observed seasons and the circle of life, read books about animals, tracked animals, and observed them outdoors - and recorded it all as science. We crossed over into total unschooling around 4th grade. The Waldorf things we were doing were beginning to bore Helena and feel artificial without a group to do them with. And, frankly, it was getting in the way of learning from real life. What do I love most about unschooling?We both love unschooling because it could be summed up as one grand life adventure of living in relationship, exploring our world together, and making our dreams come true!! How do you know your kid is really learning without tests?How did you know your kid could walk or talk? You knew because you are with them, because you're in relationship with them! Similarly, you'll know what your school age child knows because you are in relationship with them. Have conversations. Make it a practice from infancy on to talk to your child as you'd talk to an adult. Do your critical thinking out loud. Comment on things... they'll quickly learn to question, comment, and discourse with you! Most importantly, they'll learn critical thinking skills that curriculums can't really teach. What about states that require homeschoolers to test?I'm in NYS, which is one of the strictest in the nation regarding homeschool requirements. We turn in an annual plan and 4 quarterly reports, and we have to test biannually in grades 5-8 and annually in high school. The annual plan and quarterlies are no big deal. You just learn to translate real life into academic and subject-based terminology. Testing? Helena did her 5th grade test last year. We did the CAT test, California Achievement Test. It's a test of basic ELA -English Lang. Arts - and math skills. She scored 7th-11th grade on all sections. (Updated to add, she's completed 9th grade now and continues to perform well on the CAT test.) I will say that while I do not force any learning activity, I am much more intentional than many unschoolers in making sure she comes across info I know she'll need on the tests. For example, we've done MadLibs to learn parts of speech, or we've read funny library books like Greedy Apostrophe. But many unschoolers just don't worry about the scores since you only have to get 33rd percentile to pass - meaning that you can pass by scoring lower than 67% of the kids the test was normed on. All that to say that you can unschool no matter how strict your state's requirements are. Just get in touch with other unschoolers in your state and they'll help you out. Won't people think I'm crazy for unschooling?Maybe. Maybe not. It's all in how you present it. Personally, I think using language people can understand is a helpful means of communication and kindness. So I don't tell the state/school district we unschool. We use the word "homeschool" with the general public. And it's helpful if your kids can tell Grandma or others "Hey, I have been studying Colonial hisory and primitive skills. We've been reading Little House and we visited a farm and watched them do sheep shearing." Kids love to learn a few new terms that make them feel smart and sound smart to others. Others like to know your kid is still learning and appreciate language they can relate to. It's also helpful if your kid knows what subjects are learned in school, knows that building in Minecraft or measuring things are forms of math, knows what PE and recess are, and so on. And please make sure your child knows what grade they are in! I know... some unschoolers don't like that term because it's a "school" term. But it really goes a long way to helping your child relate to the general public. Just assign whatever grade generally goes with that age even if you don't do any of the learning typical for that grade. If you want to be so countercultural that you don't relate to broader culture, then don't be surprised if people think you're crazy. Ok with using some academic language? Then people will find you very relatable :) What role do parents play in unschooling?Some people say unschooling is MORE work not less for parents than using a curriculum. In any case, it's relationship based. You are on your child's team helping them to explore their world, find and pursue their interests, and meet their goals! What does this really look like? "Strewing" is a word many unschoolers use. The parent(s) strew the child's path with a zillion different learning opportunitis. It's up to the child to choose which to explore and how deeply and how long to explore them. Examples: When Helena was little I had an alphabet puzzle around. I'm always talking to her about things in real life, not expecting that "this knowledge is for 7th grade" or "this is adult stuff". I showed her the difference between crinkly onion skins and bumpy oranges when she grocery shopped with me at 6 months, and we've never stopped exploring the world around us and talking about it. Now, I suggest ideas to her, brainstorm with her, pass along videos I think she'd like, find books she'd enjoy, read with her, help her with her website, find interesting political posts/videos/events and on and on.... I spend a LOT of time both exploring the world and looking for fun resources. I really nerd out on finding fun resources to learn from! :) How do unschooled kids learn to read? Don't they need phonics worksheets or something?Unschooled kids learn to read in a variety of ways and at a variety of times, some at age 4, some not until age 10 or so. Most learn around "average" ages of 6 or 7. Many learn by playing video games. Others ask mom or dad for help and are shown what letters say and helped to sound out simple words. Some learn by asking how to spell words to make lists. Some parents buy and read simple phonics readers with their child because the child has asked to learn and wants to be shown. Can unschoolers do worksheets or use curriculum or take classes?If the child wants to, sure! Most people prefer learning from real life though. If you, as an adult, want to learn something what do you do? You might buy a textbook or take a class, but you'll probably first Google it, read books, have a friend share a skill with you, or use other means of learning through real life. Most adults don't read a textbook and take a quiz to learn something. Helena used a textbook for some biology and has chosen a sort of textbook for astronomy for her 10th grade science. Crash Course videos are much more popular with her than books though. Won't my child just slack off without the discipline of curriculum and routine?If your child has been in school and learned that learning is an onerous chore, then probably they will need a lengthy period of "deschooling" where they can just chill out and do seemingly "nothing". "Deschooling" is a really important process for parents too, by the way. Most parents need to read, listen, learn, and change their paradigms about learning and schooling. One of the premises of unschooling is that it's pretty impossible to NOT learn. Personally, I think learning happens best when parents and kids approach life together as an adventure, try out lots of new things, visit places, read together, watch things together - spend lots of together time. But some unschoolers would argue that a child playing video games and watching YouTube all day everyday is still learning. And while I'm not personally fond of anything that keeps any human being sedentary all day (even reading all day everyday) I do know there are many unschoolers for whom this has worked. They're now happy and successfully employed adults. Kids who have never gone to school seem to not lose the natural curiosity and delight in exploring the world that toddlers and preschoolers have. Just today Helena, age 11, asked me "Mom, how is olive oil made?" so we'll be googling that on a little later and probably watching a YouTube video or two. Can I unschool just some subjects and not others?You can do whatever you like of course, BUT if any learning is forced than you're really NOT unschooling. That would be more eclectic homeschooling. And that's ok too if it works for all of you. How do unschoolers learn math?Math is everywhere, or so I'm told. As someone who is far more adept with words than numbers this one is a bit more challenging for me to explain. We tend to see math as problems on paper, but math is ever so much more. And kids learn it by price comparing in the store with you, dividing things up fairly amongst friends, playing video games, sorting, counting, building in real life and Minecraft, and many other ways. Helena has really enjoyed watching the humorous math antics . com videos; playing Dragon Box, an app that teaches algebraic equations beginning with images and no numbers; playing Prodigy math a wizard quest game where you do math problems to battle villains; reading funny math library books with me; finding acute, obtuse, and right angles on buildings while driving; playing mental math games together; developing a business; saving and spending money; and more. The thing to remember is that long division is really tricky when you learn it at age 7 in public school BUT very easy when you learn it at age 10 or 11. Many unschooled kids report learning all of high school math in a few short months in their late teens - because they want to learn it and need it for college then. When one is motivated to learn a skill and developmentally ready to learn, learning comes easily. Edited - as a mid/late high schooler this year (we're doing combined 10th/11th this year), Helena's chosen to work with a tutor once weekly, mostly so she feels confident on our state's testing requirement but also because she wants to know a bit about algebra, geometry (she loves it), and business math. Unschooling sounds great in theory, but does it really work in the real world?Yes, it very much does! Dr. Peter Grey has researched and written extensively on unschooling and the outcomes of unschooling. It's pretty amazing! As adults, unschoolers get into their top choices of colleges. More than the average population go into arts or tech careers, and more than average are self-employed entrepeneurs. But the beautiful thing about unschooling is that kids don't have to wait to grow up to begin living their passions. Many unschooled kids find what they are passionate about and pursue it long before adulthood. It's not uncommon for them to learn other "subjects" such as writing, math, research skills, history, and science by delving deeply into one "subject" that they are passionate about - be that Medieval armor or baking or art or animals. My 11 year old Helena has been crazy about animals since infancy. Much of our learning over the years has in some way included animals, and at present she's been developing a website and business around animal herbalism. Updated to add... in 9th grade she's pursuing a career in art via digital animation/video game design.... Updated again to add, she's decided digital art/video game design would require her to be too sedentary and is planning to go into real estate sales and investments with plans of creating passive income and an early retirement... She also wants to continue to write poetry and see where that leads. Your kid might change their mind 101 times but the learning that happens in each phase is really amazing! But how do unschooled kids learn discipline?I admit. I wondered this at first as well. But frankly we're brain washed into thinking that we need to be miserable, that it's somehow good for us to suffer and do things we detest in order to build character. Charcter building, should, in my opinion, arise from what we love not what we hate. Unschooled kids learn discipline out of love not misery. If you love having a business you do the paperwork you hate in order to facilitate what you love. Or you hire/barter with someone who loves paperwork to do it for you. One of the outcomes of unschooling discovered by Dr. Grey was that unschoolers report greater happiness and job satisfaction as adults. Unschooling is a lifestyle of following one's heart, knowing HOW to learn, being life long learners, and knowing how to make one's dreams a reality. Persistence and discipline become natural parts of all of that. Personally, I emphasize to Helena that freedom is a powerful thing, that she has the power to create and shape her own life, and that some planning is helpful to ensure that we are not drifting but accomplishing what we want. We set goals together, seek out opportunities together, write things in our calendars together. We talk about how so many people have their lives planned out for them and how amazing it is that we get to make these choics ourselves. Is that a normal unschooling conversation? Probably not, but it is for us. But doesn't everyone need to be prepared for the drudgery of employment?No way! As unschoolers we believe in following our hearts, creating work we love, doing work we love. People work in jobs they hate only because someone else has dictated what they "should" be doing to them for most of their lives and/or because they've never had the time, assistance, opportunity to build a career doing what they love. We question these paradigms. Working for someone else is great only *if* it's work you love and want to do. Helena and I talk about the perceived security of a job - how working for someone else seems to provide a set income, insurance, and paid vacations - but how you can lose all of that in an instant from a lay off or being fired. We talk about how, when you work for yourself, you might not have set paychecks, but you can create multiple streams of income. If you lose one stream of income you don't lose your entire livelihood, lose your house, or have to move across the nation for a new job. We talk about making informed choices in all of this. These conversations are not ones I've seen other unschoolers having, but they are part of the paradigm for us. What is radical unschooling or whole-life unschooling?Radical unschooling is taking the idea that you can trust your child to learn and extending it to full trust in your child's eating choices, sleep choices, media choices, and other choices. More questions about unschooling? Ask away! Also, Unschooling Mom to Mom is a great FB page to learn from! Personally, I've found some other unschooling pages to not be as friendly toward people just exploring and learning, though still very inspirational. ![]() Just a little bit of learning... When learning is not mandated it's unstoppable! Here in NYS we have to put it into subject categories for school district quarterly reports. Here's just a little bit from the last two weeks... English - We got this awesome word-a-day calendar and have been using lots of fun new vocabulary! Helena's joined a bookclub and is finishing up the 2nd Harry Potter via Audible.com with two other exciting sounding books for the next few weeks coming up. She's also been asked to write an article for a super cool kid's magazine iGen21.com so look for that in the Februrary issue. She's taking a writing class weekly with local award-winning children's author Jennifer Roy who we adore. Helena's also been further indulging her love of fantasy fiction watching all of the Hunger Games movies, taking an outschool.com class called Girl Power: Females in Myth and Theism, another called Pirates: Swashbuckling or Swashbuckled and a third about vampires and bloodsuckers in world myth. Math - It's not been a heavy math season, just a few figures here and there for bio labs. Helena always goes in waves with math, binging on it, leaning deeply into learning, then backing off to give her brain time to integrate it all. As of the latest "score" on Prodigy math game she's at an 8th grade level. ![]() Science - Helena started Paws for Herbs, an animal herbalism video series and business; she's rescued a pitbull (2 months ago) that she's been treating; and she rescued a rat three days ago. She's slowly working her way through all of the basic bio concepts in the textbook she requested. Monthly wilderness school and several weekly hikes adds to the natural science. Social Studies - IndyKids.org is our latest lovely discovery - a magazine by kids, for kids, focused on social justice issues. We've watched more BBC historical fiction series on Netflix than I can count this year... currently watching Mrs Fisher's Murder Mysteries about a 1920's flapper era lady detective. We've learned about Lativian anarchists, Zionism and more from this series. We try to keep on top of current events and today we're reading and talking about MLK and The March on Washington along with watching the civil rights era American Girl movie. Music/Art - non stop drawing, listening to music, upcoming theater events but none too recently... Health/PE - Resumed taekwondo and began Kumdo, Korean sword fighting; Teen mindfulness class this week; monthly wilderness school, several hikes per week; daily walks; talking all the time about health; listening to mom proof read her health writings on phytochemicals and how herbs work; discussions about brain development, mental health and emotional awareness. ![]() Here in NYS, we have to report quarterly to the school district on the following subjects. The rules look very strict on paper, but don't in any way prohibit one from unschooling - or non-coercive, child-led learning. Helena chooses what she wants to learn about and we really can't separate out learning time vs non-learning time or school-time vs non-school time. It's one big, beautiful blend of life=learning=life! And we love it! Second Quarterly Report 2016/2017 Helena _____ 6th Grade Hours of Instruction: 225 + Helena has made satisfactory progress in all subject areas. Math: A
Social Studies: A Covered many topics in world history, current events, government, and culture
English Language Arts: A
Health & PE: A • Hiking/walks nearly daily • Taikwondo classes • Playing outside, climbing trees, swinging, exercise ball • Talking about health continually • Daily meditation practice • Stretching, pushups, situps Art & Music: A
Helena and I were just reading before bed when we realized that we had, yet again, covered all of the "subjects" a child would get in school with no effort or intention at all. As I'm fond of saying... Life=learning=life!
Music: Morning drum circle with singing Math: Played Minecraft and Math Prodigy video games; used cash to purchase items in store Social studies: Listened to Story of the World audiobook in the car; discussed diversity in culture ELA (English Language Arts): Independent reading; wrote a riddle for a game she was playing; I read to her. Science: Reading in Do Unto Animals and Omnivore's Dilemma and Earth Child's Book of the Year; discussed global warming, animals, extinction, zoos, animal training PE: Played outside; went for a short hike Health: Reading Omnivore's Dilemma When kids are not forced to learn or made to see learning as something miserable and boring, they are so intensely curious. Learning becomes relationship based instead of textbook based (although we do use a textbook if that's the best way as in the biology class Helena asked for). Unschooling is such a lovely adventure! <3 ![]() There's a general idea that unschooled kids don't use curriculum or textbooks. But that's not entirely true. They DO use them if and when they WANT to use them. And since unschooled kids get to choose what they want to learn when, we're doing a full biology course in 6th grade rather than in the traditional 9th or 10th grade. By those later ages Helena's goal is to be taking wildlife biology, zoology, or vet tech classes at the local community college. Helena has been interested in animals and wildlife biology since she was a baby. She blurted out the word "doggy" amidst ecstatic giggles at 9 months, hands buried deeply in my friend's golden retriever's furry face. And when I was driving in the car with her as a baby, I'd keep her content and put her to sleep making animal noises. "Doggy says 'Woof woof, woof woof'. Kitty says 'Meow, meow'..... ...." and so on - from the animals in the house, to those around it, to the ones in the deep forests, to the ones in the waters, to those around the world - and right on back again to the house. I had a very well thought out system in place because heaven forbid I paused - she'd be wide awake and grunting in discontent! My sister once commented that she'd have to kill anyone who made all those animal noises when she was trying to fall asleep. I think that's when it first dawned on me that Helena was a bit passionate about animals. To her, falling asleep to animal sounds was beautifully comforting. And by the time she was 11 months old she was pouring through a picture book of 100 animals, asking in sign language if a moose was a bear and if not WHAT was it? Seriously. Sign for what is it. Sign for bear. Confused look. Sign for what is it. At age 4 we were looking up YouTube videos on veterinary medicine, watching a dog get his patella replaced. Now she's majorly into the Netflix series Bionic Vet. Though, if you ask her, she's far more interested in some sort of animal rescue or wildlife work than in veterinary medicine. She says she might get her two year vet tech degree though so she always has that to fall back on. And she's just counting down the years until she's old enough to become a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. Photo above and below: working on first biology lab, a plot study... Life with a kid passionate about animals is great fun! I think she knows where every bird's nest in the yard is. She's always peeking into nests, tracking the progress from eggs, to newborns that look like ugly baby dinasaurs, to little fluff balls, to fledglings. She's befriended fledgling doves who really are such peaceful creatures that they let you walk up and talk to them and pick them up. She's been beak-dinged on the top of the head by robins for peeking into their nests. They're not so peaceful and are fiercely protective! And I swear every injured animal around she finds! This summer alone we rescued a robin hit by a car which, unfortunately, died before we could get it to wildlife rescue people, and another robin that we transported 45 minutes each way to a vet that works with a local wildlife rescue organization. Last year she found a not-quite-fledgling dove out of the nest after a storm and, per wildlife rescue directions, made it a nest in a basket to keep it off the ground where it would get moist and get parasites. Last year she also fed our tunafish lunch and water to an injured seagull on the beach. This year, we found a nest of baby bunnies in our garden and she learned to put sticks in an "x" across the top to ensure mama rabbit was coming back to nurse them. Rabbits typically nurse once per day, but this mama, we discovered, was only coming every-other-day. We weren't sure she was coming at all, at first. That meant, per licensed wildlife rescue instructions (we have a lot of their phone numbers haha), that we needed to check their bellies for fullness and their bodies for warmth. They were just fine. But oh was Helena in her bliss checking on those wee little fur balls!! And then there are all the posts on here of exploring lakesides, toad eggs, exploring outside of a beaver's lodge and so on... Helena is definitely my little wildlife biologist! Photos below: 1. On her swing counting moss clumps in the tree for her plot study 2. Looking for insects for plot study 3. Making a to-scale drawing of the plot Science is really one of my weakest subjects if it's not directly related to herbs and health. So I'm learning alongside of Helena here. A friend has given her a microscope and another acquaintance who runs a microscopy lab has offered to let her borrow a big one. I still need to get online and order all of the rest of the lab equipment - minus the specimans to dissect. Helena's already dissected critters she has found, and despite them being bloodier, we prefer that to the idea of killing an animal for money-making and dissections. So we'll see what we find to dissect this year.
In addition to the R.E.A.L. Science Biology 2 textbook from Pandia Press we also have the Backyard Biology book from above. Plus we ordered a number of free videos from HHMI.org - everything from evolution, to earth history and climate change, to the biology of skin color, to virtual labs, ecology, and neuroscience. Plus we're really enjoying two Netflix biology series: Bionic Vet and Brain Games. Lastly Do Unto Animals by Tracey Steward is a beautiful and fun book about life with pets and various ways we can make all animals' lives better. Can't wait to see how this scientist girl of mine continues to make the world a better place for animals as she grows up! |
Rebecca Grace AndrewsWelcome! I'm a college professor, herbalist, writer and photographer. Archives
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