Strewing

Strewing is a term that unschoolers use to describe what interesting things they are leaving around for their kids to discover. That definition is provided by Sandra Dodd. You can read more about strewing here . So I have been strewing. We bought an ant farm a couple of years ago which the kids found the other day. We filled it with sand and caught some ants to put in it. We wanted a queen ant and some eggs. If you order ants you only get worker ants. So we got out our Pets in a Jar book and looked up how to catch ants. We didn't get a queen ant but we did get some eggs. Lacey, Lily and Kyle helped catch the ants. We watched the ants build their tunnels and carry the eggs to a separate nursery. Lacey and Lily spent a lot of time looking at the ant farm with a magnifying glass. A couple of times we were even able to see a little black dot inside the egg that we believe to be the little baby ant. I checked Kyle out some books on drawing and bought him a calendar that he can color and make. We started reading Little house in the big woods. We built a diorama of a jousting tournament (something else I had bought years ago and never got around to doing). I took Lacey and Lily shopping. We went in flower shops and looked at flowers, we spent a good bit of time in an old antique store here in town, we visited a pet store and talked to the owner about her different pets. The antique store was especially interesting, we looked at old kitchen utensils and farm equipment. Then I picked Kyle up and we all went to the library. At the library I showed Kyle where the joke books and dinosaur craft books were and he spent a long time reading and then telling us all jokes. I also checked out some books on Native Americans to leave laying around. No interest in them so far. My Aunt and Uncle just started a blog about building their house so I showed the blog to the kids and we read it together. It was pretty interesting, so far we saw how a foundation is built. Kyle really like the pictures of the trucks and crane. We created a family blog. I left colors and alphabet coloring books around and I found an old electric calculator that the kids have all had a ball playing with. We found their felt board in the garage and made felt pictures together. Its been fun.

Six things I learned from unschooling

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to decide what to do about school. Should I keep unschooling? Or go back to school at home? Or maybe somewhere in the middle? While thinking and planning and praying I made a list. I found the list yesterday while flipping through my notebook and thought I would post it here. My list.

What I learned-
1. Kids want to learn- it really is true kids do want to learn. The may not want to learn what I want to teach them but they do have a desire to learn.
2. Everything is learning, even when it doesn't look like learning-
I learned maize is corn. I learned that from watching the movie grown ups the other day. I also learned that it is almost impossible to go a whole day, let alone a whole week without learning something. And It doesn't have to be working fractions on a piece of paper to be math, it may just be realizing that if you have twelve crayons you and your two sisters can each have four.
3. My kids want some structure to their learning- Okay not all my kids but Ashley definitely does. And Kyle and Lacey like workbooks. Especially if they can do them when they want to.
4. Learning should come from as many real experiences as possible- Life really is the best teacher. Just letting them live life, surrounded by people, going shopping, visiting friends, playing on the computer, going to church, cooking or doing chores, all these things teach them how to really live in the world.
5. Don't think more is better, often less is best- Its better to focus on a few things that they really enjoy or love than dabbling in several things that they don't care anything about. I think we (teachers, parents, society ?) have gotten the idea that information is power and that we may leave out some vital piece of information that is going to somehow prevent kids from living a productive life. So we try to cram as much information as we can into their heads, hoping that we can give them that one magical piece of knowledge that they need to be happy, useful adults. But I don't know what they are going to need as adults, will they choose a career in science? Or maybe one requiring mathematical knowledge? So how can I predict what they need to know? Maybe it is better to help them develop their interests and help them learn to find the information they need as they need it.
6. Leave plenty of time for play- sometimes they do their best learning while they are playing. And Besides they are only going to be kids once and for such a short time. I need to give them time to play, to dream, to wonder. They have a lifetime to think about jobs and bills, relationships and responsibilities, but only a few short years to build a fort, fight monsters and dragons, be a princess or hang out with friends. I want to nurture their childhood and enjoy it- it passes so fast.

What our week looks like

Man! Today was busy! We started our morning running. I got up early (for me) at about 8:30 and me and Shane and Kyle did a real fast sweep of the house. Once the house was reasonably straightened the kids ate a bowl of cereal and we rushed out the door to our Enrichment classes. I wanted to get there a little early so I could visit with some of the other moms and check out the share table. I am glad I did, I was able to get video about Rembrandt tat looks pretty interesting. I also got the kids a couple of vhs movies. After our classes we went to Jacksboro ( about an hour drive) to pick up Ashely's friend Kelsea. She is going to spend a few days with us. Ashley is very excited, she has really missed her since we moved. And I had a nice visit with my friend Suzanne (Kelsea's mom). After we got back from Jacksboro I woke Shane up and talked to him while he ate. Then we ran some errands (read that as we made up an excuse to drive around awhile just the two of us) and then we sat outside on the patio for a little while. After Shane went to work a cleaning bug bit me and I cleaned the house. It really needed it! I mopped floors and dusted and swept, folded clothes and even swept the driveway! I really do love a clean house. While I was doing all this Ashley's friend Sara came over to spend the night. After giving the little ones a bath and a snack we watched Survivor and The Modern Family together. And now I am sitting here writing my blog, all the little ones are asleep and I can hear Ashley and her friends laughing in her room. It is very, very nice.

Tomorrow I am meeting my friend Dee ( Sara's mom) at the library and then we are all going over to their house for a little while.

Wednesday a friend from our church and a friend of his are coming over to play some board games or maybe Who's the man with us. Ashley and Kelsea want to go to the mall so I am going to try to drop them off there in the morning for an hour or so while I go to the library and go get the oil changed in the van.

Thursday we have our first Burkburnett Park Day! Yeah! Very excited about that. We will meet at 10:30 and right after park day we will drive Kelsea to Decatur (hour and a half away) to meet up with her mom and at the same time we will pick Donna up! I cant wait to get her home. I miss her so much.

Friday no plans that I can think of. Rest maybe lol.

Unschooling is NOT unlearning!

Okay, I really need to rethink the words I use!! Somehow my kids (Ashley and Donna) have gotten the idea that I am against learning and education! What?! Since we have been unschooling for about 7 months now, I understand it and love it and get it more and more. Maybe I should call it Child Led Learning? or Self- Educating? I don't want my kids (Ashley) to think I don't want her to learn. But is it working you ask? Well if you understand what unschooling is all about- learning something because you want to not because a teacher/ parent is making you learn it- then YES it is definitely working! And while she will vehemently deny it, Ashley is my biggest success story. Ashley insists on doing school work, she picks out her language and math and she chose to take a science class and a sign language class through our homeschool group. I don't have to nag or prod her to do her schoolwork, so I should be on cloud nine right? But it really annoys me that she thinks I am against education! About the only part of schooling we argue about is the stuff I try to assign her, which is stuff she sees as unschooling. The stuff I assign her is not actually unschooling, it is things like how kids learn, ways to learn without traditional textbooks and traditional schools. So should I just drop it and let her believe that the traditional way of learning is best and I am just anti- education? I don't know. I want her and all my kids to feel the excitement and wonder I feel when I learn something I never knew or see something I have never seen. I want them to find something they are passionate about. I want them to see life as an adventure, an exciting and wonderful gift that we are given and to love life and learning. But I am DEFINITELY not saying that we unschool anymore! We are homeschooling- just very untraditionally.

Unschooling and Relationships

If the kids learned absolutely nothing by unschooling I have to admit I'd still maybe choose to unschool simply because of the change it has made to our family life. I know that makes me sound like a terrible parent, like I don't care about my children's education, which of course I do. I do want my kids to have a great education but what is the point of education? Isn't the whole purpose of school to prepare kids for life? And isn't the best way to prepare for life is to simply start living? At least that's what all the unschooling sites, books and blogs seem to say. So instead of sitting down to fill out pages of arithmetic problems we go grocery shopping, we bake cookies or play monopoly or life. We count and multiply and measure and weigh things. Instead of reading science textbooks we have been studying our turtle (which we released last week after an explanation how wild animals are meant to be wild and don't really do well with long periods of captivity) and taking long nature walks, and examining different bird nests.



And in between the cooking and the games I realized kinda all of a suddenly how much better everyone seems to be getting along. I guess it's not surprising when I think about it. Without realizing it I created the same environment in my home that I was trying to get away from by homeschooling in the first place. One of the main reasons I started homeschooling was because I wanted to be with my kids. But spending all day doing math and reading lessons, trying to corral the little ones long enough to teach the older ones doesn't really count as quality family time. And by the time the school work is done the kids just want to be free to do what they want, free to go outside or watch television. And I just want some quiet time. But now they ask each other to play games, they watch t.v. together. Kyle and Ashley reads to Lacey and Lily. Donna watches shows with the little ones. And it seems like we have time to do all the things we wanted to do but never had the time. One example of this is playing cards with the girls and my dad. He comes over at least 3 or 4 times a week to play spades with me and the girls. It's so nice to see a real bond between him and the girls forming and I have learned so much about my dad and my own childhood during these card games.

I think the reason I like sonlight so much was because it did help make school time seem like family time. In fact I still enjoy reading my sonlight books to the kids. I think I've taken the relaxed time we felt while doing history and extended it to all our subjects. I struggle with whether or not the kids are learning enough but everytime I start thinking about going back to our old school ways something happens to encourage me to keep unschooling, at least one more week.

Two books every homeschooler MUST have!

There are two books that we have used over and over through the years. I would say that every homeschooling family would benefit from these books. One is Pets in a Jar by Seymour Simon and the other book is Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock. Both books are excellent to have on your bookshelf, especially if you have a kid that's always bringing some critter home.

The first book, Pets in a Jar, explains how to set up different habitats using gallon size jars. We have used this book so many times over the years. We have kept ants, tadpoles, frogs and toads, crickets and earthworms with it's help. All my kids with the exception of Ashley have brought home some critter at one time or another.

The other book is a great resource for studying nature in general. From birds to turtles, trees to rocks this book is really great for leading children to learn about the world around them in a very natural way. I love the way it leads kids to make discoveries on their own instead of me just telling them the information.

I've never been much into nature study but these two books have really helped. Lately I have been making a concentrated effort to get the kids more involved with nature. Maybe it's because the weather has been so nice, but I just really want to be outside more.

Turtle Shells Bleed??!!

Did you know that turtle shells bleed? Or that turtles have 5 toes on their front feet but only 3 on the back. Did you know that turtles eat worms? And tomatoes? And hot dogs?

I didn't know any of these things until my dad brought a turtle home for us. Lacey promptly named the turtle Franklin ( of course), Kyle named it Raphael, after the teenage mutant ninja turtle. Every morning we take him/her/it outside to walk around and enjoy some fresh air and we dig for worms to feed it. We have learned a lot about worms also by doing this. Like where the best worms are, and for some reason we found that we have better luck the earlier we dig for them. Why is that I wonder? Do they burrow deeper later in the day? Also we learned that we have better luck closer to the ground and under bushes. We don't seem to find as many the deeper down we go. Oh and one day while we were digging for worms we found a really weird something. I don't know what it was. Worm? Centipede? Baby snake? I have no clue. It didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. It was smooth like a worm but moved like a snake in a way. It slithered back and forth but also could go forward or backward. If agitated it struck out kinda like a snake. My dad said it was a centipede but it didn't have any legs. Shane said it was a baby snake but it was red and yellow without any black. And I don't know if snakes can move backwards! Anyway we feed it to the chickens but now I wish we had kept it a while. There is still lots of discussion about just what it really was.

Anyway back to the turtle. We also discovered that Franklin/ Raphael prefers fat long worms to the skinny ones. And he'll eat grub worms but he doesn't seem to like them very much. Sometimes we'll put him in a puddle of water to swim around for a while. He doesn't seem especially thrilled by this but Lily insists that he wants to go swimming so I let her put him in occasionally.

One day we decided to draw pictures of him. That's when we discovered that he had 5 claws on his front feet but only 3 on his back. That seems strange to me so hopefully we can check again the next time we draw him. Kyle and Lacey drew some really good pictures! I told them to really pay attention to the shape of his body and the color of his shell and body. They even drew the way his shell has a scalloped edge instead of a smooth edge.

Today we learned that their shells actually have blood and nerves in them. We learned this because Lily accidently dropped him and a tip of his shell broke a little. We saw blood and examined him and it looked like the blood was coming from his shell. We looked up on the computer about his shelland sure enough turtle shells can bleed! So now we are handling him much more carefully.

I think he is getting used to us. He'll walk around even if he sees us and he'll come out of his shell while Kyle is holding him. I think we'll keep him another week or two then let him go. I sure am enjoying having him aroung though.