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My boys favorite activity is programming in Scratch. It is a programing environment that is made of "puzzle pieces" that are easily put together to make the icons on the screen move or whatever else you might want them to do. My 7 year old started programming in Scratch almost two years ago. He started with simple movements-- the Scratch cat just moving back and forth across the screen. He added different elements and started drawing his own sprites to animate. He can also download pictures that he finds on the internet and add them to the scenes he creates. My 5 year old is quickly becoming as proficient as his big brother. Together they make scenes and games. It is great fun, and they will spend the entire day working on a project.
Some of my family's projects:
http://scratch.mit.edu/users/raeleo
A Link to get scratch for yourself:
scratch.mit.edu
I never thought I would say this, but because of unschooling, mornings are now my favorite part of the day.
I am usually the first one out of bed (on weekdays my husband is technically the first one up, but he gets up at 6, and leaves around 7, and the boys and I are not early risers). I get up and get a glass of diet pepsi ( I am not a coffee drinker but an influx of caffeine is good) and sit on the living room couch and open up the laptop. This is the time of day that I have to read emails, check on facebook and twitter and just enjoy my own thoughts for the day.
Slowly, the rest of the family starts to stir. And they join me on the couch.
First they just snuggle in. They hide behind the throw or the couch pillows so that they can stay warm and in that wondrous sleep state just a bit longer. Then as they really awaken, we begin to talk to one another. Sometimes it is about things as banal as the placement of my sheep in farmtown. Other times we discuss the least ferocious of the wild cats, or where a certain bird might live. Since I have my laptop, information is at my fingertips and we can use the internet to answer questions. Sometimes the kids will get their laptops and program in Scratch or draw. Always we will figure out what animal we are that day.
All too soon the boys start to get hungry and it is time to get breakfast. Then we all go about our own tasks, coming together during other times of the day, and perhaps we will all sit on the couch again. But it is never as peaceful as it was first thing in the morning.
Before unschooling, we had too many "things to do" to take the time to enjoy each others' company in the morning. I am thankful that I took the time for my Unschool October experiment.
My good friend Jen's parents are moving to Maryland from Iowa. Jen was going to aid the move by flying to Iowa, then driving one of their cars back home. Her parents did not want her driving the 900 or so miles by herself, so I was invited to come along. After a bit of deliberation, and figuring out who would watch the kids the two weekdays I would be gone, I decided to accept her invitation.
I was excited by the invitation until a day or two before I was to leave. I think that because I am an at-home mom who homeschools, I have a bit of an attachment issue with the boys. My sons and I are usually together. They LOVE their dad and crazy things he does, but I feel guilty when I leave for more than the evening. To make me feel better, my husband pointed out that the trip was an adventure, and that I needed to remember to look at it as such. I realized that this was an oportunity to go somewhere new and experience new people and places by doing.
Hey, this was like I was unschooling ME!
So I headed out and flew from Baltimore to Atlanta, then onto Moline, Illinois. We went to her parents house, then Jen gave me a tour of Davenport. We then went to her brother's farm and enjoyed a lovely evening with her family. The next day we traveled through Illinois, Indiana, and part of Ohio. We stayed the night there and traveled the rest of the way through Ohio and into West Virgina, Pennsylvania, and then back into West Virgina before we returned to Maryland.
And I learned some interesting things this trip.
*I still set off metal detectors in airports.
*The Atlanta airport is huge, but the people who work there are quite friendly.
*Davenport, Iowa is part of The Quad City Area that spans both sides of the Mississippi River.
*Iowa (Illinois, Indiana, and much of Ohio) is very flat, as least compared to my home in Western Maryland.
*The first chiropractic adjustment took place in Davenport. Daniel Palmer was the person who performed the first adjustment, and he started the Palmer College of Chiropractic, which is also in Davenport.
*There are hundreds of miles of corn and soy bean fields across the Midwest. For miles and miles, corn is all that can be seen.
*I have mixed feelings about Cabelas stores. There are too many dead things, but goodness, it is interesting.
I met some great people, visited a family owned farm, chased barn cats, and pet a wonderful horse. With my trusty iPhone, I was able to research anything that caught my eye during the trip. I could take things in and process them for myself instead of always looking at them from a child's perspective. I had a great time, and was full of stories to tell my family when I got home.
I highly recommend that all homeschool "teachers" take the time for a family free adventure if they can. It was great fun, and really helped me put the unschooling idea into perspective. Thanks to Jen and her family for inviting me. And thanks to Leo for making it possible for me to go.
So here we are, continuing unschool October. And here I am, still missing the "H" key on my keyboard, but unwilling to give up my pink Dell laptop. I tend to buy lots of pink things because I am the only girl in the house surrounded by 4 boys. Pink says that things are mine. And I love my pink laptop. I can type an H, but it is easy to miss the hole where the key should be. So, please bear with me if I don't pick up on a spelling error caused by my missing "H."
Anyway..... Unschool October is going well. There isn't any daily crying. Kids are reading on their own. Math sneaks into our daily lives. Interesting scientific conversations are held around the dinner table.
Life is good. The kids are happy. I'm happy. So why can't I get over the fact that I feel like a slacker?
Last year, our homeschool life was filled with worksheets, and book lists, and a HUGE portfolio. I was able to track Andy's progress by the amount of "stuff" I had to prove we did work. Unschooling feels like we are just living life. We talk about science at dinner, program in scratch, and spontaneously read books all the time. Weekends. Christmas break. Even in the summer.
Why do I fall back on making our homeschool life so much like traditional school without the PTA meetings? We decided to school Andy at home because we knew that he wouldn't thrive in that environment. Why am I trying to emulate it, and feeling bad because I'm not?
I think mostly I have to get over myself and go with what is working for our family. Live our lives to the fullest. Explore our world-- be it a trip to the aviary or through cyberspace.
One Unschooled Day
*Wake up at 8:30
*Get kids to make own breakfast (cereal)
*Convince them to comeback and clean up breakfast mess
*Kids use Scratch to construct computer games, read bird books.
I start sewing bag for mother in law's birthday present.
*Leave for lunch. Kids choose to eat at Subway. Andy gets more diverse vegetables on his sub than I do. Jules just gets shredded cheese.
*Andy asks about the effects of catnip on cats. Asks if we can experiment on our own cats.
*Drive to local state park to visit the aviary. Park away from the aviary so that the kids (and mom) can get some exercise.
*Kids enjoy walk to birds: throw rocks in lake, identify leaves, marvel over the changing colors.
*Make it to the aviary, renew our acquaintances with the birds there. My boys LOVE owls. At the aviary there are 3 screech owls, 2 barn owls, 2 barred owls, and a great horned owl. There are also 2 red tailed hawks and a black vulture with only one wing. We get to see the vulture eat (not everyone would consider this a treat). I quiz my boys on owl and raptor facts, but they have committed owl books to memory and know more than I do.
*At a picnic table near the aviary, the boys draw owl pictures, making a find the mouse game (sometimes the tail is sticking out of the owl's mouth; sometimes it is in the owl pellet lying on the ground; sometimes, just to trick you, it is in the belly of the owl).
While they are drawing, I ask questions to help devise a scientific method-based experiment to test the effects of catnip on cats.
*Collect stuff and walk back to car, stop on the way home to buy sizable bag of catnip
*Go home and have dinner with dad and older brother. Kids play and talk to dad while I read and make bag to contain catnip for the next day's catnip experiment.
My boys engaged in reading, math, science, phys ed, home-ec and art activities. And no one cried. At least not because of school.
Ok, so it has been a month since my last blog post. I had such high hopes. You can tell that I was the little girl who HAD to have the new diary with the lock and the picture of the kitty on it, and then after less than a week never wrote in it again. But I am going to try to blog more often. Not that I have any followers. So it really doesn't matter, but I will feel better about myself.
Anyway... Our school year started just fine. Both boys worked on work assigned to him-- the traditional math worksheets, reading books I picked, and writing/spelling practice. But it quickly returned to last year's dynamic: Andy crying in frustration over everything that I assigned him. He was especially frustrated when asked to read. His frustration was perhaps made worse by the fact that his little brother was quickly catching on to reading, and it has always been a struggle for Andy.
So there we were, Andy frustrated, Jules frustrated, me frustrated.... I decided to take the week off, and regroup. During his time, I was looking for ideas from homeschool books, and noticing that while we were having a week off, the boys were filling their time by doing just what they wanted to do. Sure, they played wii and watched some dvds, but they also read about owls, illustrated stories that had written, and designed computer programs.
Hey, I thought, I am reading about this. They are UNSCHOOLING!
So after talking to my husband and reading more on the subject, we decided that unschooling might just be the answer for us. I have some conflicting thoughts on the subject (how do I know what they are learning? what will my public school teacher mother think?) so I have dubbed the month "Unschool October," and we will be trying unschooling for the month. Then I will reevaluate my thoughts on the subject. But one week into it and so far, so good.
