Unschool October

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.