I am FIRED up!!!

[renie408]

I have spent the past day researching unschooling and I am sold. I am past sold, I am a convert! The key, as far as I can tell, is EXPOSURE. I was worried about the whole 'let your child follow their bliss' thing because I was thinking that my daughter would just become the world's greatest living expert on That's So Raven. But then it was like a big CLICK went off in my head. Of course that is all she would learn about if that is all she was exposed to. But if she gets exposed to othter things, she will learn other things. SOOOO...I have made a list of field trips and ideas for exposing her to....stuff. There is the Discovery Place hands on science museum in Charlotte, the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, the Mint Museum of Art, Biltmore House is only three hours away....the possibilities are vast. I just started the list this morning and I already have 20 items on it. I figure that if we just do one a week and she is really interested she will learn more than if we sit at the kitchen table for three hours a day with me trying to cram American History into her brain. Also, there are a ton of movies that manage to be educational without being deadly. And there is the library, only instead of taking her and telling her what to research, I will take her and turn her loose and see what she comes up with.

I am going to do math, spelling and grammar the way we have been. And I think I will continue to read The History of Us with her. But instead of making her take tests on what she has learned over the week, I am going to let what sticks stick and what doesn't not.

[mzteris]

1. YAY!

It's always wonderful to see someone really excited about learning! (Because I promise you, you will be learning just as much as your daughter. More than you ever learned "in school".)

It sounds like you're off to a running start - just remember to pace yourself. LOL. And there will be periods of second-guessing. Periods of burnout. Periods of "OMG what am I doing?????" But they pass - that's where a good support group comes in - to help you through those rough times. To say - "hey - we've all been there, and come out alive on the other side."

You're not that far from Raleigh - we have GREAT museums here - and there's one in Durham. Greensboro has some interesting "stuff" (including Wet&Wild lol). The NC Zoo is in Asheboro, Winston-Salem's Old Town, there are tons of battlefield/historic sites in NC, as well. Chimney Rock, there's a great Nature Center near Asheville/Biltmore, then there's Grandfather Mountain/Linville Falls. . . Plus for you Charleston isn't that far, either. It has a wealth of historical information. (Not to mention the BEACH!) That loop I told you about sometimes has "group" activities - some learning, some just for "socialization". :)

"Tests" are highly over-rated. A good discussion of the lesson - plus connecting it to "real places" and to other things she "knows" will cause more information to "stick" longer than any "test" ever will!

[renie408]

2. Been there, done that on the burnout

I think that is where I have been since Christmas. My first inclination when I started homeschooling my daughter was to reproduce school at home. I quickly figured out that if 'school' wasn't working at school, it didn't work at home either. So I tried a version of the same thing, only using different books. I began to run into the same problems. Her attention wandered, she didn't retain any of the information and we both felt like failures. So I have been having some questions about how to go about the whole homeschool thing. Reading about unschooling made so much SENSE to me. And all the things about how degrading school is. I really understood that. The goal of school is to produce good little cogs for the wheels of society. Stand in line. Take what is given you. Ask to move. Ask to go to the bathroom. Raise your hand. I understand why all these things are necessary for the orderly processing of 25+ kids a day. But I don't want my kid processed.

Thanks for the info. I will look into the Raleigh area as well. I have found a ton of things in Columbia, SC, which is only about 90 minutes from here.

I am going to talk to my ninth grader today and ask him if he wants to continue in school. I think I could work with him also. I imagine he is going to want to stay where he is. He has a big social group and is enjoying school. But I have so many ISSUES with the school and the teachers. They are reading Julius Caeser now and he had to watch a documentary on the life of Shakespeare. He commented to the teacher that we had read some books last summer which called into question whether the Shakespeare that wrote the plays was the William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon. His teacher essentially told him not to be ridiculous and didn't want to hear anything about it. Which really BOTHERED me. Maybe Shakespeare is the Shakespeare from Stratford, but if a 14 year old kid came to you and started telling you about how maybe Edward De Vere wrote the plays and here was why...would you cut him off and dismiss what he was saying out of hand? If she had told him to go home and write a paper offering the pros and cons of both premises, THAT would have been teaching.

[mzmolly]

3. I'm considering a similar approach. I use Core Knowledge as a base

right now but me and my child are FRIED right now. So, I'm considering sticking with the basics and unschooling for the rest of our curriculum.

I'll probably still use the "what your x grader needs to know" books as a means of exposure, but beyond that, we both need a new direction.

:hi:

[unschooler]

4. I killed our Disney Channel.

I can only take so much Raven, not to much Zach & Cody and the rest of them. I think one of the keys to successful unschooling is to make sure that your child is, as you say, exposed to a lot of great stuff and that the mental junk food is in short supply.