|
jnezmama02
|
I read this the other night, but didn't get a chance to write a reply. I'm afraid this will be long-winded (no surprise, there, though).
Megs, I think what you are doing definitely still qualifies as unschooling. The way I understand homeschooling is not that no teaching/guidance is involved. Rather, it is learning thru activity and thru the child's interest and learning style. So, by doing activities that she finds fun and interesting, you are helping her learn in an unschooling manner. However, if you were to force her to do these activities when she indicates she rather do something else or if you were to sit down and do flashcards or worksheets with her, that's when I think you move from unschooling to traditional homeschooling. Remember, the goal of "unschooling" is to teach a child how to learn on their own, using methods that suit them best. At such a young age, learning on one's is hard. As the parent, I think your job in unschooling is to gently guide her in how to do things she shows in interest in learning how to do (ie teach her how to plant a seed and water it, teach her how to play a memory game, etc).
With Emily, I'm not really doing anything formal toward schooling yet. I'll wait until she's at least 3yrs old to start anything structured. Right now, we just sing, dance, read books, watch tv shows, play w/ toys and practice counting and singing ABCs as a game. I have a lot of books that are educational in the sense that they discuss colors, shapes, big vs. small, etc. So the repetition of these books are enough to teach her what she needs to learn now. We also ask her lots of questions, which gives her a chance to think about what she's learned in a fun way ("What color is Daddy's shirt?", "What's this?"...while pointing to a picture, etc). Most of the time, what she learns is by her lead...she brings us which book she wants to read or what toy she wants to play with. The only thing we do is further facilitate this by adding questions or talking about something further than in the book, etc. I might also show her how to do something if she is trying and fails, but even this kind of stuff I'm not doing to any large degree yet. If we do something she's not interested in, we drop it and wait until she wants to do it again.
With Jessie, I have started trying to do more formal teaching...using a lose "structure". I think what I had planned to do is definitely more "homeschooling" and less "unschooling". I had planned to sit down w/ her at the kitchen table for 15-20min in the morning and 15-20min in the afternoon to begin and do activities that help her learn things. Basically, I went to a teacher's supply shop and found some preschool worksheet, activitiy books, and curriculum guides. I probably spent $50. I think most of it was a waste (for right now, anyway), other than the special scissors I got that I couldn't find anywhere else (they're the really small blunt tip ones you find in preschool/Kindergarten). What's funny is that after i bought all that, I went to Sam's Club (warehouse store) and found a full year's worth of worksheets, activities, and curriculum guide all in one book for $8. I bought it and actually like it better than the other stuff b/c it's meant for homeschooling and is a little bit more colorful and simplistic to start out w/ (bigger pictures, less things to do per page).
At first, Jessie was excited to buy "school books", but after the first day of sitting down to talk about things, she was very uninterested. On one hand, I don't want to push and make learning unpleasant. On the other hand, I know that she often resists something when it's relatively new until it becomes a routine. For right now, I've just backed off b/c I've been too sick to fight about it and want time to rethink my strategy. In the long run, I'm not sure what to do. I might switch back to an "unschooling" kind of approach that we did before. However, I kind of did that this past year and found that she didn't learn a whole lot...which is why I was going to try a more structured approach this year. But, perhaps if I do more "projects" with her in which learning is kind of of part of the activity, more "hidden" that it would be better. This was my original approach I had planned on this year, but then I got caught up in "curriculum" and such. Sigh! I just don't know. I've researched the topic a bunch, but don't seem to be coming up w/ any definitive answers, lol!
|
Author
Logged
