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Here is a rundown of our unschooling way of life:
First, and most important we have long talks, and discussion about anything, and everything.
For history we choose, movies, documentaries, live talks with veterans, good historical fiction books, games, and other literature.
For geography we do essentially the same, again we include games, travel video's, road trips, and cooking meals from the regions.
Map skills (regular, and topical), and compass reading are learned by reading the maps, because these skill are a necessity where we live.
One should not rely on technology (GPS) alone, these gadgets do break.
The Civil Air patrol teaches many of these skills to them as well.
The highlight is learning how to fly a plane.
Science is part of everyday life, the first six years are the day's of creation, each "day" has enough subject material to cover a years worth of reading, experiments, as well as field trips; one drawback are the animal habitats; they become a permanent part of our families zoo. :)
Home economics's, and life skills; chores, learning how to budget, shop, and cook by planning the meals, and preparing them.
Getting a job, balancing a checkbook (even at age 12), and learning how to save, learning how to work with, and interact with all kinds of people on the job,or while doing their volunteer work are skills that need to be practiced, and cannot be learned properly from a textbook.
They are learning languages, cultural diversity and music, from members of our congregation who gladly share their knowledge, and talents with them, because the children are genuinely interested.
Bible; Sunday school, Awana's, youth groups, and Bible camps; add daily devotions, voila, no curriculum needed unless you like to have a chronological study; my kids did want to do that so we got one.
Civics's, study a basic book; add a study of the constitution; go to see your elected officials in action at your state capitol, follow a bill to see how it is drafted, and what it takes to move it through the system, volunteer at voting booths, or a candidates campaign.
Speech, and debate sign up for Toastmasters, or another club.
Electives; use 4H for everything from cooking, sewing, photography, veterinary science to robotics.
Sports; the sky is the limit, both for recreation, and competition.
I would say all that adds up to much more than the average "textbook" could cover.
Life was meant to be experienced, lived, and questioned, with all it's ups and downs.
The added benefit is that learning actually clicks, because it is a part of their daily life, it makes sense, and they gain the needed self confidence to become independent, with that I can do attitude.
Is it easy, heavens no, it is exhausting, my house has never looked the same again (it once was neat); I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to throw in the towel, and say please take a long vacation, or please go to a school (not); it is well worth it, and I would not trade it for anything.
I think it's teaching in an unconventional way. Like learning through experience and exploration as opposed to text books and assignments...but I'm not 100% sure.
I think it could refer to undoing the subtle mental programing put in place by going through a traditional system or process of education. This being done in order to make way for either an updated, revised and improved load of information.
Sort of revising the way someone has become trained to think like so that they can be taught a better more effective way to think and behave.
It is what must be done to erase the propaganda they teach in public schools instead of teaching what they really need to know to make it out here in the real world
"Deschooling" is giving a child time to transition from public schooling to homeschooling; depending on whether the child had a good or bad experience, and on how they react to change, determines how long the deschooling process takes. It could take a few weeks, it could take a 6 months+. But once that process is over, the child generally takes off and starts to love learning about lots of things. Not always, but often.
"Unschooling" is an educational philosophy in which the studies are pretty much entirely student-led and parent facilitated. There are varying degrees of it, from students getting to pick what units they want to do and getting to help pick the resources, to students deciding their entire course of study - don't want to take math right now? Ok, no math.
This can be good and bad - not every student thrives in this sort of philosophy. For a motivated student, one who loves to learn, this opens up a whole new world. The student gets more say in what they learn, when, and how, which helps to spur them on even more. This type of student usually realizes that they will need to learn things that they might not be terribly interested in - periods in history, types of math or science - and will buckle down and do it.
For the not-so-motivated student, this can be bad. If they don't really want to learn much in the first place...they won't. Usually, this student needs more structure for learning to take place.
Anyway, that's what the two terms mean :-)
Completely depends on the person you ask!
One unschooler might say that it's child-led learning and they are completely hands-off: the child will learn what s/he wants to learn when s/he is ready without any involvement with the parent.
Another unschooler would say it's child-led learning but they make sure to make a lot of things available to their children. An enriched environment of sorts from which the children will choose their activities (because that's what's around them). These types of unschoolers may or may not practise something called "strewing".
Of course, there are all kinds of other types of unschoolers! The basic premise is, though, that there is no coercion on the part of the parent for the child to learn something.
Unschooling is a bit different than homeschooling. Unschooling is when the parent lets the child decide what it is that they want to learn. For instance, a child decides that they want to learn how to do Algebra on the computer. The parent will then find the child games, websites, software that would help the child learn Algebra.
Parents that unschool their children have a very good trust with eacher other. The parent trusts that the child knows what they want and how they want it.
Unschooling is a "method" of homeschooling (just like classical or unit studies or Robinson). With unschooling, typically, the child directs the learning, in the sense that the child decides what s/he wants to learn and when. In general, no "textbooks" are used, unless the child requests them.
The idea behind unschooling is that we all learn best (and fastest and easiest) when we are learning something that interests us and that we *want* to learn. All of us have unschooled at one time or another - when we decided we wanted to learn something and did. That's generally the way adults learn, although many are so programmed by the spoon-feeding used in the public schools, they believe they must take a course in order to learn.
Dayna Martin describes it in the link listed below. Her video blog has many interesting ideas.
There is a difference in relaxed home schooling and unschooling.
We unschool. Every family who does, defines it differently. For us, it's child-led learning. We don't sit at the table doing worksheets (though my seven year old loves to occasionally). We love the library, the internet (especially Wikipedia and Google Earth), and learning from going out and meeting real people in real places. Some days we play outside all day. Some days we stay inside and read all day. Some days we go to the library or the museum or the park. My kids have chosen to join Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and two play soccer. They all enjoy what they do, they are happy, they all have lots of friends, and they are all learning so very much.
--Januaris_ros - unschooling mother of four
This is when you have parents that are lazy but want to be counted as homeschooling. They teach nothing and count things like their child playing with legos as learning. It's extremely pathetic when their 16-year-old still can't read because she hasn't decided to teach herself yet. If you homeschool long enough, you get to hear ALLLLLL the horror stories.
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