When we first decided to homeschool, Shawn was mildly hesitant about things. He was concerned that Connor would fall behind, that we wouldn’t end up getting anything done, and (of course), he worried about Connor having enough friends. To help alleviate some of his fears, we decided I would have some weekly goals of things I wanted to accomplish, and then a larger, more encompassing semester goal. Our plan was, that we would sit down in December, see how things were progressing, and reevaluate from there.
I also set some goals for the YEAR. And here it is, only the middle of November, and here’s where we stand:
* Identifies and writes all letters. Yep
* Identifies and writes numbers to 50. Yep…he can actually do this to 100 and beyond.
* Learn to read. Close. He’s catching on to the concept of sounding out words.
* The four seasons. Yep.
* The five senses. He can tell you the function of all of them.
* Months of the year. We’re working on this still.
* Days of the week. Yes. Though he will occasionally leave out Wednesday.
* Major holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. He knows all of them, especially Xmas, which he is anxiously awaiting.
* More complex shapes. He can identify cones, cylinders, and spheres.
He’s also learned to tell time, and is in the process of learning to count money, can add and subtract numbers below 10, has worked on fractions, and symmetry. And all of this? Has been done without me saying a single time, “Connor, it’s time to do school!”
I have 100 percent followed his lead on things. I let him decide if and when he wants to do things. I go to the library and check out dozens of books at a time on several different topics, and they are always available to him. We play games and draw, and read books, and my math obsessed child has gone through nearly the entire kindergarten math book that we got when we signed up for the Home School Resource program.
In homeschooing terms, we are unschoolers. Meaning, I don’t force learning. We let everything happen naturally. I provide him with resources and then trust his natural curiosity to lead us to his interests that he wants to learn about. This fits much more naturally in with our parenting style anyway. We strive to be consensual-livers. There’s a link in the side bar that probably can explain this much better than I am. (We don’t punish…no spanking, no time outs…we don’t set limits on media or restrict food, etc). We allow him to set his own limits and trust him to discover his own boundaries and his own interests. And if his interest for the day happens to be playing his uncle’s Xbox 360 game, The Force Unleashed? Then that’s fine too. In fact, he beat the game only a few hours behind his dad!
A couple of weeks ago, we spent the whole day learning different magic tricks to perform for Daddy when he got home. We read books, and listen to music (He has discovered he is a big fan of the Beatles, and likes John’s songs the best). He plays computer games, and Xbox games, and watches movies and builds with blocks, and plays pretend, and is learning all day long, every single day.
So, the goals have been scrapped. Clearly he’s meeting and exceeding them without me having to force “learning time” on him. It is always learning time. We are officially unschoolers.
