I'm looking for advice, tips, or book suggestions about Unschooling. We've been pretty much unschooling ds. He just turned 5 last month & we're still considering him pre-K. So, we study what he wants, when he wants. We have a bunch of books, educational DVDs, computer programs, and other stuff. When he wants to do ETC, we do it. When he wants to go on Starfall, we do. He's currently into dinos, so we've read the Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs, played the Magic School Bus Explores in the Age of Dinosaurs (computer prog), watched DVDs about dinos, picked up library books on dinos, are planning to make a paper mache dino, etc. With him, unschooling right now is pretty easy. We've decided that dd is going to unschool for the rest of our current school year. We think that this is what she needs right now. It will elminate the fighting about school and a lot of the stress (on her & me), while dh & I work with her Dr to find a correct diagnosis & figure out a new plan of action. So, dd will unschool for every subject, except Math. If I let her unschool for Math, she'll purposely avoid anything that uses Math. Since she's already ahead of her ps peers, we're not concerned with her falling behind. We just think this might be the right thing for us right now. I'm hoping that maybe this will help with her motivation & desire to learn. She lost most of both during her year at ps. We've made some progress on getting them back, but not as much as I'd like. Dh & I have never seriously considered unschool dd, until now. I can see how it would be great for younger kids, or older kids with a lot of motivation. Dd just doesn't have that motivation, so we never considered it. Anyway, I would love some advice, tips, suggestions of good books to read, websites, etc. Anything that would help me with unschooling. It's easy enough for me, when it comes to ds, but with dd, I'm not sure. I think I'm just having some trouble adjusting to the idea of her unschooling. It'll be so different from the way we've done things in the past. Dd is 10 (will be 11 by the end of the school year), is gifted & has ADHD. She is currently diagnosed with ODD, but we (dh, dd's psychologist, & I) think this diagnosis is wrong & are currently looking at the possibility of her having Bipolar. Here's my current plan: we still expect her to do her Math (TT), but instead of assigning a lesson a day, I thought I'd talk with dd & set goals for when each chapter should be done, or how much we think she should get done in a week. I plan to set a time in the afternoon for reading, about an hour - the only requirement we're putting on this is that the books she reads during this time are at grade-level or above (she's reading way above grade-level, so this shouldn't be a problem) She can read pretty much anything she wants, the only exceptions being books we find inappropriate for her she'll have a limit on how much time she can spend watching TV & how much time she spends on the computer for certain materials, she'll still have to ask permission or ask us to get them, because so much is locked up due to her stealing, if she stops stealing things will be unlocked & she'll have easier access to them once she can use her library card again (we're almost done paying off her fine from last year), she can check out whatever she wants. as long as her stuff gets checked out on our cards, she's limited to books, educational DVDs, and educational computer programs we have tons of educational materials, science tools, educational DVDs, computer programs, books, magazines, arts & crafts supplies, etc. she can use any of them (even stuff she has to ask for first, as long as they get put away when she's done) we're working on fixing our 2nd car, so I can have a car while dh's at work which will allow us to take more field trips, nature walks at the state parks, etc. I have a blog that only she has access to, with links to sites about different topics, plus we have a wiki we've been using for her schedule & assignments. she can use the wiki to list things she's interested in learning about, so I can help her find resources we also have a wiki for friends & family to see what the kids are doing for school & a newsletter for those who don't have internet. she can help with both of those, which would help with her writing & computer skills I might be able to pick up some book-binding kits so she can create books on the things she's learning about (this is something she & I talked about & were planning to do for next year) What else can I do? What are some of the best books about unschooling? Does anyone have any advice or tips they can offer me? We're just starting this today, so I'm still fairly unsure & concerned about how this will work. It kind of feels like I'm giving in or giving up, and I've had to remind my self numerous times that we're trying this because we feel this is what she needs right now.
Hi I wish you all the best with unschooling your 2 kids! I know a book you might want to read. It's called Creative Homeschooling by Lisa Rivero. It has some great ideas, information and resource pages included in it. Based on your dd's description you also might want to look up a Yahoo group called homeschoolingcreatively. They are a group of people who have children that are creative, gifted, right brained, visual/spatial, ADD/ADHD, LD's etc. They also offer great creative ideas and creative curricula information. They are not all necessarily unschoolers though. I think many of them are creative/eclectic. I hope this info. helps in some way.
Any and all of John Holt's books are fantastic. Unschooling.com has lots of great articles to inspire you. Sandra Dodd has a site with a collection of her writings on radical unschooling. Now, that may be going a bit too far for you but there's lots of great stuff and sometimes reading the more extreme stuff can give you ideas for more moderate applications. She was definitely a help to me.
Thanks. I'll look into that group & check the library for the book today. We've been using an eclectic approach with dd since we started & we might be going back to it next year. We just really need to get things figured out, right now. Ds will also be starting with a more eclectic approach next year. We never planned on unschooling dd at all, and only planned to unschool ds until he was ready for more "formal" lessons (for lack of a better term). Now, I'm not sure what we'll be doing for dd next year. Every time dh & I have discussed unschooling dd, we've agreed that it wouldn't work for her. I always said that if we let her unschool, she'd learn everything about Ancient Egypt & human anatomy, but wouldn't be able to do basic math (Math is her least favorite subject, & she would completely avoid it if she could). Now, it seems that unschooling for everything except Math, may be the only way to go, at least for the next few months.
Thank you. I found unschooling.com this morning (right after I started this thread) & I'll check out the other one in a few minutes. I'll keep an eye out for books by John Holt while at the library this afternoon.
For math.. even though you are going to keep using TT... We love the Family Math books...they are full of games and things that are FUN!! I also like The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas by Linda Dobson.. it has ideas on every subject. Some of the ideas annoy me, but some are pretty sneaky
Oh.. I have a link to an unschooling magazine you can read for free.... http://www.lifelearningmagazine.com/read.html
http://schoolsoutsupport.com/resources.html Try this link for more links! The accountability association we belong to is run by an Unschooling mom.
