The Unschooling Experiment Begins

The idea of unschooling has really intrigued me in the last year or so. I don’t know what made me interested to read it in the first place but my real interest developed when I read An Unschooling Manifesto.

My cousins unschool their boys, they are really the only unschoolers I know and they doing an amazing job. They read a lot, they do a ton of hands on activities and live a life that is so conducive to unschooling. The boys make their own flavors of kombucha and sauerkraut, they explore the local countryside, they take apart bikes and put them back together . . . seriously, can I just send my kids there to be unschooled? (Maybe I could convince them to move to our town and conveniently send my kids over there each day . . .)

I regretfully admit that our unschooling will never look like theirs but I wanted to take the next few months and give this unschooling thing a go.

Admittedly, I’m taking the cheaters way in this – it’s February and we’ve pretty much completed everything I had planned for Raeca this year. I took a look at our provincial curriculum and we did pretty good, especially considering the school year is just over the half way mark.

Maybe it’s my education degree that’s made me a little scared of unschooling (or my inherent need for order) but even though I wanted to, I just couldn’t go full unschooling right at the beginning of the school year. I was scared we would miss something big. (Now I’m asking myself, like what? She can read, she can add and subtract, seriously, what else do they really learn in grade one?!)

I know unschooling will push against my natural tendencies (I like workbooks!) and my education background but I think it will be so good for our family.

We are going to be diving in to some of the kids interests, ideas we’ve had so far include:

• bats
• sewing
• planets (Raeca wants to know what happened to Pluto)
• famous landmarks
• cooking
• Hawaii
• plants
• painting

Looking at that from a teacher’s perspective we’ll be covering, science, home economics, math, art and geography. And that doesn’t include all the books we are bound to be reading and listening to.

I’m really excited for this unschooling experiment! And to be honest, knowing we’ve already covered what we need to cover this year it will be a lot more fun for me as well.

I really want to incorporate more hands on activities as well. I don’t have any specific ideas right now though I do know I want to try out the Little Passports box (our subscription has already been ordered!) as well as a Kiwi Crate.

Got any unschooling tips or resources for me?

BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS POST:

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