unschool monday :: being and becoming

"But how do you know that they'll learn everything they need to learn?" This is one of the most frequent questions we're asked as unschooling parents. The answer is quite straight forward... If we encourage them to follow their interests, they'll pick up or ask to learn what they need to along the way to getting wherever it is they are going. We don't know where that is, so putting them in a classroom, or at home, with a set of arbitrary goals for them to attain and a pre-ordained path for them to follow may not be the best use of their time or enthusiasm. We have no idea when certain concepts will be relevant to them, enough so that they grasp them. We have a fair idea that pushing them to learn before they are ready to understand is quite futile. We don't teach our children to crawl, walk or talk... why do we teach them to read? And why do we expect that they will all do it at the same time?

 

Little Owlet was ready to learn how to write a lower case 'e' on Thursday at approximately 3.20pm. I was unwell and idle parenting was very much on the agenda. I sat down with a cup of tea, rolled my jeans up to my knees and handed the two smallest owlets a pack of face paints. They delighted in drawing all over my legs and after a little while, I could hear Little Owlet writing out letters, saying them as she went along, and then... "Mama, how do you write a lower case 'e'? This is the first time she's expressed an understanding that there even is a lower case of letters. She seems to have picked it up by osmosis, as owlets often do. I showed her the shape with my fingers, as seems to work best for Little Owlet. "Uh-huh!" She said as she went about writing it... Sure enough, half an hour later I noticed it. The perfect 'e'. In this moment, Little Owlet is pottering away, doing everything she needs to gain the knowledge to pursue her interests. It's slow and incremental, so we may not notice it all the time, but the learning is happening as part of the living. As part of the being.

As for what Little Owlet is becoming? That is yet to be decided. But, if she follows her heart's desires, and if we are able to provide access to them, where possible, the sky is the limit. And the lessons required to get there will happen along the way... We, as adults, are not generally working towards one particular thing that we'll do forever and never learn anything or move beyond that. We are always learning and striving for new information, new ways to do things and new ways of being. We prefer to remove the focus from Little Owlet's future life and provide learning opportunities for her right now. This moment that she is in. What does she need to learn and do and be in *this* moment? This week she is a drummer. She's always responded to drums, always drums along with music. She loves nothing more than to make a loud noise on the pots and pans. I have the dented pots to prove it. So this week we found her a decent second hand drum kit. Will she become a drummer? I don't know. But she is one now. And that's important.

As for the others? Well, Tiny is a natural.

Huz is having a blast making up some new beats and finally indulging in some time at the drums... Something he's always felt drawn to, but never had the opportunity until now.

Big Owlet sees herself as a guitarist and singer, so enjoys the odd play and observing the others. She's not a drummer right now... but she might become one, one day.

What do you think? Are you on the path to becoming something in particular? Or are you just being and learning as you go? 

We're rather keen to see this film, "Being and Becoming". All about choosing not to school, but to follow our children's passions. It looks fab.

look at them learning...

Actually, this is a particularly schoolish photo, don't you think? The owlets decided to sit down and work on a page or two of some maths problems while we were waiting for the pasta to cook on Saturday. And it's possibly the only photo I have of them looking like they are doing anything related to "learning" in the traditional sense, even though they are all learning so much...

On this particular occasion, Big Owlet learnt to add numbers with double digits, which she later said was "kind of fun", despite her general feeling that "maths is boring". Big Owlet is going through a patch of not reading much at all. She reads to her sisters lots, and very well, but she's paused the novel reading for a little while for some reason... She's all about cooking. Today she baked her first solo cake. Thanks to baking, she now understands measurement, time and temperature so much better, as well as a bit of chemistry, watching solids and liquids mix, which she's backed up with a bit of playing with gloop...



She's learning the fine art of checkers and thinking strategically. Actually, we've been playing lots of games, learning much along the way.



Little Owlet, who doesn't like games all that much, is learning the basics. Self care is an important one for her. I'm modeling it as best I can and showing her by nurturing her LOTS. She forgets to eat, she's so wrapped up in play. Forgets so many things... She's branching out lots on her own, finding independence, wanting to spend all day with friends...



Little Owlet is also asking for lots of time with me, in that tug-of-war that goes on until that independence is upon them... I'm making time to read to her at the end of each day. It's important to her. Unlike her sisters, she never much cared for books, as a toddler. But we're making up for it now. She's reading some words. And listening to so much that I'm saying to her, showing her. She's a little sponge right now. A happy, social little sponge and it's so exciting to watch.



Tiny Owlet is a sponge too. She's observing everything and learning by osmosis. She's all about mothering.



She carries her baby everywhere. She breastfeeds, co-sleeps... actually we all breastfeed her baby, but that's a story for another day... She calls most of us "mama" when she needs something or wants to be heard...



She is working so hard on talking, despite being perfectly comprehensible in grunts. Her days are about caring and copying and climbing and clowning. And they are so full. All of our days are full. Full of learning and loving and just living.

book loving :: part two

It was so lovely to read about everyone's favourite books last week. Some of our favourites were listed too. Among our faves are Alison Lester's books like Magic Beach, Imagine and Our Farm and Jeannie Baker's books like Window and Where the Forest Meets the Sea... We love Dr Seuss, Winnie the Pooh, Fancy Nancy, Eloise, Harry Potter, Audrey of the Outback, Cuddle Time, Winter Awake, My Dad, Hello Baby, The Magical Place, Murgatroyd's Garden, M. Sasek's Australia and New York... We love our very extensive Golden Book collection, Little House and Hairy Maclary, The Hobbit and The Very Hungry Caterpillar which, as I mentioned last Friday, we now also own in French! Oui!



Huge thanks to Glottogon for giving readers here the opportunity to win a $50 gift code on their fab website bursting with books in a bunch of languages, including their lovely range of books for little ones... I'm so excited for our winner.... who I'm thrilled to announce, thanks to Random. org is... Cybele! Pass on your details, lovely and I'll make sure that gets to you soon.

Happy Friday! We're camping in the lounge room, having a slumber party. How about you? xx

unschool monday :: blythe...

Otherwise known as numeracy, literacy, craft, information technology, history, planning... life learning.... Big Owlet first spied Blythe over my shoulder on a blog one day and was immediately besotted... Then after some research and thought found you can make really rather awesome doll houses for these dolls. And perhaps she's not too old for dolls after all.



So she sat down with ebay and watched auctions and lamented the fact that Blythe comes at such a high price. Her weekly allocation of pocket money meant she'd be waiting for aaages if she saved. But she began saving. And longing, pining. Researching some more and working out just how long until she owned Blythe. Then discussion of credit cards came in... Currently Big Owlet is paying off a substantial credit debt. We helped her pay for the doll, seeing it as an excellent excercise in all of the subjects listed above. And helping her follow her passions.

So now Blythe is here. Her name is Sophie. And she's sitting in Big Owlet's room, waiting for friends. Hmmm... Now comes the part where I set aside time to indulge Big Owlet in some crafting. She suddenly needs to learn to sew and crochet and have someone to share that with, and this doll seems to be the catalyst. Off we go!!

Have you wandered around last week's unschool monday links yet? So many beautiful posts on families exploring nature... and iPhones!Just about my most useful parenting/unschooling tool :)

unschool monday :: simple lessons

A couple of weeks ago, we were sitting on our favourite hill, having fish and chips for dinner after picking Huz up from work. We were chatting and out of the blue, Big Owlet asked "what's a noun?" We were a bit surprised, because we have no idea where she's even heard of nouns, but there you go... We went on to answer and explain what nouns are and verbs, adverbs and adjectives are too, using examples we could see around us and making up sentences...

She ruminated on it for a couple of weeks, then today we were playing with words on the fridge. As we do from time to time. Big Owlet is teaching Little Owlet how to write words with the single letters and Big Owlet and I play with the words to make sentences. We usually take turns to add words to make the sentence and that's how we rolled today, when Big Owlet said "oh, that's a noun." "Yeah, cool, that's right!" I exclaimed. "Do you remember which is the verb and which is the adjective?" She proceeded to point them out effortlessly and together we pointed out other examples of verbs, nouns and adjectives on the fridge.

Later we picked up Huz, had fish and chips on our favourite hill again, and I told him of our afternoon. Told him of our play with words on the fridge. Marveled at how easily she grasped concepts that I remembered struggling with at school. I remembered reading workbooks and trying to make sense of it all (I can still see the page and me staring at it), and having it only kind of, sort of, stick after weeks of practice... But then today, she showed such a clear understanding after such a short period of time. Really she's been thinking about it every time she reads, but perhaps it stuck so well because she brought the question to us... Another simple lesson for me in trusting her ability to find the questions and our ability to answer them as she needs and that learning really just does fit in with life.

Do have a wander around last week's unschool monday linkups and see life learning happening in other people's nests. I'm still making my way around, but I can see plenty of happy wandering...