Desperately seeking.....

It's funny, but I read often from homeschooling parents, mothers mostly, on forums etc. that they spend time desparately seeing the perfect curriculum....buying one after another after another, spending gazillions of dollars on curriculums that they ditch after a short while because they don't work. I started doing this while tutoring young chinese kids in Hong Kong. I ordered the perfect "phonics" program, bought book after book, workbook after workbook, each one a boring failure and the lightbulb slowly went on for me and I understood more and more. I still didn't know about homeschooling and unschooling at this point. I found that the best way to reach the kids was to read cool books with them and then design FUN activities around the books. I read Roald Dahl a lot with the kids, Captain Underpants too - a huge hit, and I learned. When I had kids, began my journey into attachment parenting, LLL, Continuum Concept, and finally homeschooling I started researching curriculums, finding free ones like Letteroftheweek.com, Five in a Row and Sonlight....FIAR's literature lists and ideas are great, I ordered the books and the guides, and did nothing but read the books over and over to my kids. I don't know that I did ONE thing from the guides. Activities to reinforce learning SNORE. Sonlight's literature idea is awesome but by now I knew I would never do everything....so ordered some of their reading list but stayed away from their IGs. I have purchased less than most people I think. I did a few lapbooks with my kids, but again, reinforcing learning isn't really necessary. Either they get it or not. Either they want to know about something or they don't. If anything, by doing the lapbooks I killed their interest in certain topics. (here's a whole nother blogpost i suspect) I haven't completely given up on them, maybe when they are older they may enjoy the project aspect of lapbooks....but for now I have let them fall by the wayside. I have fallen for a couple of Math programs, but spent relatively little money. And I know with my kids its all about living and reading about real life stuff, and doing real life stuff every day, like catching mosquito larvae to put into your fish tank. You know the whole circle of life thing. You know Charlotte Mason's twaddle free literature, and living books, and living history???? Yep, she knew what she was talking about. Are all these parents desparately seeking the perfect curriculum wasting their time and money? Yep. It's right in front of their noses. Great books! LIFE LEARNING. SELF DIRECTED. Let the kids free to explore their own interests...and as a parent watch....and feed....spend all that money feeding the passion......and of course READ READ READ to them.....

All this just hit me today.

I figured out what August said. His loose tooth is driving him batty....it's been almost out for a week now, he finally said....."Maybe tonight I'll just put my whole head under the pillow and the tooth fairy can just take my tooth!" Ok, well *I* thought it was funny.

Panic Attack

Teacher supervisor visit tomorrow.

Me Panic.

Me kinda ticked that the 'unschoolers' were given a new hire who hasn't even read John Holt.

That I have to work on/educate her to see where I'm coming from.

Good thing she's pregnant now, she will start to understand....but unfortunately she will be off all next year and won't finish this year...

I tried to market math workbooks to August Saying that I would get in trouble if he didn't do SOMETHING.....he still couldn't do them, and I felt bad going against all my principles trying to get him to do them.....Believe me I didn't even TRY to get him to write anything....So it ticks me off totally as I`ve probably set August back months in real `learning` in trying to coerce him into doing stuff he had no interest in. When will I learn.

So I gave up - I know he understands the Math already, maybe not in its formal form.....but intellectually he does...

He has chosen books to read to her, this is not an issue.....and I suspect he will play piano for her.....

I'm still panic stricken......

SLUG SLUG SLUG Where are you????

unschooling support group for me

Well after looking at the provincial learning outcomes for grade 2 and seeing that August must be/should be writing full sentences/paragraphs I started to mildly panic as there really is not a chance in H3ll that that is going to happen. And then Math, argh, I can look at the Miquon book (don't get me wrong, I think Miquon is a great system) and I know he knows it....why make him fill out the pages if he can do it? As for printing, it appears when we "play" with letters he knows his letters just fine. As for reading, he reads along and WANTS me to put my finger on the words when I'm reading.....So I am rereading John Holt's "Teach Your Own" reading lots of unschooling blogs and trying to reinspire myself. The first chapter of JH got me feeling better, Rue's pictures of her mushroom adventures made me laugh out loud (see her blog here) and I feel better. I just gotta focus on bugs. Bugs! August's passion right now and all will be ok, I have to trust.
At homeschooling swim lessons today I spoke with another unschooling mother, who really said the right things....and she even called me tonight to see if I felt better. I said to her "We need an unschooling support group" and what I really meant was "I need an unschooling support group" If only I had the time I would make time.....a playgroup for mum's right?