Unschooling: Vacation-Style Learning

Since it's summer and schools are out on break, this question, "Do you take summers off?" finds its place among the homeschool FAQs my kids and I hear. Seems like a simple question, but because people equate learning with school and all its trappings and because we don't "do school," it really isn't.

My first thought is that the truest answer is "no." We don't stop learning after we've clocked 180 6-hour days or because it's June. We aren't burnt out and in need of a break from learning because learning is not a chore when it's driven by imagination, curiosity, delight, interest, or passion sparked from real life experiences -- both the regular everyday stuff and the new and exciting stuff.

However, the question about taking summers off probably really means something more like, "do you take summers off from school work?" The answer to that is a huge "yes!" We have also taken off for the Fall, Winter, and Spring ever since we took Riley out of preschool about 3 1/2 years ago.

I suppose the most honest answer would be to say, "Well, the way we learn actually looks more like a really great summer vacation than like school." Even though the person asking is probably just making conversation, it's always fun to take any opportunity to sew a few unschooling seeds.


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In the spirit of vacation-style learning, here are a few of our vacation pictures from Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. This was Seth's first trip to the ocean. Riley was 2 last time he saw the ocean and Maya was not even 1. Everything was new for them: the ocean, the bay, the beach, the dunes, the dolphins, the birds, the fish, the boats, the hermit crabs, the palm trees...

This morning we headed out early (for us) for our neighboring county's parks department program, Wild Wednesdays. Different groups that work with animals come to the park each week to talk about what they do and to show the animals. We've gone several times this summer; and we met our friends, Kelly, Jonathan, and Rebecca again this week for an equestrian-themed program by Farmer Joan.






Later, Maya and I were reading a book about animal babies that had a diagram of an unfertilized chicken egg. She decided she wanted to go crack some eggs open and "check out the parts," and we invited Riley and Seth to join us.


After we were finished with the eggs, cleanup led to water/bubbles play for Maya and Seth while Riley played his current favorite game, Guitar Hero.

3rd Generation Friends

My friend, Shelley, just returned home to California after visiting here in KY for a few weeks. We got to see Shelley, her Mom, Jane, and her little girl, Maddie, earlier this week when we met up at the Georgetown skatepark. We had a blast playing with, holding, and feeding Maddie. The last time we saw her she was just a couple of months old. My kids know Maddie because two generations ago my Mom and Shelley's Mom met at work (I think that's where they met -- Shelley or Jane can correct me if I'm wrong) and became good friends. They introduced Shelley and me to each other when we were in, I think, second grade; and we've been good friends ever since. How cool!

Late Spring

Here's another catch-up blog post with some pictures from late Spring before our Florida vacation. I'll do a vacation post soon, but Riley posted about our trip on his blog already.

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Our map with postcards from an unschoolers' postcard swap group we belong to

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This is a picture of the pond we started a several weeks ago. This makes me sad to look at. It is now overrun with algae, and I'm working on getting it back in balance. I feel like a goldfish slum lord!

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Riley -- excited about his tae kwon do red belt

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Maya stringing beads in her hair and on necklaces

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Riley and Maya trading and organizing Pokemon cards. This is a big interest at our house right now. The Friday morning before we left on vacation we set up a Pokemon/Yugioh park day with friends from our homeschool groups and had a blast. We're getting together again this Friday.

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Here is a 6 year old who *loves*and has available salty snacks, candy, ice cream, and McDonald's chicken nuggets and has free choice about what, when, and how much to eat and has some basic knowledge of nutrition freely and happily choosing to snack on a tub of plain organic mixed lettuces.

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A sweet moment: Riley had been playing outside on his scooter when he heard the garbage truck coming. He came in to get Seth, lover of big trucks, to come outside and watch together.

Everyday living and learning

Here are some of the twists and turns our lives (and learning) have taken over the last week:

Yugioh dueling/trading, Pokemon trading, organizing Pokemon card collection, listening to and singing the songs on our new Amy Steinberg CD (everyone should have the awesome experience of hearing their children belting out the words of her song Exactly), making and sculpting with homemade play dough, meeting new friends (including an unschooling family -- yay!), playing with old friends, watching the road crew/trucks resurface our street, Club Penguin, receiving postcards from unschoolers in other states and countries, Runescape, Webkinz, reading and looking at lots of picture books, drawing 8-point stars, drawing pictures of friends and family and trucks, solving for "x," squares and square roots, UNO, Karaoke Revolution on Playstation, tae kwon do, a new (to us) skatepark, a new (to us) playground, reading a flow chart, the Indianapolis Children's Museum, Letterboxing, learning to use a compass, tent caterpillars, Bhutan, the midnight premiere of Spiderman 3 (for Matt and Riley), and a matinee of Meet the Robinsons in 3D (for all of us).

Snapshots

At home:

Maya on the keyboard ; Seth watching the road crew

Around town:

Our first letterbox

From our trip to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis:

Sculpting a plastic version of Dale Chihuly's Fireworks of Glass

Building an ancient Egyptian town

Mayasaur nurturing her nest; Sethasaur on the prowl

More dinosaur play

In the Art Room

Peaking beneath the surface of the pond

Sethy was a race car driver...

National Spank Out Day

Today is National Spank Out Day. EPOCH-USA and the Center for Effective Discipline works toward educating and legislating away physical abuse of children, a.k.a. spanking, corporal punishment, swatting, or whatever term makes easier for so many to justify hitting children. Their website has information about alternatives to hitting children, information related to various religious views, and statistics by state regarding the legality and incidence of hitting children in schools and even daycares. I have a list of links along the right side of my blog to other parenting resources that offer alternatives to hitting (and so much more). There is also a yahoo group/email list run by Pam Sorooshian for parents who want to discuss alternatives to hitting.

My husband could go to jail if he hit me, even if he had "tried everything else" and I "still wouldn't listen!" Why children are not afforded the same protection from abuse that full grown adults are given, why there is not shock and disgust and *rescue* when we encounter a child being hit, is completely beyond my comprehension. And yet...

We went to a children's museum yesterday. My daughter was playing at a water table when a woman came up and hit a toddler 2 or 3 times for climbing on the table (this was the third child I had seen hit in a time span of about 30 minutes). My daughter looked around at me like "Do something!" Do you know what I did? Nothing. I know that what that Mom did is so acceptable in our society that *I* would be the one perceived as stepping out of bounds to intervene; but, by choosing to look the other way, all I did was condone what happened. Here are two articles (that I will certainly be rereading and thinking about) by Jan Hunt of the Natural Child Project: Intervening on Behalf of a Child in a Public Place: Part 1 Is It Our Business, and Intervening on Behalf of a Child in a Public Place: Part 2 What Can We Do.

I do have a story that makes me smile and gives me hope. We have had the book One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss since Riley was a baby. Near the beginning of the book, there is a part where it says "Some are sad. And some are glad. And some are very, very bad." The illustration on the "very, very bad" page shows a big, angry-looking, red fish hitting at a surprised-looking smaller fish. I had always seen it as an adult fish punishing a "very, very bad" fish until my kids told me one time what they saw in the picture: a big, red, "very, very bad" fish hitting the little fish.

Beowulf followup

Riley lost interest in reading the full version of Beowulf after we got past the battle between Beowulf and Grendl (the part he was familiar with from a short story version). Still interested in the original language, we found a website that had audio of a reading from a passage from Beowulf in Old English (you just click on the capital letters at the beginning of each verse to listen -- you need RealAudio Player v3 ). We read a bit more online about the evolution of the English language; and, as we were reading about the Battle of Hastings and the Norman conquest of England, we found this cartoonized version of the Bayeux Tapestry on You Tube. I'll post the video directly on the blog from YouTube if I can figure out how...

Overdue Easter pix and this weekend's TKD tournament

Here are pictures from Easter Sunday:



and some from this weekend's tae kwon do tournament in Elizabethtown, KY:

Riley doing his form

Waiting to do his breaking technique: a blindfolded wheel kick

Sparring with Julie, a friend he met at the tournament

Receiving a trophy

Riley's TKD master instructor, Master Kim, and the group from KMA who attended the tournament:

(side note: if you click on the KMA website, I just realized they have added the video from a local commercial filmed at last summer's open house -- at the beginning there is a quick shot of Riley jumping through a ring of fire)

Maya and her monkey ---------- Matt and Seth

This Week

We had two days of beautiful weather early in the week before it turned really cold -- we even have had little snow flurries several days this week. Matt took one of the warm days off from work. We spent that afternoon at a nearby playground and skatepark. We spent the next afternoon at the park with friends. The rest of the week we spent indoors. The kids got interested in reading Shel Silverstein's Falling Up again, and I added one of his poems to the right side of this blog page. I also added a link to the blog Riley started called "my great life and all my adventures."

Ri got interested in Beowulf from a short story version we had borrowed from the library a few weeks ago, so this week he borrowed the full poem. The book we borrowed has the original Old English on one page with the corresponding translation on the facing page. That has spurred an interest for both of us in learning more about the progression of the English language through history; and we're planning to read more about that as well as about Scandinavian history, particularly during the time period Beowulf was written (between the 7th and 10th centuries).

Maya has been thinking about words a lot lately, too -- the modern English kind. She doesn't read on her own yet, but she spends a lot of time lately looking at words, sometimes asking what something spells but more often just quietly looking by herself. We were looking at some paint chips, and she was asking me the names of the colors on them, and one was called "madras." She said, "Oh, I thought it said 'drama'." I have no idea where she learned which letters make up the word "drama," but I thought it was cool that she saw it in "madras." It reminded me of how she has spelled her own name over the last few years -- sometimes it was "ayam," sometimes "yama," occasionally some other variation. A couple of times I mentioned about writing left to right, but she said she didn't care, so that was that. At some point, she started consistently spelling "Maya." At some point, she will crack more of the code and madras will be madras and drama will be drama. I'm glad she gets to enjoy the process in her own time and in her own way.

Pictures from this past week:

Riley making mosaics---------------Maya drawing

Maya and Seth making things with magic nuudles (cornstarch foamy things)

Maya building with Lego's----- A crane that Seth, Riley, and I are building

Maya playing with air flow at the vent

Seth playing with magnet shapes