Saturday, November 27, 2010

Thanksgiving Break and the (Sort-Of, but Not Really) Case for Unschooling

Dentist appointments, well-child visits, and cleaning out closets all seem to get pushed aside in the busyness of life.  So, we (sort of) called off school for two weeks, scheduled doctor visits, let the kids run wild and free, and I tried to get caught up on domestic duties.  And, I have once again, been forced to give heed to that little voice in the back of my head that occasionally whispers the idea that perhaps unschooling is not as bad as I have made it out to be.



As a former classroom teacher with a passion for education, organization, and neat rows of on-task children, I find the mere mention of  "unschooling" to send shivers down my spine and lectures on depriving your children of life's basic needs pouring out of my mouth.  But, with a copy of  The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook by Raymond and Dorothy Moore on my nightstand (more about that later, hopefully) and two weeks to observe my children spontaneously educating themselves, I have had to admit that I can see how the concept could be potentially doable. 

Now, lest I sound too enthusiastic about the whole "no formal education before the age of 12" idea, let me insert here that I think my children are able to pursue educational activities because some forms of formal education have been a part of their lives for a year or two now.  I don't know a lot about unschooling, but I don't think my children would have chosen the same activities had they not been made to sit down to their Singapore Math, Alpha Phonics, and Explode the Code.

Having a gotten through that rather lengthy prelude, here are some of the activities we pursued over the past couple of weeks:

I stocked up on Thanksgiving read-alouds from the library and we spent lots of time on the couch with the following titles:
DK Readers: PocahontasSarah Morton's Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim GirlOn The MayflowerThe First Thanksgiving (Step-Into-Reading, Step 3)A Visual Dictionary of Native Communities (Crabtree Visual Dictionaries)Colonial Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in the New World (A Kid's Guide series)Aztec, Inca, and Maya (DK Eyewitness Books)Jamestown, New World Adventure (Adventures in Colonial America)A Visual Dictionary of a Colonial Community (Crabtree Visual Dictionaries)Three Young Pilgrims

Hard-Tack Biscuits
These books gave us a pretty good understanding of what happened prior to and soon after the arrival of the Pilgrims.  They also presented a variety of looks into the Pilgrims' voyage on board the Mayflower and the difficult years following the Mayflower's arrival in the new world.  I had selected several of the activities out of the Colonial Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in the New World (A Kid's Guide series) book, but in the end the stories themselves provided my children with enough information to create their own follow-up activities.  We did make the hard-tack biscuits out of just flour and water as well as candied orange peels, both activities suggested in the Colonial Kids book.  The biscuits were supposed to give the kids a  look at how awful it would be to eat such tasteless food for weeks on end; they, however, devoured them with molasses and couldn't figure out what the big deal was.  "We could definitely live on these for a couple of months," my six-year-old declared.  So much for that idea!  The orange peel candy was also a big hit and a good go-along with the science lesson on crystals we did at co-op the previous week.

Map Work
We also, rather spontaneously, made a compass out of a cork, a nail, and a magnet, which amazed both my son and me.  This activity prompted a map lesson and Logan happily spent the next half hour mapping out the Mayflower's journey on the laminated map we keep on the dining room table.  He decorated the Atlantic with waves, sharks, and storms and "sailed" his ship through the perils to the relative safety of Plymouth Harbor.  When I came back to check on his progress, he had created a rather impressive retelling of the Pilgrim's transatlantic travels.  (And a location-appropriate drawing of the Great Wall of China, but that's beside the point.)

The rest of the week was spent acting out the stories (sometimes scaring us with their cries of, "Daddy, stop him!", during their rendition of Pocahontas attempting to save the life of John Smith.), building Lincoln Log forts and cabins, and creating involved musicals with their Playmobile characters (my personal favorite because of a rather lengthy song, sung to the tune of Anatevka (Fiddler on the Roof), about their good-byes to England and their nervous excitement over the new world).  Paintings, drawings, and coloring pages rounded out their self-imposed Thanksgiving studies.

I still can't bring myself to toss out the lesson planning sheets, workbooks, and daily schedule, but perhaps another time I'll step back, evaluate the days events, and count it as a school day after all.  Then we'll be that much closer to summer vacation and the warm, lovely weeks of free play (or should I say, "unschooling").

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