This week's "What Works For Me Wednesday" is a themed version entitled "What DOESN'T Work for Me". Head on over to Rocks In My Dryer for more WWFM news. In keeping with the theme of the day I thought I would discuss homeschooling. I have been homeschooling our youngest son, Dakota since Day 1. He has never gone to public school. We've tried the traditional ways of homeschooling with us both sitting at the kitchen table for several hours a day working in school books but it just doesn't work for us.
For the last couple of years we have ventured more and more into unschooling. Now if I even try to get Dakota to work on something he is not interested in he asks me "Why do I have to know this? I am not interested in it. If I want to know more about it, I'll look it up on my own." That's the beauty of unschooling or child-led learning. When they get an interest in something they absorb everything they can about that particular topic for as long as they want. There is more freedom and less structure. We are not concerned about grades and measuring up to others' standards...instead, we are focused on just learning about life and the world around us. Unschooling works for us, traditional homeschooling/public education doesn't work for us.
4 comments:
We are homeschoolers too. Isn't it great that we can tailor our teaching to what truly works for our children?
Thanks for sharing your perspective!
I agree. When we started homeschooling...I was totally into workbooks and getting tons of stuff done in a day... Then I realized I was killing education for my kids. I LOVE being relaxed and just learning as we go!! What a difference!
I started out with a more formal structure - doing all the lessons in the books,doing all the tests and assignments - then I realized how lame a lot of the stuff was. Or it was geared to a larger group of students. Now we do what I feel like doing. We still have books and worksheets but we supplement a lot, skip a lot, change things around. And we read, read, and read some more. Whatever the kids (or mom!) finds interesting.
I've been wondering about this. I was homeschooled the traditional way, with workbooks. But my son, almost 5, doesn't respond to that at all. I've found if I let him take the lead he learns more, and is more enthusiastic about learning. And that last bit is the understatement of the year. :P I think my daughter (2.5) may be more of the workbook type though.
Post a Comment