We’re constantly discovering new things related to unschooling and how Ethan learns. Today, Dong Eun tried to get him to work on math and writing, but Ethan resisted because doing those things felt like a task he had to do. He really wasn’t motivated to do any of those things, but we found better ways for him to become self-motivated.
Dong Eun realized that he absorbs information from everything he sees or reads and will make a connection between what he knows and new things. The biggest challenge with homeschooling is knowing what motivates him to do things and presenting him with opportunities to do those things.
We also realized that with home learning, he can learn from anything that he is exposed to, even things like creating a bullet journal, which is more of a grown up thing to do. When unschooling, there is always an opportunity to learn and discover something, even when we think he’s not initially interested in a particular topic or situation.
Morning
Ethan read a Minecraft comic book on the Kindle after getting up.
Then, Ethan and Dong Eun went jogging along Ambleside Beach. It was raining a little and he thought it was kind of fun to run in the rain. He found a spider under a sign at the beach and he checked that out for a while.
Later, he found a stick and made it into a pencil. At the beach, Ethan started drawing in the sand. He drew happy faces in the sand. A LOT of happy faces, from smaller ones to big ones.
He drew a symbol that includes all the math operations combined into one.
Afterwards, he found a heart shaped rock and when a seagull flew away, it dropped a feather. Ethan picked it up and said it was a fresh feather.
He picked up a larger rock and wanted to count how many raindrops were on it.
Dong Eun asked him if he knew how to measure rainfall. He said he knew but didn’t want to explain, so Dong Eun explained it. They are thinking about trying to set up a rainfall measurement experiment.
The beach is one of his favourite places to play, as there is always something to see.
When they got home, Dong Eun cleaned the apartment and Ethan cleaned his room, too.
He made a new pinball machine using tacks.
Then he started working on a new maze made with hot glue. He slightly burned his fingers after the hot glue dripped onto them.
He watched a video with Dong Eun about creating a bullet journal.
Afternoon
We searched for information about fourth grade curriculum, as we are considering giving him some subjects to work on.
They searched for information about countries with only two seasons because it was something they read in one of his workbooks. They used Siri on the iPhone to do the research and found those countries on a map. The countries with two seasons are mainly near the equator.
Ethan worked on his workbooks. We wanted him to finish them so we could work on other things. He didn’t like the language arts part, saying he doesn’t like writing. We talked about what kind of writing he likes to do and he mentioned how he liked making comic books. So, he’s going to start working on new comic books.
There was a poem in one of the workbooks and he changed the words into something funny. The poem was about snow, but he made it into a poem about poo. Check out the video to hear what he said.
Worked on addition and subtraction math problems, but he didn’t find them fun. He started working on Grade 4 multiplication word problems and Dong Eun tried to teach him the traditional way of multiplying two digit numbers. But he said there was a better way by using the base 10 method he learned from YouTube. He couldn’t remember exactly how to do it, so him and Dong Eun watched the video about it. They both ended up learning the method, which made it more fun for each of them.
They also watched videos about the mathemagician.
He then continued working on the Grade 4 multiplication word problems, and since he was able to answer them all correctly, we decided to let him throw out his Grade 1 to 3 workbooks. He did, and he even kissed them goodbye.
But after a while, he decided to pick them out of the recycling box and keep them because he thought he would work on them when he was bored.
While watching more mathemagician videos, Ethan suddenly decided to make his own bullet journal. He was really into it, much more so than we could have imagined. He was super focused on it and completed the journal in one sitting without stopping. Dong Eun was quite surprised because when they were watching the videos about creating bullet journals earlier in the day, he didn’t appear to be interested in bullet journals at all.
Evening
After dinner, he wrote in his bullet journal and updated some videos on his YouTube channel.
He then worked on his daily observation and before bed, he wrote a blog post on his website.
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