Today was our first official day of home learning and it was a full day for Ethan. He’s writing in his journal as I type this and he’s still smiling, so I guess it was a great day. He was quite happy being home while his friends were at school, especially since we live across the street from his old school. Overall, Ethan was engaged and enthusiastic about everything he did. The only thing he didn’t like was our suggestion that he should learn another language. He really doesn’t want to for some reason. We realize that he should choose what he learns, but we’re hoping to encourage him to try a new language, anyway.
When the day started, Dong Eun was worried and had a sense of fear concerning how she could spend the day with Ethan.
One of the main reasons for us to do home learning, and adopting more of an unschooling approach, is our hope that it would be better for Ethan than traditional school. We know that home learning means more work for us, and Dong Eun was worried that it might be a waste of time and energy if we couldn’t do a better job than what Ethan was getting at school. She was worried that our lack of experience would make it even more difficult to provide a learning environment that Ethan could thrive in.
We realize that we need to believe in Ethan, so it was more will WE do well.
As the day progressed, Dong Eun felt surprisingly comfortable. She realized that sharing our lives together this way would be an amazing experience and brings us all closer.
She also saw much more clearly what Ethan enjoys and feels like she understands him better.
She realized that having a strict schedule wasn’t necessary, and that it was more comfortable for her and Ethan to be completely flexible.
Dong Eun was afraid we couldn’t 100% unschool, but after today, she felt much better about what unschooling would be like and is happy with our choice. As you’ll see below, just letting Ethan have time to explore and discover things on his own made the entire day so much more rewarding than we expected.
Morning
Ethan worked on his snap circuits set this morning when he woke up. He really enjoys the different combinations of circuits and what he can connect.
After breakfast, Ethan and Dong Eun went to the library, which is something we want to do regularly. I gave Ethan my camera, so he could take photos or videos along the way and he took advantage of the opportunity.
He took photos of flowers, a bee and he tried to get a shot of a mouse running around the community garden. He also stopped and played at the playground for a while.
Ethan liked this photo and wants to use it on his laptop as the background image…
It normally only takes about 20 minutes to walk to the library but today it took over an hour because Dong Eun was patient and let Ethan observe things and enjoy playing.
At the library, he went straight for the Garfield and TinTin books, reading one each in just a few minutes. Dong Eun then suggested that he find one book from several different sections of the library to expose him to different subjects. So, he borrowed some about math, Minecraft and science. While there, he met some old schoolmates but was content with just reading on his own.
After the library, he stopped to play again at the playground. When he got home, he read all five of the books he borrowed.
Afternoon
Today was Ethan’s best friend’s birthday so he and Dong Eun walked to the mall to buy a present. They took the path along the beach and Ethan loved seeing all the dogs walking by and playing at the beach. Ethan suggested playing a game that involved guessing how long it would take to get to the mall and come home. Ethan guessed six minutes and when Dong Eun said 10 minutes, he said she had to choose an odd number because if it took eight minutes, no one would be the winner. So she chose nine minutes. They used the stopwatch on the phone to time themselves. It took an hour and a half.
On the way back from the mall, Ethan saw a tree he wanted to climb and promptly went up it. After returning home, Ethan worked on his Gr. 1 to 3 workbooks and checked the answers on his own today, instead of asking me to do it.
He found some riddles in one of the workbooks and shared them with Dong Eun. Ethan loves riddles and was borrowing books and reading them online almost daily last spring and early in the summer.
We’ve been wanting Ethan to keep up with his Korean, so he practised spelling in Korean today. He was surprisingly good at remembering how to write the characters, even though we haven’t practised in many months. He practised for about three months when we first moved back to Canada, but that was about two years ago. He started reading in Korean around age 4 and used to read to other kids at his preschool and kindergarten.
After the writing, he practised violin and played with his new story cubes. They were a bit challenging because they tried to use all nine cubes, so we’ll try three next time.
As mentioned in the introduction, we want to encourage Ethan to learn another language but he isn’t too thrilled about that. We realized that it’s probably best to expose him to other languages, and anything else we want him to try, in a more indirect way. For example, we put out some Disney DVDs that tell the stories from several movies. Each DVD also includes a Spanish and French version. Ethan was checking them out, so we’ll see if this leads to some interest in the languages.
What happened afterwards was a discussion about how many languages there are in the world (about 7000!) and how some languages are considered easier or harder to learn for native English speakers.
Evening
He said he doesn’t know as many English words. I suggested we have a word of the week. We need to use it in a sentence and keep score. He chose “impossible” and was really into this game. Within an hour and a half, he used it over 20 times and we decided to change the game into “Word of the Day” and use unfamiliar words that we learn in the dictionary.
We printed a Gr. 3 suggested books list to encourage him to read something other than comics. He loves reading so he was happy to try new books.
We watched the day’s videos and photos.
As parents, we both agreed that even though today was quite full, we had more control over the day and our life as a family. With Ethan in school, we were not sure what he was doing.
We worked on our journal and observation for the day, and played Monopoly Deal the rest of the evening. We love this card game and it’s quickly become our favourite.
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