Calling a spade a spade. We’ve been using “home learning” as the title for these blog posts but I’ve usually used unschooling to describe what Ethan’s doing. So I decided it would be better to just use unschooling to make it clear to our blog readers exactly what form of homeschooling we like.
I hope that from reading what Ethan does on a daily basis, anyone thinking about unschooling can get a sense of what it might be like for their child.
And if you’re looking for a fantastic unschooling resource, Living Joyfully with Unschooling is a great place to start.
Morning
Ethan was reading Muse and saw something about keeping track of a cacti’s growth. So he decided to try the same thing with a succulent.
Improving memory
There was an article in Muse about how to memorize things and it was interesting to Ethan. We talked a little bit about what a memory castle is and how he could use it.
Time for swimming
Ethan had a swimming lesson and got everything ready on his own. He was quite excited about the lesson, which is a good sign because he wasn’t too thrilled about it last year. Maybe it’s the fact that the pool isn’t crowded and the instructor is a better fit this time.
More books on coding
After swimming, we went to the library to pick up some mandala and math books we had on hold. Ethan borrowed some more coding books and was quite excited about them. He’s really into coding these days and started reading the Star Wars coding book in the van on the way home.
He also got a book about cloud computing that he seemed to enjoy.
Afternoon
After lunch, Ethan spent some time coding and he also practiced his taekwondo pattern before we had to leave for his class.
Once taekwondo class was over, Ethan played for about an hour with some kids from taekwondo class and another kid from the nature school.
The first question people ask me about Ethan when they find out that he’s homeschooling is about social interaction. It’s a good question and I know why they ask, but the social interaction that Ethan has as an unschooler is very unique.
Ethan spends time with children who have the same interests as he does, he spends time with children of different ages, he hangs around with us a lot and he gets social interactions that are positive and he’s around people that he wants to be around.
Socialization has never been a concern and doesn’t seem like it will be.
Dinner
One of the books is for adults to learn the basics of math; or rather, to relearn the basics of math. I thought Ethan would like it because it seemed similar to the math book for parents he has.
He read parts of the book over lunch and was excited to talk about how equations involving unknown numbers work. He liked how the book explained the logic behind equations and was happy to share what he was learning.
He also thought this piece of chicken looked like a plane.
After dinner, we looked at some of the online resources provided by SelfDesign. SelfDesign has accounts with many educational sites and tools, such as Dream Box, which is an interactive math website.
But the one he really enjoyed was Discovery Education because they have lots of material about space and astronomy. So he spent most of the evening watching videos about space.
He watched several videos before wanting to do some taekwondo practice. I joined in and tried to follow along. I think Ethan enjoyed it and it was helpful for him to try and tell me what to do, which would help him to learn faster.
Once he was done with taekwondo, Ethan practiced typing with an online typing tutorial.
Then before bed, Ethan and I read The Fun Knowledge Encyclopedia Volume 2: The Crazy Stories Behind the World’s Most Interesting Facts. This is a cool book with lots of interesting back stories about certain events and people.
And that was it for today on the newly minted unschooling posts. Let us know if you have any questions.
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