What is unschooling?

To me, autonomous education or unschooling is all about learning together with my son.

To unschool him would means to allow him to be himself. To allow him to be the master of his life. Many a times I wished and itched to step in and rein in his obsession; but I've learnt that to impose any restrictions on my son would mean him rebelling against it. So my philosophy is why create a battle when we can resolve this amiacably? Not that I am being a bad parent by allowing him to do whatever he wants, but instead I am being a good parent by allowing him to learn how to make good decisions, by making bad decisions. DS know should he need an opinion, he can seek counsel with me. By allowing him all the space he wants, he will soon get to the bottom of whatever he is obsess with, and will move onto newer pastures. By not focusing on controlling DS, I am free to concentrate on what I want to do, and get on with it. And DS will learn to moderate himself if he wants to aligned himself to my routine.

All of the above have made my child believe nothing is too small, too big, too silly, too serious, too difficult, too impossible to explore and everything can be discussed.

Now that all mental barrier to learning is remove, it is my job then to bridge any handicap that my child presents, mentally or physically. If he cannot spell, I will spell for him. If he cannot draw, I will draw for him. If he doesn't want to write, I will scribe for him. If he cannot stop for food, I will feed him.

The objective is to help him reach his goal and accomplish that he will, despite any mental handicaps place there, either by himself or society.

Example:-My son will read any book from a very early age, despite the fact some of the books he picked is too mature and deep for him. But nevertheless, it never stopped him from picking up a very thick and heavy book to take home. Because he knows I WILL help him carry this book home, and I WILL read this book to him. Hence, he knows, no book is too difficult and too heavy to access into.
Nowadays, he'll read anything on his own. His reading level is of a 15 or 16 years old. Infact he is reading books meant for teenagers.

Our unschooling means to dis-regard all the conventional thinking and follow our own instinct. Only by unschooling, can we feel free enough to break away from all those chains imposed onto us, and finally see sense in learning about living and life, in it's natural order.

Which is why we believe in learning thru play instead of workbooks. My son's life is all about Lego, ps2, psp, nintendo DS and his laptop. Because for now, this is what his interest is all about. It is thru these magnificent inventions that my son finds his preferred learning method. It is thru these mediums, many lessons has been spawned.

For instance, the most recent one is about mental maths and spellings. Me and Hubby and DS is competing against each other on the Nintendo DS Brain Training game. I have to say tho DS is consistently in 3rd place, don't forget, he is competing on a software based on an adult's capabilities. So the fact that he can complete all his trials, from mental maths to spellings to memory games, means he is really really good, for an 8 yr old. Infact some parts of the trials especially the memory bits, he's come up 1st!!

This Brain Training Game has also gave him a reason to practise his writing for it is his bad handwriting that is letting him down.

We went to Scotland recently and had the opportunity to sit in the planetarium. It was magnificent and DS was surprisingly well informed. He pointed out and named the various constellation, an evidence of learning just by playing on his Jumpstart pc educational game.

What else...? Urrgh...at this stage of our 2nd year unschooling, with my full confidence knowing my child is learning all the time, has made it hard for me to cite evidence of learning. This is because I am no longer keeping track and looking for evidence of learning in order to convince and comfort myself. But it does seems like, whatever is the "favourite game or interest" of the moment, there is where evidence of learning can be seen.

So for now, his focus is on the Ninetendo DS Brain Training game(because the winner gets the money pot), Xmas, continue adding onto his Lego City which seems to have dominate the living room floor, and playing his Nintendo DS Transformer WiFi.

Unschooling (other than breast feeding) was the best parenting decision we ever make for our son, and ourselves. It allowed us the freedom from any constraints, and endless opportunity to allow our child to grow and become the confident, happy, wise, kind, gentle, considerate and articulate young boy he is today. No words can describe how proud me and hubby is of DS's accomplishment, so far; and we are relax and confident knowing that he will grow up to be a happy and confident young man, in his own right.

What about college and uni, incase you're asking. Well, if University is what he wants, then he'll have to back track and do college, won't he? If he wants university that badly, he WILL willingly do college, without any co-ercion and pain.

Happiness and Hugs to AllSharonBugs, unschooling 8 yrs old DragonBugshttp://mamagecko.blogspot.com/

A Day of our 'Mix and Match' effort

When eldest came out of school at 7 we tried 'school at home' - which was very draining and proved unworkable for us,we tried being 'Autonomous' and I couldn't stand the TV / Playstation / Computer on almost all the time and threw a wobbly about 3 months in and switched all the screens off!

We have since settled to 'mix and match' : Quran, Islamic Studies and Arabic go along with our family plans - non negotiable, but anything and everything else is negotiable!

(Eldest has proved the method works as he has gained many skills eg. Woodland and Survival, Caving experitise, Leadership ( he's a Scout Leader at 15 and has completed many of their adult modules),Camping etc.. Some skills have been self taught from his interest base eg. programming, graphic and website design. Also academically he has tried bits and pieces as the interest took him : eg.sat Maths. English, and Islamic Studies GCSE's at 10 and 12, also completed a 60 point Open University course gaining a Certificate in Natural Science at 14.)

The Journal below was first put on our home education list as many members were sharing how the home ed. day pans out.Boys at this time were 12, 8 and 7.

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Youngest was up first, who re-arranged his bed to look as though he was still in there, so brothers would not follow him down! I was next up and found him in front of the computer playing 'Fate'!(conversation was brief: 'assalmaulikum' , 'waalikumsalaam' : 'washed?' , 'no' : 'had breakfast?' , 'no' : 'read Quran?' , 'no' :'then get your butt back up here!!!!' , 'aaaww!')
Other two up shortly and all washed and dressed. They sorted their own breakfast except younegst who couldn't decide till I said 'Fine, out the kitchen' and then wanted eggs and toast!

Eldest working on Quran with al Qari over the internet while middle son tidied living room.Eldest doing some english work on sites I'd put for him into bookmarks (at this time he was working towards covering the syllabus for the English exam)Youngest onto Quran reading and middle son working on a school express unit on Lions, to be added to his Africa lapbook.

Eldest worked on the english for a while then found this to 'help' ds2 for his Lion lapbook, hilarious!!I'm calling it free delivery : lion lunch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3YJUdChx8s&search=lions(the lapbooks were started after ds2 decided he wanted to record some of the information he found and also when he realised he enjoyed writing stories and summarising the documentaries he watched).

Once Quran lesson over for youngest, ds2 took over for his and youngest started on his explanation of why he didn't need to finish his Spider unit fromschool express, despite the fact he had asked for it, and in fact insisted I print it out immediately!But now, having completed a few pages, he just didn't 'feel like he wanted to' , and could he take his scooter round on the front instead, and he'd hopefully get it 'done in the next few days depending on his schedule'!!Yes, he went scootering!!

Once middle son had finished Quran, youngest also came in and they both helped with the baking,heart shaped cup cakes and a plain sponge for my brother and uncle who were visiitng later in the afternoon.Stayed on to help cook the fish and rice for lunch: lots of sharing, measuring, weighing and recipe reading!

I had a quick tidy up, ocassionally 'commandeering' the odd one for help round the house- (housework comes under life skills for us and as all contribute to the mess so all have a share in the clear-ups)

Everything done, and sat down for a rest, which was the moment ds2 was waiting for as he wanted to read.Book chosen was one we'd got a few days ago from the 'withdrawn' box at the local library.A brillaint story of a young lad named Wesley who creates his own staple crop, and founds a civilization!! all in his own back garden!http://web.syr.edu/~jjvizthu/weslandia.htm

guests arrived, mum busy in chat etc. group prayers, eating together on the floor, all help clear up

older two went off to continue with the garden ( we have had nothing done for months in the garden and kids weren't interested in doing anything tillabout 2 weeks ago when middle son wanted to know, Why didn't plants grow in some parts of Africa? why were all these people starving?so discussion started and we also used the internetrains have failed --http://www.afrol.com/articles/13298http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=2855governments have failed --http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13885409and poverty-- because the rich are greedy: in western Kenya, fertilizer costs more than twice what it costs in France... other rich countries have not delivered the promised foreign aid necessaryhttp://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/crosscutting/poverty.html)

Showing that it wasn't a problem that had just appeared but something that was the result of years of failure was important -actions and consequences is something that must be taught as Islamically we are answerable for what we do... lots more on economics,governments making promises they don't keep, even people failing to pay sadaqa and zakat (poor due) which is a Islamic duty, .............and then back to science and how plants grow!

Final result has been where the science is concerned we have a bunch of seeds which he is going to grow in different locations and under different conditions to see what happens. He liked my suggestion of measuring the growth as an indicator of success, and producing some sort of chart to display results!The trip to the garden center also resulted in eldest wanting to look after something in the garden so we came back a few days ago with Gourd seeds,tomatoe, carrots and herbs, and the odd flowers. All the current activity in the garden if the preparation for these seeds and plants to go in.

They stayed out till online tutor signed in , Quran sessions for all 3,(this is seperate to their Al Qari work which is more for correct pronunciation and helping in Hifz).

guests leave, and we all have snack time and cuddle up to watch Patch Adams :http://www.patchadams.com/wonderful story! and very good for high lighting the meaness of people who perceive you as being 'odd', as the one who 'doesn't fit in'

Asr prayers together, and hubby took us to Ealing Common for the fun fair.Back home for prayers, quick snacks, duaas and bed

looking back at the day and trying to see this as 'curriculum' I would say
GARDENING: Nature-- identifying flower bulbs, weeds, dead roots, grasses, digging and weeding
ECONOMICS World Trade Wealth/poverty issues
ISLAMIC STUDIES-- sunnah of eating, keeping your prommises, paying the poor due, giving extra when Allah has blessed you with wealth
SCIENCE -- plants, light, water, chlorophly
MATHS -- collecting data, presenting on chart, measuring
ENGLISH-- writing in the Lion unit, reading and comprehension, spelling
QURAN-- Tajweed and meaning
LIFE SKILLS -- housework, helping others, keeping a tidy home,
COOKERY / HOME ECONOMICSI.T. - use of net as a research tool

Alhumdulilla

Home-educating a free-range, mixed-age brood

The ages of my children, in descending order, are 19, 18, 16, 6, and nearly 2. I home educate them all using the autonomous method, also known as unschooling. This article is about how that works.

So, obviously, I can’t spend all my time helping just one child to learn, or even all my time helping all my children to learn. I forgot to add that I’m a single mother, so there’s the house to run, meals to prepare, shopping to get and so on and I’m a writer too. We don’t all sit around the kitchen table pouring over or ploughing through coursework.

Is coursework the best kind of learning, anyway? This is the moot point. If you want to build a portfolio of educational certificates in order to help you find a job, then some coursework is necessary for that. But for actual learning – well, how do we really learn? How does that function work?

It usually starts with curiosity. Very young children are naturally extremely curious people. If allowed, they like to crawl or toddle around exploring, touching, tasting, listening and experimenting with their environment. If you watch a toddling child, you can actually see it carrying out experiments all the time: trying different things, seeing what the results are. Testing their ideas and learning from the results.

Most schools thwart this vital learning process by seeking to take control and direct it. The child stops experimenting, stops questioning. The best kind of educational provision allows exploration and encourage experimentation. Who are we to say what a child should learn? Curiosity is a fragile thing – if you override it, it switches off. Sometimes, permanently.

The best learning happens when we question things, when we burn to find answers and when we’re free to do both.

Let’s go back to the thing about portfolios and jobs. Is having a job the best way of earning money? For some people it might be, but for many it’s a soul-destroying way of life. Working for someone else, day in, day out, hoping for a promotion, seeing the bosses take all the profit. I know a lot of people who feel they could do a better job of running their company than the people in charge, but they daren’t branch out on their own because they’ve got a mortgage or rent and rent and debts to pay.

But imagine if, instead of school, you’d had a childhood full of natural learning in which you were free to find out what you were really good at and stick at it obsessively (we are naturally obsessive creatures) until you became an artisan. Imagine you never got used to a daily schedule, with measured portions of work but instead you liked to work non-stop on projects until you finished them and that you really enjoyed that work and could be well paid for it.

Imagine you had the confidence to intrinsically know when you were really good at something by virtue of the thousands of hours you’d been free to invest in it and from the peer group feedback you’d been free to elicit for yourself, when you felt ready to do so.

Then you wouldn’t need to go to an employer for a job to be able to pay your bills. You wouldn’t need your portfolio of certificates and you wouldn’t need to spend most of your time, until adulthood, in educational institutions learning what someone else decided you should learn, in the way they decided you should learn it. You would start your working life in credit, not in debt and you would fill your portfolio with examples of your success.

That’s not the outcome for all unschooled children, but it’s a likely alternative to the mainstream and of course, they’re not precluded from doing coursework or taking exams if that’s what they want to do.

My older three children haven’t pursued qualifications up to press. My older son (19) is gearing up to set up his own business, doing what he’s been so good at for so long: building, maintaining and repairing IT systems. His 18 year old brother is as yet undecided whether to join him in this, or to develop his work in translation and interpreting – languages being his thing.

They choose to spend most of their time learning and developing their skills and ideas. I don’t have to stand over them. Indeed, they wouldn’t thank me for doing so. All three of the older children have always been very independent learners. Over the years, I’ve provided tutors, books, equipment, transport and (when possible) funds for what they’ve wanted to do and I still do that.

I also provide a sounding board for their theories and – not to be underestimated – I stand as a protector of their freedom and space to live their own lives. I provide stability: the deep roots of a solid foundation from which they can safely grow in whatever direction and shape is best for them.

I’m the person they’re trying to explain their theories to, while I’m stirring a pan or cleaning a floor. Sometimes you can’t understand something properly until you’ve explained it to someone else. I’m the person they’re often brainstorming with while they’re trying to work out how to do something, or what to do for the best – though they use their siblings and friends for that too. I’m the person who says: “Yes, you can do that. I don’t see why you shouldn’t. Let’s work out how you could do it,” or sometimes just: “Let me know if you need help,” is enough.

They come and find me when they need me and I’m usually available to them, because I think older children – young adults – still need that kind of parental relationship. Perhaps we all do.

Our six year-old is learning all the time, but so is the baby too. In a natural, healthy environment, that’s what people do. But with the six year-old, it’s very definite, deliberate learning on her part. She says: “I want to learn this,” and she learns it, often with my help. She wants to learn to read and is making good progress in that respect. The reason she wants to learn is not because anyone has persuaded her that it’s a useful skill, but because she sees the rest of us benefiting from it and she struggles with the activities of her choice (computer games, websites, comics, maps) without it.

Like her older siblings, she comes to find me if she needs help with something or wants to share something, both of which happen frequently. Whenever possible I stop what I was doing and go to accede to her request. She doesn’t always need my help: sometimes one of her siblings is a better person for the job, or sometimes she’d rather play or work something out by herself.

The baby is free to roam around the house and, in good weather, the garden. I make the environment safe for her and there are many books and toys around. She often brings a story for me to read to her and I make it a priority to stop what I’m doing and to sit down with her and the book. How else will she want to be literate, if she doesn’t learn about the treasure and pleasure to be found in a book?

They both have free access to art equipment too, and computers, games and puzzles. Lyddie asks questions all the time, and isn’t scared to stop me when I’ve answered too much, or to challenge my replies. Nor am I scared to say: “I don’t know. Let’s go and find out,” to anything. I’m only her mother, not an oracle. But I do see it as my parental duty to help her find the answers she needs.

And that’s how we live here. Our days are free-flowing, not usually pre-planned. Each one is different; each hour is different. We do what we want and also what we need to do, to enable us to live the way we want to live. Home education frees us from structure and schedule, and from other people’s ideas about the way we’re supposed to do things and in our situation, this has had some very happy and healthy results for all concerned.

By Gill Kilner

http://gillkilner.blogspot.com/

Alphabet 'work'

One of the strangest things about autonomous learning, I’ve found, is the frequency with which children actually ask (beg, sometimes!) to do things that most of us autonomous home educators would steer well clear of - real ’schooly’ things. But then is the reason that they have never been put off schooly things because they’re done on their own terms - when and how they like, for as long or as little as they like? I think so, and I love the freedom of being able to say ‘ok, you don’t want to finish? that’s fine - do you want to finish it another time, or do you want me to finish it for you?’. There’s no pressure - it can just be fun.

A while ago our 5yo had been asking to make an alphabet frieze for sometime now - she doesn’t like having to ask things and was very into writing little notes and lists at the time but fed up of asking us, not only how to spell words, but also if we would write the letters for her to copy (she wasn’t confident enough to get the letters the right way round etc. yet). So she wanted something on the wall she could refer to whenever she wanted (we already had a number line used for similar purposes and made in a similar way!). Our 3.5yo hadn’t outright said she wanted to learn her letters, but seemed to be very interested in letters at the time and has always loved projects with a passion. So we made this:

I printed all the letters out off the computer for them to colour in and cut out (they both were very into cutting and colouring at the time) and then my cousin (who was staying with us) drew them pictures requested by them that began with the letters they were in charge of colouring in. So our 5yo did the posters with ABC, JKL, STU and VWX, each time thinking up pictures that she wanted drawn for her letters. Our 3.5yo did DEF, GHI, MNO, PQR and YZ and chose from a selection of pictures that her big sister had thought up for her. Our 5yo wasn’t interested in doing any writing for under the pictures, but our 3.5yo wanted to so I wrote them for her to copy and she did an incredible job! You might be able to just about read her ’pig’ and ‘queen’ but she also had a go at ‘mouse’ and ‘net’.

Our 5yo, our little butterfly, didn’t have the stamina to do much of it, and only did one poster per session (it took about three sessions, but my cousin and I kept saying we were happy to finish it for them if they got tired) whereas our 3.5yo, our attention span queen, did two and then only stopped because her big sister had started doing something that interested her more! Our 3.5yo was disappointed when it was all finished and wanted to do another one, but we’d run out of wall space so her Grandma suggested she make a poster with her name on it and lots of other things that start with A:

She seemed, at the time, to see ‘A’ as her name, so I was keen on the poster idea to help her realise that there’s more to her name than just ‘A’ and also that there are other words that start with ‘her letter’. I knew she would work this out anyway, given time, but she wanted to do the poster, so we did it! Obviously she could have done it anyway, even if there had been no tangible 'educational benefit' to it. She also, as you can see, had a go at writing some of the words herself and has done a fantastic job :-)

This still wasn’t enough for her though, so she then started working on an alphabet book, along the same lines as the frieze and coloured all the pictures and the letters before she ran out of steam. She’d made books like this before and will spend, quite literally, hours on them at a time. Our 5yo isn’t really a project person so it makes for a pleasant change to work with a child who learns in such a different way.

In the couple of weeks after making the frieze, our 5yo spent a lot of time looking at the frieze and then persuading us all to sing the ABC song with her - she obviously knows it very well, but our 3.5yo doesn’t so automatically got a lot of practice at the names of the letters and the order they come in. All on their terms, in their own time, in their own way, when they want and for as long or as little as they want. And most people in our culture don’t believe children will learn anything if they’re not taught it - pah!

It's all about the spin...

Monster and Teeny (who aren’t really called that!) are an 8 year old boy and a 6 year old girl who have never been to school or nursery and are autonomously home educating themselves and us too! This is a blogpost I wrote back in 2007 on our sometimes neglected home ed blog which can be found at www.monsterteeny.blogsome.com .

It’s all about the spin…

But then I guess you already knew that. In much the same way as politicians use spin to tell us what we want to hear, spin is used to sell you things you don’t actually want or need. I think one of the areas that spin is used the most is Education. And I utterly include Home Education in that sentence. I regularly use spin to convince people of the benefits of Home Education - it’s not that I don’t think what I am saying is true, or that I am trying to market Home Education to people particularly but a bit of spin does allow us to get on with what we want to do, how we want to do it while reassuring people enough that we are not members of some weird cult or abusing our children and glossing over some of the less traditional ideas we have.


We’re not known to the LEA and I would defend to great lengths our right to remain unknown, after that our right to educate Monster and Teeny in the way we see fit without visits to our home, meetings with the children, presentations or ‘proof’ of our educational provision. However, if I had to do it I know I could. I know I could fairly easily convince an LEA bod that we ticked all of their boxes and then some. I could spin what Monster and Teeny spend one morning a week doing, without any intervention or guidance from me, into encompassing every area of the National Curriculum. Yes, ladies and gentlemen without the aid of a single workbook, curriculum, lapbook or even time spent sitting round a table, let alone a safety net I could fit what we do into boxes, label it, colour code it, timetable-er-ize it and present it, neatly packaged into bite sized gift wrapped chunks of spin, satisfying anyone that we were providing that all important age, aptitude and ability appropriate education.


Long, long ago when I was still full of questions about Home Education worked, full of doubts about how I would possibly cover every ’subject’ let alone deal with issues like pythagorus someone gave me an example of how they spent their morning:


"We decide to do some baking so we get out a recipe book and read the ingredients list, writing down our shopping list of items we need to buy. We walk to the local shop where we purchase the items on our list, having added up the total and worked out what change we will get. We stopped at the park on the way home for a play on the slide and swings to run off some energy playing with some other children we met there.


Once home we weighed out out the ingredients, followed the recipe and baked our cake. When it had cooled we iced and decorated it."


In just that brief exercise you have your literacy (reading, writing) numeracy (weighing out, paying) physical exercise (walking and playing in the park) socialisation (with other children in the park) science (baking - adding ingredients together to change form, adding heat from the oven to cook) and art (cake decoration). Add in all the conversations you’ll no doubt have along the way, maybe some observation about the weather, the wildlife you might happen across in the park, some discussion and negotiation about what recipe to use for your cake, what colour to ice it, some long words chucking in educational terms and a sprinkling of photographs of children doing the writing, baking, running in the park, icing the cake and there you have a near perfect example of activities that meet all the criteria of even the most picky of inspectors.


Even with our autonomous approach if I wanted to I could easily pick out examples of everything the children do which meet the ’standards’ required. This despite the fact everything they do is at their own volition with me occassionally suggesting or offering or introducing ideas and activities. I could spin so many of the things we do into ‘projects’ or ’studies’ along with supplying huge photographic evidence, reading lists of the many books we have, art inspired by it, supplemented with the many and varied conversations we have - a perfect example of this recently would be our chick hatching. Which has spawned all sorts of activities, knowledge about bird life cycles and development, chick inspired art, plenty of practical animal caring and rearing experience, learning about their needs, alternative ways in which chicks are reared and treated. Monster narrated a piece to go in our local HE newsletter about the chicks hatching and between them they came up with the idea of a competition to name our fifth chick which they judged and picked a winner for. In very traditional ‘which came first?’ mode clearly if we’d not introduced the eggs and the incubator into the house this would never have come about but that was all we did - all of the ensuing developments from the chicks hatching to the various inspired activities the children have done since happened without our direction or interferance. But if I needed to I could rewrite that to perfectly document our chicken and egg insprired curriculum for the Summer Term at MonsterTeeny Home School and present it with lesson plans, timetabled schedules of what we did when and have it all look very contrived and successful.


Whenever I talk to people about Home Education, which is pretty darn regularly, they start off with all sorts of concerns / questions / issues. Gradually by way of calm, contained utter belief in what we’re doing I am able to answer all of those questions. Yes, we socialise, yes the children are learning, they are happy, healthy, inquisitive, intelligent, articulate little people with passions, interests, plenty to talk about, excellent communication skills and questioning, challenging minds, we are providing them with an education - depending on how I choose to spin it which at will certainly not fall short of what they would receive in school, with the right spin I can demonstrate that we cover every topics taught in school, just in baking that cake and walking to the park. What I find myself frequently left with as the last resort question is ‘wouldn’t it be easier for you if they were in school?’ because once you remove the potential damage to the children either educationally or socially that is about all you are left with. Clearly I have my days when the idea of waving them off with a lunchbox for seven hours at 9am would be really quite attractive, but I know I’d be missing them dreadfully by about 9.30am. One of the best things about Home Education for me has been doing all the great stuff I’d have loved to have done as a child but couldn’t because I was in school. Keeping tadpoles, hatching chicks, going to Legoland during term time when you don’t queue for one hour for every ride but instead can manage 6 rides in one hour, walking through the same woods once a week watching the seasons change, sitting on the beach during a surprise hot spell in April, splashing in the puddles during a surprise wet spell in May, spending an entire afternoon making animated plasticine figures, curling up with bowls of popcorn and watching 4 films back to back, driving a 300 miles round trip to attend a birthday party for an afternoon. I’ve never been so free, I’ve never had so much fun - this to me is what childhood should be about and I am just so lucky to be getting to have another go at it as a grown up and spending it with the amazing, fascinating, interesting, wonderful people on the journey with me still enjoying their first crack at childhood. And with a little bit of creativity it is possible to make all this fit into the little boxes we are required to fit it into. Result