loving unschooling

I thought I would post about our past few days because they struck my as a good example of unschooling.

I have been feeling so energized by my decision to unschool lately and so thrilled to have discovered this amazing path. One of the many reasons i love unschooling is that I really enjoy lesson planning! One of my strengths as a teacher in the classroom was this passion of mine. I thrive on the research involved, organizing my ideas, and preparing for the lesson. The cool thing about doing this for my kids is that they have the option whether to participate, choose the day and time they want to do it, we can discontinue the project and move on to something else or perhaps delve even deeper into it if we want to, and they will not be evaluated in any way.

actually, i am getting ahead of myself here because the few days i want to write about now involve "lessons" the boys planned mostly themselves, and I might add their plans were just as multifaceted as the ones we were encouraged to create in my grad school program--of course, they were! Matt and I just followed their lead and became their facilitators. I will discuss my own few days of lesson planning in my next post!

What started our "unit" on fires was the fire that burned a lot of land and even some homes in North Boulder last week. We mentioned the fires to the boys on Thursday morning and from the minute we did, they were off and running with questions (see "your four year old: wild and wonderful"--4 year olds are often intrigued with fire and oh how true that is for liam and patrick!) On Thursday morning, Matt took them to see the fire that was still burning. Wow! They were so fascinated. They came home to tell me how many firefighters worked on the blaze, how they worked over night, how the fire started, what damage the fire did, etc. They were brimming with facts. Next, Matt decided to read them some articles from the Boulder Daily Camera online, and they also found a few videos of the fire on the site. They watched those short videos countless times and asked lots of questions, and then proceeded to show me the videos and explain them to me in detail. On Friday, Matt and the boys visited the library where they picked up about 15 books on fires and firefighting. They had a wonderful afternoon reading them and we have been reading them often since. That same morning they also dressed up as firefighters--fire rainboots, 2 pairs of pants each so that they were doubly protected, winter coats, fire hat, gloves tucked inside their coats so their hands would not burn and went outside to play firefighter for an hour or so. They have been wearing the boots the past few days and both plan on being firefighters on the same "team" when they grow up. this week, we plan on a visit to a firehouse to learn more.

I think the above example demonstrates just how fun and easy unschooling can be. Most of us facilitate our children in this way anyway. As an unschooling parent, I want to be really in tune with my kids and their interests and let them lead the way.