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Our Unschooling Experiment: The Result
We finished out a full month of our unschooling experiment. I admit, it was a little tough for me to let go of my plans! So many times I wanted to sneak my own agenda back in there (and a few times I did, if we’re being honest). But I kept reading unschooling blogs, following unschooling families on instagram, and trying REALLY hard to fully embrace both the method and the philosophy. It was a fascinating experiment. It worked in ways I never would have predicted. Letting my children take the lead in their educations helped me understand them and what makes them tick so much more. I have a…
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Our “Unschooling” Experiment
I mentioned last time that we are dipping our toes into the world of unschooling. That led to a couple of interesting conversations, and was a bit of a surprise to some who saw Facebook posts of us beginning our semester as normal just a few weeks ago! The truth is that our fall semester of homeschooling was difficult, to put it mildly. It was so bad that I desperately wanted to put the kids in public school in January. That didn’t happen though, and I finally accepted that we were still doing this homeschooling thing. I hoped that simply being settled in a home with all of our school supplies…
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Homeschool Review: Herb Fairies
One of the areas of our homeschool that I’ve been working to improve is our nature studies. I love Charlotte Mason’s emphasis on nature study, but frankly had no idea how to implement it at first! When we began homeschooling, we were living in a subdivision with a tiny yard. Our curriculum scheduled a weekly nature walk, but didn’t give much guidance. I’ve always loved camping and hiking, but honestly didn’t know much about the natural world around me. I couldn’t identify birds other than the most obvious ones, I didn’t know any plants other than what I grew on my patio. I was so inspired by the homeschoolers on…
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May Updates: Closing our School year, Disasters on the Farm, and Big Changes
2018 is not our year. I try to keep the negative talk to a minimum, but seriously, 2018 has been one long string of disasters. If I were superstitious I would be throwing salt over my shoulder, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do to break a string of bad luck, ha! From expensive car repairs x3, to my son’s freak accident (which broke his femur and landed him in the hospital for emergency surgery), to the crazy fire in our oven’s control panel (leaving us without a stove/oven until the new one is delivered in JULY), it has been one rough year! Our tractor is broken down, our…
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Wrapping up: Japan, Russia, Australia, and Antarctica with MFW ECC
Today, I packed away my ECC teacher’s manual and textbooks. We aren’t quite on summer break yet, but we’ve completed everything we are going to complete of ECC and it was time to pack it away. Here’s a quick review of our last few units and some end of the year thoughts. JAPAN Japan was a fun unit for us! We enjoyed experimenting with origami (but we are all terrible at it). We loved our Japanese picture book, The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks. We ate seaweed for a snack, went out for a sushi dinner, and had a really enjoyable two weeks! The Vernal Equinox took place during our Japan…
