Yesterday I went to another homeschooling meeting…I was ready for it to be as usual but I wanted to go because it was being held at my good friends house and I wanted to see her and her new baby and the boys wanted to go play with her girls…
It turned out to be just a nice get together which was pretty nice… One of the girls is moving so it was kind of like a mini goodbye party and a little welcome party for the new baby… (who is so cute!!)
I still feel like the oddball there though… besides getting looked at and talked at like I was crazy because my kids went outside in socks without shoes and they might get dirty or wet *gasp* … I got the feeling that some of them pretty much think that we don’t do anything because we don’t sit and “do school”….
because we don’t have a little classroom set up… because we don’t have any curriculum that we follow… because we don’t have a set amount of time for each subject and because I don’t even care that the boys might not be interested in some things yet or that there are things that they might not learn at the expected age…
When we talked at one point about baking bread I also got a comment about how much free time I have because we don’t do anything because I am not “teaching”…
It is really hard for a traditional homeschooler to understand unschooling I guess…
There is a lot of ground between doing school at home and forcing kids to learn on schedule and doing anything at all and ignoring a child’s education.
I spend a lot of my day answering questions, finding information about things I don’t know the answers to myself… there is so much to learn without being forced…and as an aide to my children’s learning I need to have and find the answers until they are ready to be able to find the information on their own…
Not sitting down and doing school curriculum doesn’t mean that we never do anything and learn.Not having to prepare for the next lesson doesn’t mean that I never research and prepare my answers… it might not be as formal but it is a lot of work and time because the questions range so much…
The good things that came out of yesterday though was that I got to spend time with my friend before everyone got there and then for a few hours after they left… I got to cuddle a new little baby… I got to talk with some really nice people though we might not see eye to eye on some/many things… The kids got to play with some friends and outside on their great property..
and another cool thing is that the same person that assumed that we don’t do anything did mention something that she is going to be starting soon with her kids that was overheard by Xavier and peaked his interest…
so we have a little project in midst…
I suppose it’s good that you get to be with other moms and connect a bit but man, I would find it hard to spend so much time trying to explain our intentions as much as you did.
The longer I spend in a classroom as a teacher, the more I see the benefit of homeschooling. The longer I spend teaching children things they really are not ready to learn, or do not want to learn, but I have to cover them because they are part of the curriculum, the more I see the benefit of unschooling.
I think you’re absolutely amazing!