Unschooling – Page 9 – a hippie with a minivan

AQED/QAHBE Symposium 2009

Yesterday was the AQED/QAHBE (Quebec Association for Home-Based Education) Symposium…

I had avoided going the last years because there was not much that interested me in the presentations that were offered, but this year I decided to take a chance and go. I am happy that I did so…

We left in the morning at about 6am and got there at about 7:15 and we were in the first arrivals… there was an intro and then the presentations started…

The first I went to was called “Eco-Education” and was basically about the language around homeschooling and about how the word “homeschooling” misrepresents the act by giving the impression that it is “school at home” when it is so much more (or even not close at all to that model in the case of unschooling). The words of “Eco-Education” in this situation doesn’t take on the meaning of ecological (though they can be intertwined) but takes on the meaning of “eco” as representing our “habitat”… our environment etc…

The second one was on “unschooling”… lol… I actually ended up taking a bit and I am glad I did… I had mentioned when I presented myself that I was an unschooler and that I was there to mingle with other unschoolers… and soon after we left the room I was aproached by a woman who presented herself and her partner and we ended up talking for an hour or two about unschooling and eating lunch together… it was really great to meet them and I hope that we can keep in touch because they were great people whom I would love to know more… Sadly they live far away but I hope that there will be other ways to keep in touch…

I also met a cool homeschooling mama that came all the way from NB to meet other French homeschoolers…

After lunch there was a seminar but I ended up ditching it and talking with another couple that are in the other homeschooling group that I go to at times and we ended up talking for another hour about unschooling and kids and family life etc…

It was really refreshing to be around so many like-minded people…

In the afternoon I went to two other presentations…

One was on Waldorf and I kind of regret going to that one… though I went to a walforf school when I was young, I did not see it at all in the same way as was described…

The last one was on a theory called Parent-Guide, Parent-Complice, which turned out to be a really cool presentation about parenting… many of the things presented in the book reminds me about a little bit of “Hold onto your kids” mixed in with “Playful Parenting” with a little bit of “NVC” thrown in… among other ideas that seemed pretty interesting…

After, I met with my friends and we headed out for supper and we had a great time eating and sharing before finally heading home at about 9pm…

Anyway… I am really happy to have been there and I had a lot of fun and I am honestly looking forward to next year…

Electrium…

Yesterday , the boys and I headed to the Electrium...

The Electrium is in Ste-Julie on the south shore of Montreal and is a place run by Hydro-Quebec to learn all about electricity…

The tour starts out with a few minute long films that were fun and held all of the kids attentions…

then they learned about safety,

then electricity/magnetism in Nature with electric eels and other fish, the human body, static electricity, power and circuitry…

It was really quite informative and most of all it was a lot of fun…

The boys loved it especially because everything can be touched and tried…

Xavier learning about how a circuit works….

This of course was a big hit…

But I think that this was Colin’s favourite part… the guy who was showing the tour let him go up even though he was a bit small… he told Colin not to take his hand of the ball and Colin listened so well that it was hard for him to hear when it was safe to do so… he just stayed so still and didn’t move…

If you are near or in Montreal the Electrium is on the south shore not too far away from the Island. It is free and though it is not a big place it is a lot of fun and even for little kids…

Drawing…

Colin has been spending hours upon hours drawing… he will grab a stack of paper and then sit at the table and just go… he can literally spend his day drawing…

I guess for some this isn’t a big deal… but Xavier doesn’t sit down to draw more than once every few weeks…. so this is new to me…

In the last weeks his scale has changed, what was once one or two Star Wars Characters on a piece of paper has become full stories with all different characters, monsters, spiders, animals etc…. The details have changed greatly also… I love to sit and watch him draw and I love seeing where his imagination takes him….

I thought I would share this too… this is our kitchen wall next to where the table is and is often the first thing people notice when they come over… I love displaying things this way!

New books…

We have a lot of books in our home, neither Xavier or Colin bring them out on a regular basis… we need to make some trips to Montreal more often and go to the library there because our local library just doesn’t cut it… there are no English books at all… it sucks because we could walk there…

Their interests are changing of course, and because they know our books, and the topics are not what are interesting them at the moment, books have just been collecting dust (except for a few of Simon’s that the boys love)… so a bit more than a week ago I asked the boys to each choose a book online… something that they would really like to read or look at…

Colin choose the “Star Wars Complete Visual Dictionary”

which is an amazing book that shows each character in full colour… there is so much detail on each page but it is not overwhelming… great book!

Xavier has been playing Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter nights and has been interested in learning more about the game of Dungeons & Dragons and has been looking through Simon’s old Monster manual for a while now… so he got “Monster Manual: A 4th Edition Core Rulebook”

He was a bit disappointed that some of the monsters that he likes got cut out of the book but that doesn’t stop him from loving it and looking at it often…

Though they were a bit on the more pricey side then I usually would buy, I love the choices that they made because I know that these books will grow with them for a long time…

And the greatest part was that they were so excited to get their books and when they came they were so enthralled with them that they spent the day just looking at them…

(I put this post up about an hour ago but I have to add this.. a few min ago)

unschooling… doing nothing?

When I wrote the definition of unschooling a few weeks ago I handed it out at the local homeschooling meeting in hope that the philosophy around it would be a bit more understood… I found out yesterday though that it really wasn’t…

I agree that to the outsider, unschooling doesn’t look like the parent is doing much… you are not technically sitting and teaching a few hours a day… you might not have as many ways to “show” what your kids are learning because there is no curriculum, no workbooks or tests…but unschooling is not about “doing nothing”… you are always answering questions and researching things… you need to be attentive to their interests and provide them with experiences…

I felt really felt disillusioned yesterday at the homeschooling meeting when I realized that my efforts to explain unschooling in the attempt to create a connection regardless of our differences had caused maybe even more confusion… some parents were talking and saying that they agree with unschooling because they do it also when they are not doing school work… (like in the afternoons.. on weekends or in the summer on school break) basically saying that when they are done “teaching” the kids what they “need” to know… then they are free to “unschool” (with limits of course)…and in the context and way they said it, it was like unschooling is what happens when the parent is doing nothing to actively teach their kids… they also made clear that most kids cannot be unschooled because they just “wouldn’t do anything’ and would never be able to learn without being taught…

The thing is… Unschooling is not just about not doing schoolwork…. it is about looking, and seeing, learning and education, in a different way… it is about having confidence that all kids start with the love of learning and if nurtured, they will always learn what they need to learn when they are ready and interested to do so…

When you see that, you no longer see the need to actively teach math and grammar because you know that they will learn it when they see the necessity in learning within everyday life experiences… you don’t teach the alphabet or colours or make sure that they know where their nose is… you can even see that doing so can be detrimental and destroy the love of learning…

Free time after sitting and being taught for a few hours is not “unschooling’… and neither is summer vacation… just because you decide on stopping school work for the day… or even a month or two and the kids keep on being interested in things it doesn’t mean that you are unschooling… it just means that kids are being kids… but it could be unschooling if you continue letting them do that all of the time and gave them encouragement follow their natural interests of what they want when they need to…

To be honest, the rest of night I was much quieter than usual and was wondering what I was doing there… the experience left me feeling really withdrawn and indifferent… I feel that each time I have made an effort I have felt pushed away.