Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Minimal Schooling

As an update, I can report that our homeschooling efforts have taken the following form:

Older Daughter has a package of homework that was sent with her by Friends Omphalos. She does the work just as grudgingly and last-minute as she would have done at home.

I have walked Younger Daughter through a few pages of Singapore Math, and all of us have at different times helped her read a few of her leveled readers.

Every day we spend on our travels I find myself becoming more of an unschooler. The most mundane of our activities here -- for instance, biking around the small city where we now live, which we've been doing a lot -- seems so much more valuable than most of what the kids did at school.

3 comments:

  1. Keep those updates coming, FedUpMom. We're living vicariously through you.

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  2. PsychMom adds:

    We just had a three day weekend here in Canada, and just being free for three days was noticably different, at least psychologically for me..routines are mindnumbing spirit killers sometimes.

    On Tuesday morning, daughter stuffed the untouched math work sheet back into her backpack, mumbling, "I forgot completely about it. It's due today." It was another brilliant exercise of drawing and colouring esoteric ideas.

    FedUpMom, you are an inspiration..happy trip.

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  3. Cynthia says:

    Are you familiar with TJed? I'm just getting into it, but it basically boils down to the idea that there are phases of childhood (imagine that) and that kids in a good, rich environment, with a rhythm of family life, will move through the phases, ultimately willing to put in whatever time it takes to get to their own goals. Great philosophy.

    http://www.tjed.org/

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