Is It Naptime Yet

Yesterday was a fun filled day. A very fun filled day in very hot weather.

We dropped off cinnamon rolls, returned something to JoAnn’s, had lunch with Anna and met up with a local unschooling group.

It was so hot outside.

The unschooling group met up at a local park to have fun and do the mentos experiment.
I felt a little odd at first. There was a woman with dreadlocks, a vegan and what appeared to be another very health conscious organic mom.

Even though the yahoo group description said they accepted everyone, I was worried that I might be too normal and not eccentric enough to fit in.

Plus all the kids seemed to be mostly boys and  at least seven years old and older.

They pointed me to another mom who had young kids later after I was there. Julia is her name, she has a five year old son and a 16 month old daughter. She also appeared to be more average, or not eccentric. We chatted a little and she lives on my side of town. She also had a homeschooling group that is dissolving so she was wanting to find another group for her son to hang out with.

We chatted a little then it was time for the mentos experiment. The girls liked it and the other kids had lots of fun too.

This is when I was really able to chat with all the moms. They were really nice and very open minded. They said I was the anomaly to have a husband supporting homeschooling, let alone the unschooling technique.

Side note: Unschooling is the least formal type of homeschooling. You basically live life and let your children learn all they want about a subject. It’s motivated by what the child wants to learn and not by what you want to teach them.  You can find definitions for different homeschooling techniques here.

It seems that most of the fathers worried about whether their children were actually learning enough. So telling them about Jon and his support, really homeschooling is the only option in his mind, made them like him before they’ve ever met him.

We also discussed Montessori schools in the valley. One of the mom’s, Rachel was her name I believe, two children have decided they wanted to go to school so they researched and Montessori is they path they’ve decided. It was interesting because Darlene, another mom mentioned how unschooling is about letting your child make the decisions and letting them go to school if they desire is also apart of unschooling.

Our differences seemed less as I got to know them and discuss.

I met only a handful of the group, but it was still fun. I do worry that Lilah may never formally interact too much with kids since they’re all just at the park playing and doing their own thing, but hopefully over time she’ll recognize the families and get to know the children better.

When I joined the yahoo group I mentioned my concern for how to teach Lilah reading and writing. Reading is a part of life, but writing, that takes practice so it’s not something you can just learn through life, I guess you can try to write letters to people or something.
The facilitator of the group mentioned how I could discuss that at the activities and get input from other moms. She also mentioned once she let go of the idea of having her son be the smartest five year old homeschooling got a lot easier. (Compared to fighting one another on what to learn and not having fun. )

So, I’m going to try to let go and let Lilah learn. I will still have some more traditional techniques, but she doesn’t need to be the smartest five year old. I know she won’t be learning the same things as as her peers in school but I know she’ll be learning, growing and having fun along the way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 9:54 am and is filed under fun, homeschooling, Kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.