Unschooling

Homeschooling has been on my mind as Raccoon gets closer and closer to 4 years old. I found a series called I can't homeschool because... with a variety of reasons/excuses. My two objections, which weren't on the list, would be:
1) My son will miss the other kids.
2) My son doesn't enjoy following my lead.

For number one, we could probably find enough social activities, one way or another. And for number two... unschooling, or child-led learning. This seems to tend towards unit studies and deep investigation into the child's area(s) of interest. For a really great collection of blog posts about unschooling, go here. My favorite one is Laughing at Chaos' concept of StealthSchooling:

"See, he resists being taught something he thinks he already knows, but if he doesn’t already know what is being taught he thinks it’s too hard and shuts down. If I try to teach him, he is not in charge, and thus also shuts down...

So I find us somewhere between school-at-home homeschooling and full unschooling. I call it StealthSchooling; I wish to hell I could Trademark that. I quietly sneak in information in the form of documentaries, books, games, and iPad apps. Just enough pre-learning that he thinks he knows the topic. Then when he actually gets to the topic, he knows just enough to take off running."

I find unschooling appealing because honestly, I get bored with things too. I found this out while we were doing tot school. Only activities with a certain amount of complexity appeal to me to even try to teach to Raccoon. If he's interested, he just gets things. If not, then there's just no way I've found to turn that light on. When he's ready, he goes by leaps and bounds. He doesn't know the alphabet yet, but he knows the difference between an arachnid, a mammal, and an insect. He knows a bunch of snake names and that venomous and poisonous mean the same thing. When he feels like he needs to know the ABCs, he'll just do it.

This fall I might even have a play/school room in our new house in the States. Gasp! My mind is spinning with possibilities already. Home-un-something schooling, here we come!

Alphabet Book

As I've mentioned before, my mom is a preschool teacher, and an awesome one at that. I don't say this just because she's my mom, I know because I've seen her creativity and dedication firsthand. She is designing her own curriculum for her 3 year old class, part of which is an alphabet book. She's seen my blog (we live far, far away, boo hoo), so she sent me the pages to do with Raccoon.

We did A before Robin came, and since then we have done B, C, and D. This is the extent of our Tot School for now, but it makes us both happy to be doing a little bit. I love it because my mom did all the prep so I just have to pull out whichever page is next and the supplies are all right there. Thanks, Mom!

(Note: We don't always put the pages together with the same materials she's used, her class does a variety of things, we mostly just paint each page.)

 

Aa is for Apple, juicy and sweet.

Aa is for Always, always be kind.

(Look at those curls, sniff sniff.

An unfortunate barber cut them all off when all I wanted was a trim.)

Bb is for Brown Bear, Boots on his feet.

Bb is for Beginning. "In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

 

 

When Raccoon saw his baby pictures after Robin was born, he asked, "Where's my big brother?" I told him that he doesn't have one, so he chose this red dog to be his "big brother."

 

 

Cc is for Cave where I like to hide.

Cc is for Created. God created me.



 

 

Daddy Tot School

For the last month, my husband has been spending A LOT of time with Raccoon. He took some time off work to be home after Robin's arrival; he's my hero. To my surprise, Raccoon ended up asking him frequently to make things, cut, glue, etc. My little man missed our Tot School activities more than I thought he would. I didn't get pictures of most of their stuff since I was with Robin, but here are a few.

 

Reading with Daddy

 

 

Daddy drew and cut, Raccoon glued. He's still obsessed with monsters!


 

We're Back!

Little by little, Raccoon and I will be starting up some Tot School activities again. This morning we worked on the letter C from my mom's preschool alphabet book. It felt good to be active again. The last few weeks Raccoon has spent most of his play time dressing up in his various costumes.

 

Builder

 

 

I came across a bag of animal masks that my mom sent us awhile ago.

Raccoon enjoyed trying them all on and running to see himself in our living room mirror.

 

 

Knight and ninja are his all-time favorite costumes. He got some new knight armor for Christmas since the cardboard set I made him is wearing out from so much use. If anyone knows where I could get real metal armor made for a child, Raccoon would love it!

Robin's first dress-up with big brother - Spiderman and an elf. This smile for the camera is a huge success for Raccoon since he still often runs the other way.

Robin is three weeks old and doing her own early learning program (How Smart Is Your Baby: Develop and Nurture Your Newborn's Full Potential). Right now this consists of stimulating her different reflexes and a series of passive movements. She still spends more time asleep than awake (miracle of miracles!!!) so we're off to a slow start with her as well, which is just fine.

Baby Break

Celosia School is officially on a baby break for an unknown period of time. I'll hopefully still be updating my home blog so come on over and check it if you'd like some news. Baby Robin is due any day now, then we have a country move coming up in June, and possibly starting homeschool pre-k in the fall.

I have done part of the Doman program with my first daughter, SB, and with Raccoon. I may be doing some of the activities with Robin as well, we'll see how it goes. If so, I may switch to posting about that for awhile since I don't anticipate doing many Tot School things with Raccoon in the upcoming months.

The January Plan

I wish I could say that December was full of holiday fun, but the reality is that all three of us were sick for most of it. On top of several different colds, Raccoon also had multiple allergy outbreaks which make him crankier and more sleepless than usual. The most I can say about last month is that we survived and are all still here.

Just this week things are finally feeling manageable again, but now we are only a couple of weeks away from the arrival of baby Robin. Because of this, my plan is to keep Tot School very simple this month. My mom sent me materials for an alphabet book (Aa is for apple, "always be kind"), so I want to work on that with Raccoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the evenings, I would like to start reading to him from a chapter book (I got the idea from Learners in Bloom). I haven't been feeling very well this week, so one of my sister-in-laws is going to start coming over twice a week with her 4 year old son to help me out. I hope to have the two boys do things together whenever I feel up to it.

At random times during the last month, Raccoon would decide that he wanted to cut or draw. One day, he drew the picture on the left. The next day he drew the one on the right. I've mentioned being concerned about his fine motor skills before, mostly due to his lack of interest. I was very surprised to see so much improvement in his control and design from one day to the next. Way to go, Raccoon!

 

MTR - December 2012

This month's "moments to remember" are all about Christmas and family.

Unwrapping my mom's ceramic creche figures was always my favorite part of decorating for Christmas. My brother and I used to fight take turns rearranging the figures whenever we walked by. The was the first year that Raccoon could actually help me and he enjoyed the unwrapping too.

When we went to buy our tree, Raccoon fell in love with a mini tree. It was only $2, so we went ahead and bought it for him. He was so proud of himself, carrying it to our truck and then decorating it once we got home.

After we decorated Raccoon's small tree, he helped me unwrap the ornaments for our big tree.

We bought Raccoon one big gift last year for Christmas - a trampoline - instead of several smaller things. We had to put it away for a bit and just got it back out. He has LOVED jumping on it again.

 

 

 

 

(I posted this post-baby. There were many more pictures that I didn't have time to put in, but I wanted to at least do some.)