Here in the Bonny Glen

Radical Unschooling, Unschooling, Tidal Homeschooling, and the Wearing of Shoes that Fit

This is part of a (much) longer response to the comments on my "Lovely, Lovely Low Tide" post. I thought this part of my comment was relevant to the ongoing discussion here:

I am certainly not perfect and I try show my warts and all on this blog. I am constantly pondering and working with questions, and I wonder sometimes if that makes me seem inconsistent, like people must be wondering if I'm ever going to pick a lane! I am comfortable, though, with who I am (my favorite John Paul II quote was, "Families, be who you are!"), and who I am is someone who likes to mull over a wide range of ideas and see what WORKS. For me, for us, for my kids, my husband, in our unique and ever-changing situation.

I sometimes do feel an urge to "belong" to one school of thought or another, to find that label that fits me perfectly. As I said in my original Tidal Learning post, I couldn't find the label, so I made one up. It's useful mainly as a way of answering people's questions when I meet a new homeschooler.

I have written elsewhere about how some part of me seems to stick out of every niche I enjoy visiting (and that is probably true for most people). I'm a pro-life Democrat, for Pete's sake! Sort of. Ha!—I don't even fit THAT label across the board.

But still there is that desire to find the perfect label. There are times I read Charlotte Mason and think: She makes so much sense! I want to be a whole-hog CMer! And other times when I read Sandra Dodd and think YES, I grok that, I'm an unschooler! But the reality is, I have places where my understanding doesn't completely line up with either CM *or* radical unschooling. And that's fine. I can still learn from both schools (unschools?) of thought, and identify with aspects of each.

One area I'm keenly interested in is the balance between a rich unschooling environment (the kind of environment & relationships Sandra describes so vividly in her book and site) and the logistical challenges of raising a big family, especially with my special-needs son. When you've got big kids and babies in the same house, all with their own (sometimes conflicting) needs, you're probably going to have to make compromises somewhere. Tia, that's the issue you seemed to be exploring in your post on Always Learning—-how your need for a clean, uncluttered space seems to you a valid need that benefits the whole family, and how you feel able to maintain that without shortchanging your children of your time or attention. It seems like a good question to explore, but is perhaps a bit out of context on that particular list. And I saw that the reactions of experienced radical unschoolers there were coming out of a sense of concern that your vision of it being possible to maintain a tidy home while unschooling might make newbies feel like failures if they can't pull that off.

Probably some of the friction comes in the different definitions people have of unschooling. I try to consistently use "radical unschooling" when describing the lifestyle Sandra speaks of, which incorporates an approach to parenting that believes kids grow up happier and nicer if there aren't constant conflicts with parents over chores, TV, and so forth; and that the way to avoid that kind of tension is to relax control in those and other areas.

While I find much to learn from in that vision of parenting, I cannot say it totally lines up with mine. I'm completely on board with "say yes as often as possible"—but I also see myself as the leader of this crew of kids and am comfortable with the notion of parents being in authority over their children. I don't see authority as a bad thing or necessarily meaning there will be friction and discontented children.

But I digress. I was saying that as I understand it, "radical unschooling" has a specific meaning, and some discussions are not going to be relevant in a radical unschooling context.

Just plain "unschooling" is a tricky term, because to some it means radical unschooling, and to others it means "kids growing up without 'doing school' either in a schoolhouse or at home"—without necessarily applying to *parenting* style. You'll find, then, families who consider themselves unschoolers but where the parents have an authoritative (not the same as *authoritarian*, and I credit Jeanne Faulconer for writing a post years ago that first made that distinction clear to me) parenting style. That probably best describes how Scott and I are raising our kids. So while I have great respect for people like Sandra who have, by all accounts, raised some fabulous, considerate, compassionate, respectful, nice kids according to the parenting principles that accompany radical unschooling, I'm coming from another perspective, one informed by my Catholicism (the only label that truly fits me across the board), my experience, my husband's viewpoints, and the temperaments and needs of our specific children.

So yes, I think you can be both an authoritative parent and an unschooler, and there are unschooling discussion lists where it might be interesting to have that discussion, but I would naturally expect the experienced & happy radical unschoolers to speak up with strong arguments from their perspective. And if they all disagreed with my opinion, I'd have to say, well, I went to the vegetarian banquet looking for hamburger recipes!

Still, I love to hear the RU perspective, with its emphasis on JOY. Joyful parent/child relationships, joyful person/learning relationships, peace and delight and harmony in the home and with the world. It's a refreshing vision—invigorating, I think is the word I used in my Low Tide post. Sandra's work truly refreshes and empowers me, and I would hate to discourage anyone from encountering it, even if I'm not a radical unschooler myself.

One insight I had about myself during this current re-immersion in Sandra's website & list is that I was able to put my finger on why our foray into pure CM method this past winter/spring fell flat after six weeks, so that I found myself—for the first time in our homeschooling experience—with a roomful of discontented kids. (Discontented with our learning experiences, I mean. They have certainly all been discontented before, like whenever I cook dinner.)

The realization that came to me via my rethinking Sandra's philosophy is that what was different about our High Tide time this winter was that always before, while we may have been taking an excursion aboard the S.S. Charlotte Mason, I was captain of the ship, adjusting our course as needed, and pulling into port for refreshment or exploration as my young sailors required. This time around, I turned the ship's wheel over to Cap'n Mason herself—and much as I love her captain's logs, she doesn't know my crew the way I do. After six weeks, they were ready to mutiny.

So I am back where I belong: comfortable in my own shoes. I'm a Tidal Homeschooler, and it works for us, makes for fun times with my happy, pleasant children. But it was the Radical Unschoolers who taught me this lesson, and I will continue to enjoy learning from their perspective— just as I learn from the pure Charlotte Mason folks and the Real Learners and the classical-ed people and the Waldorf folks. I really, really like to learn. So do my kids, so I'm content to "be who we are."

As a final note, it occurred to me there might be others out there interested in exploring this concept of Tidal Homeschooling, so I have created a group for that purpose. I encourage you all to join me there! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tidalhomeschooling/

Lovely, Lovely Low Tide

The first time I posted about tidal homeschooling at Bonny Glen (in January of 2006), I said,

Our family enjoys both kinds of learning—the heady adventure of the well-planned fishing trip, with a goal and a destination in mind, and the mellower joys of undirected discovery during weeks at the metaphorical beach. Around here, the low-tide times happen much more often than the high tide times, and often I find that the children catch more fish, so to speak, when the tide is out. Beachcombing reveals many treasures.

I was talking about unschooling v. Charlotte Mason-style learning, which, as readers of this blog know, are the two philosophies/methods of education which most resonate with me—even though they are very different philosophies.

We have been unschoolish Charlotte Mason learners, and we have been Charlotte Masonish unschoolers; I described it in that post like this:

[T]he what we do—read great books, study nature, dive deeply into history, immerse ourselves in picture study and composer study—is highly influenced by Charlotte's writings and their modern counterparts (particularly Elizabeth Foss's treasure of a book, Real Learning); and the how we do it—through strewing and conversation and leisurely, child-led exploration—is influenced by the writings of John Holt, Sandra Dodd, and other advocates of unschooling. But I couldn't say we're "real CMers" because I don't carry out Miss Mason's recommendations in anything like the structured manner she prescribed; and I probably do too much behind-the-scenes nudging for us to be considered "real unschoolers."

I'd say that continues to hold true, a year and a half later. If you start looking for a definition of unschooling, you'll find there's a lot of disagreement between different people about what exactly unschooling is, and any definition I attempt to apply to it is simply my own take; but to my way of thinking, the term is most useful when applied to an approach toward childhood in which the parents do not "make" the children "learn stuff." The children are learning, constantly, enormously; and the parents are actively engaged in discussion and strewing and facilitating and offering new experiences, and at times classes or curricula may be a part of those experiences—but only as the child wishes.

And so, since there have been some studies I have required of my children (Latin, for example), I can't say I'm a full-fledged unschooler. I am very, very unschooly, most of the time.

This past winter, I veered farther off the unschooling path than ever before, with our very much by-the-book Charlotte Mason term that began after the holidays. And, as I talked about here, it started off great guns, loads of fun, a very rich and animated time of formal learning—and then we hit some rather large bumps and the fun started to spill out of the cart. 

Scott's back went out; we sold our old house; there were lots of distractions. We stuck to our rhythm of morning read-alouds and narrations, but last week I noticed the kids were squabbling with each other a lot and our lesson time was turning grumpish.

(And re-reading that post, I see that a lot of what I'm writing here is a repeat of that one.)

I reassessed and saw that the year's upheaval had tangled us up quite a bit, and I turned to my favorite Waldorf resources to help us untangle: we immersed ourselves in the soothing, homey pursuits of baking, painting, making things with yarn or clay, singing, telling stories. Our CM lessons continued but at a slower pace, and mostly for Jane. Gradually, as our spring got busy with recitals and outings, I retired the CM schedule altogether. I did this without fanfare or announcement, and the children seemed scarcely to notice: they've been too busy learning.

Learning about (to rattle off a few topics from the past week) the history of purple dye, the legends of Hercules, musical notes, how to make cookies without mom's help, how to adapt a knitting pattern for crochet, measurement, air pressure (pumping up a baby pool and watching the pressure gauge), geography, San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, ISBNs and book cataloging, ocean life (could be a long list itself), the joys of playing in the sea, snakes, turtles, goats, miniature horses, Lightning Lad and Superboy, writing and cracking codes—and that probably isn't the half of it. Just today, Rose sat down to write a story, and when it was finished, she asked me to correct it ("I want it to be like a real book"), and that led to conversation about spelling rules (slam/slamming, split/splitting, reply/replied), punctuating dialogue, indenting paragraphs and when to start a new paragraph, capitalization of titles, when to capitalize "mom" and when not to, and more grammar stuff that I can't remember.

Whenever our low-tide times come around, I laugh at myself for forgetting how true are the words I wrote above: I find that the children catch more fish, so to speak, when the tide is out.

A week or two ago, reveling in the richness of low tide, I got in the mood to read some Sandra Dodd. Sandra's website is one of the best educational resources on the 'net. She has been collecting wisdom from experienced unschoolers (including herself) for over ten years, and her site is a vast (really, I'm not using the word carelessly—there must be a hundred? pages there, at least)* repository of quotes and anecdotes to inspire and edify anyone who is interested in how people learn. Be careful; you'll lose yourself there for hours.

But you'll find yourself, too. Sandra always makes me think. She can be challenging, in the sense of 'one who challenges you to examine your assumptions.' I've lurked on her email lists on and off over the years (and not always lurking; I used to participate in the discussion, two or three younguns ago), and I sometimes found her almost painfully blunt. But now, ten years into my own home education journey, I think I understand why she doesn't mince words in conversation with other homeschooling/ unschooling parents. She doesn't want them to lose precious time to friction and tension. She wants there to be joy and delightful connectedness between parents and children, always and as soon as possible.

I don't necessarily agree with her on every topic, but I appreciate the way she gets me questioning, pushing, pondering, learning. I like her emphasis on saying yes as often as possible. That one simple idea can effect HUGE changes in your relationship with your kids. Sometimes I get so busy, so caught up in the logistics of managing this busy household, that I drift into scolding mode. Ugh. Sandra's work reminds me not to scold, but rather to listen, and to smile, and instead of barking out a kneejerk "No" to the child who proposes something, to ask myself "Why not?"

A small example. On Sunday after Mass, the three older girls and I were standing on the sidewalk outside church, waiting for Scott to pick us up. There are two entrances to the church parking lot, and I had positioned myself at the corner of a traffic lane in the lot, so that I could see both entrances. I didn't know which way he'd come in. The girls wanted to cross to the other side of the lane. I didn't want to, because then I would only be able to watch one of the entrances.

A month ago, all wrapped up in my brisk busy-ness, I might have simply said no—offering no explanation.

A week ago, with my renewed focus on saying yes and, well, being nice (the busy me is not always the nice me), I might have said, "Sorry, gang; if we cross over there, we won't be able to see Daddy coming."

A day ago, with my wits sharpened and my desire to be connected and happy with my children renewed by an immersion in unschooling belief, I asked myself, "Why shouldn't they cross the lane? I can stay here and watch for Scott. Anyway, even if I don't stand here, it's not like he won't find us. It's not a big place. Why do I need to watch for him at all? What was I thinking? Or rather, why wasn't I thinking?"

So I said, "Sure!"

And guess what? Scott found us just fine.

Oooh, that pesky auto-response! It is so easy for a mother's default setting to be NO. But truly, so unnecessary too.

About the same time I went poking around Sandra's site, I treated myself to a copy of her book, Moving a Puddle, which is a collection of essays she wrote for homeschooling publications, message boards, and other places. I'd read some of them before, but many of them were new to me and it's nice to have them all in a book I can curl up with or tuck in my bag. I got halfway through the book and had found so much I wanted to talk about that I simply had to order a copy for my pal Eileen in Virginia, Wonderboy's godmother and my crony in unschooly Charlotte Masonishness. (Or is that Charlotte Masony unschoolishness?) She received it a few days ago and we've racked up quite the tasty phone bill, discussing and enthusing every day since she opened the package.

I feel downright invigorated, and I didn't even know I needed invigorating.

Of course this begs the question: if low tide is so fabulous, why not stay there forever? Why have high-tide times at all? That's the question I am continually examining (see this post: Accidental v. On-Purpose Learning), and will be pondering again this summer.

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*Turns out there are over FIVE hundred pages at Sandra's site, and that's just the unschooling arm of it; she's got other sections, too. 500! I told you it was vast!

Unschooling Blog Carnival

The new edition of Unschooling Voices, a collection of posts by unschooling parents, is up.  Enjoy!

The theme for this edition is "How has unschooling changed you?" And I think that's fascinating to contemplate: how has homeschooling your children affected you?

Scott told me once about how Eric Clapton learned to play guitar. He wanted to learn, and so he sat down with a guitar and just played and played and played, to the exclusion of all else. It's called "woodshedding," as in you go out to the woodshed and practice for hours.

What was funny about Scott telling me this (it was before we were married, I think) was that it sounded so much like HIM to me, the total immersion in an interest. It sounded like me, too: I have always been one-track that way, wanting to throw myself intensely into a new subject or interest.

The first Christmas we were married, I gave Scott a guitar of his own, and he hunkered down and taught himself to play.

A year later, when we had a six-month-old and I was reading about homeschooling and thinking this was the path we should take, I remembered about woodshedding. When I talked about home education in those terms, it made total sense to him. From initial skepticism he shifted to receptiveness and eventually to an enthusiasm for homeschooling that was (is) as vocal and wholehearted as mine. All this was before the baby's first birthday.

Deciding to homeschool changed us both in granting us a sense of freedom about learning—how naturally it happens when there is an interest in a subject or skill. The change was in regard to how people work, how people learn. In school, I was always so good at seeing just what I needed to do to get the grade. I was more focused on the benchmarks than on the knowledge itself. Through the decision to homeschool, I pulled back from that very narrow focus and saw how there were times I had woodshedded to learn something I really wanted to know. I learned to weave that way, autodidacticly, immersing myself in weaving books and warp and weft until one day there was a towel in my hand, and I'd made it all by myself.

I'm seeing that happen with the kids now: the origami animals everywhere, everywhere; and the Sculpey creations, and the stories, and Jane's pretty book she is filling with algebraic equations she wants to remember.

What I'll Be Reading This Weekend

Unschooling Voices, Volume 8. Growing Without Schooling meets the 21st century.

Tweak Tweak

The nice thing about what I call "tidal homeschooling" is that it keeps the pressure off me. By now, I have learned that our family's life seldom maintains a consistent rhythm longer than, say, four to six weeks. I have learned to enjoy the ebb and flow, the seasonal change. When monkeys toss their fabled wrenches into our works, as those naughty little monkeys are wont to do, I know it's time to do a little tweaking.

Our "high tide" Charlotte Mason term chugged along nicely during February, but this month we went a bit off kilter. Scott's back went out; we sold our old house; there were lots of distractions. We stuck to our rhythm of morning read-alouds and narrations, but last week I noticed the kids were squabbling with each other a lot and our lesson time was turning grumpish. That is always, always, a cue for me to shift gears. (And mix metaphors. Good heavens, I am haphazard with the metaphors today. Metaphor soup!)

I've mentioned before that my introduction to the idea of homeschooling was through the writings of John Holt and Sandra Dodd. Sandra is the guru of radical unschooling, and though I don't agree with her take on everything, I have learned a great deal from her writings. Jane was a babe in arms when I began to ponder Sandra's ideas about children learning naturally, through life experience, apart from school; and truth be told, it was Sandra who sold me on the lifestyle, way back when I was lurking on the homeschooling boards at AOL.

Now you know that while I have a big streak of unschoolishness in me, I'm not an unschooler per se; the Charlotte Mason method, applied according to her principles, is not unschooling. But Charlotte, too, envisioned the kind of happy and eager childhood that you hear about in the writings of the unschoolers. And that's my main answer to the question, "Why do you homeschool your kids?" I say, "Because I think it's a way to give kids a great education and a joyful childhood."

During our low-tide times, which occupy the larger portion of the year, we are like unschoolers. We live and play; we take care of our home together, the children and I; we have adventures and read lots of great books.

During our high-tide times, we keep doing all of the above, but I'm the one picking out the books, and I have the kids narrate a lot of the reading back to me, and we work more deliberately on mastering skills that take practice, like piano and math and Latin.

After the big adventure of moving to California, quickly followed by the big adventure that is Christmas, all of us were ready for some structure, some predictability. Hence our current lineup of studies a la Miss Mason. And as I said, our "term" (the term amuses us, ba dum bum) got off to a terrific start. Last week, when the fun started to fizzle, I gave some thought to what might need tweaking.

The first question I always ask myself when I'm assessing our family rhythm is "What would we be doing if we weren't doing this?" If, for example, we weren't spending three mornings a week reading and narrating, how would we spend them? We already have activities the kids love which take us out of the house twice a week, sometimes more; plus I've tried to be good about making spontaneous outings to the zoo or the park, exploring this vast new land we've moved to. I find that an important ingredient for family harmony is having plenty of mellow time at home. I am not, therefore, inclined to add any more activities to the mix right now.

Home time, then. The kids want to do more painting. Check. I can make that happen. They want to do more baking, and Easter is around the corner...Check. Jane has a flat of herb seedlings going, and all of us are in the mood to do some gardening ("all of us" as in the entire Northern hemisphere), so: Check.

Thus far in my ponderings, I have found nothing that really requires a tweak. We can do all those things any afternoon of the week; I just need to remember to DO them. (Check.)

But the grumpishness of the last week or so, that's got to go. That's where the tweaking comes in. What jumped out at me when I gave some thought to the question was that it has everything to do with the challenge of keeping five small people happy at once. (Make that four small people and one medium-sized person; Jane is really getting to be such a big kid.)

I decided I was trying to do too much all together. After traveling in a pack (both literally and figuratively) for the past nine months, my kids are ready for some one-on-one time with me. This can be as simple as making sure Beanie gets to help me wash dishes, or Jane gets me for a few screens of Absurd Math, her favorite online pastime. Rose wants to stretch out on my bed and chatter; she is my most introverted child, and I think she soaks up a lot of observations during the big group activities and wants my ear in which to pour them later on.

This morning I gave Rose a stack of books and helped her set up camp on my bed. She beamed. While Jane read a picture book to Beanie, I spent some one-on-one with Rose. Then I grabbed Bean for some cozy couch time, and we rediscovered Eric Carle's Animals Animals together. Jane went off to her favorite corner of the craft room and read the books I'd given her; later she came back and narrated to me while I changed a few diapers, nursed the baby, unloaded the dishwasher. It was a good morning. The house is a mess but our moods are tweaky clean.   

Is the Mainstream Press Finally Starting to Understand Unschooling?

This recent article in The Patriot Ledger presents a positive look at unschooling. Even the obligatory balance-it-out quotes from "experts" pose fairly reasonable questions, though I had to laugh at the patronizing remark from the Boston U School of Ed's dean. (‘‘It probably doesn’t do the children any harm,’’ says he. What a ringing endorsement!)

I quite liked this quote from a parent of unschoolers (and author of a book on unschooling):

"Unschooling is ideal for all children, but not for all parents,’’ said Kream, of West Bridgewater. ‘‘Unschooling parents need to be enthusiastic about life and learning themselves, they need to want to be very actively involved in their children’s lives and they need to be caring, supportive and respectful parents. They also need to believe that the desire to learn is intrinsic to human beings.’’

Rue Kream is right on the mark here; this quote speaks to the difference between unschooling and "unparenting," a brush with which unschooling is often erroneously tarred.

I Love When It All Comes Together

I'd love to take credit for planning the trip down the lovely little path the kids and I are following at the moment, but I can't. The trail appeared before us and we set forth, that's all. It started with Our Island Saints, a book I'd ordered from Yesterday's Classics last year.

No, wait, I guess it really started with my decision to take a cue from the Waldorf folks and keep "saints and heroes" in mind as a kind of over-arching theme for Rose and Beanie this year. An umbrella, if you will, to provide some shelter from the chaos of our move. Our Year of Saints & Heroes. It has a nice high-tide sound to it, though of course you know we'll be spending much of this year in the lowest of low tides. And that's fine. We thrive on low tide around here.

(Hey! Just occurred to me! I get to add actual BEACH experience to my whole Tidal Homeschooling thing! You SEE the lengths to which I will go in order to flesh out a metaphor for you?)

Anyway. Our Island Saints, I was saying. We started with St. Brigid of Ireland because she is special to my family, and also she is the patron saint of scholars and babies. Before I began reading (this was one day last week), I printed out some pictures for the kids to color: pictures of the saint for the younger girls, a complicated Celtic knot for Jane.

I read part of the story (it's long) and a good deal of it was about how kind and generous Brigid was to the poor, how she'd give away her bread to any ragged stranger she passed on the road. That reminded me of a poem I love—Alice chose it for the first post on her blog last year—and I sent Jane to fetch The Harp and Laurel Wreath so we could read it together. It is "An Old Woman of the Roads" by Padraic Colum, and it begins like this:

O, to have a little house!
To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods upon the fire,
The pile of turf against the wall!

The poor, bereft, wandering old woman: she could use a Brigid in her life.

After we read it and talked about it, I got a little goose-bumpy, because I remembered that Padraic Colum is the author of the VERY NEXT BOOK I had planned for a read-aloud. It's called The King of Ireland's Son, and if you've never read it, you've got to treat yourself to the rollicking, lilting (hey!) adventure of it. Sure and 'tis as fine a bit o' storytellin' as ivver I've seen. Weaving together the strands of old Irish tales, Colum creates a rich and riotous tapestry of princes and enchanters, cats and kings, monsters and maidens, songs and swords.

Like this:

"...the youth I'm telling you about did nothing but ride and hunt all day. Well, one morning he rode abroad—

"His hound at his heel,
His hawk on his wrist;
A brave steed to carry him whither he list,
And the blue sky over him,

"and he rode on until he came to a turn in the road.  There he saw a gray old man seated on a heap of stones playing a game of cards with himself. First he had one hand winning and then he had the other. Now he would say 'That's my good right,' and then he would say 'Play and beat that, my gallant left.' The King of Ireland's Son sat on his horse to watch the strange old man..."

Irresistible, I'm telling you.

And so,

with my babe in my lap
and my boy at my knee,
and my big girls before me as rapt as can be,
and the boxes all around us,

we are off on another adventure, and fie to the packing.

Maria Montessori on Unschooling

"Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants—doing nothing but living and walking about—came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning: would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning. This is the path he follows. He learns everything without knowing he is learning it, and in doing so passes little from the unconscious to the conscious, treading always in the paths of joy and love."

—Maria Montessori

(With thanks to Donna G., local Montessori teacher and my fellow speaker at a recent alternative education panel, for bringing it to my attention.)

And in that vein, here's what Rilla learned yesterday.

It's All Fun and Games: Curriculum for Unschoolers?

The Curriculum Series, Part 3
Part 1: Live and Learn.
Part 2: First How, Then What.

(Attention non-homeschoolers: big long list of Fun Stuff below! Scroll down to below the Dali painting.)

I've been hearing from a lot of people who took the "What kind of homeschooler are you?" quiz and came up as unschoolers, much to their surprise. It seems many of us recognize those muddy children in the first question as our own, and our families do a lot of experiential learning. To learn about Native Americans, we might try our hand at grinding corn to make our bread. Our dining-room tables are buried under "3 marbles, 2 dominoes, 5 Scrabble tiles, a 1/2-eaten jelly sandwich, 1 basket of unfolded clean laundry, 4 broken crayons, 3 markers (1 without a cap), a can of fish food, 2 screwdrivers, and a hammer." When Life interrupts our plans with a sick relative or a cross-country move, we scrap the plans and learn what the roller coaster has to teach us.

Home education is a lifestyle as much as it is a school choice. Its rhythms and possibilities are so utterly unlike institutional education that it sometimes takes us a while, as homeschooling parents, to shake off the years of training that told us "education" was answering enough questions correctly on enough tests to earn us the grades that satisfied our parents and teachers. Whether or not we would remember the answers to those questions a year later seemed to be beside the point.

But once we do shake off that notion, we discover that there are a lot of other notions out there about what a good education is and how best to achieve it. And here we are back at the how.

Let's look at some of the different answers to how and talk in very practical, specific terms about what stuff you can use if you want to educate your kids according to a particular how or method.

First up: Unschooling.

"Melting clocks are not a problem in your reality. You are an unschooler. You will tolerate a textbook, but only as a last resort. Mud is your friend. You prefer hands-on everything. If your school had an anthem, it would be Dont Worry, Be Happy." (From Guilt-Free Homeschooling's What Kind of Homeschooler Are You quiz.)

I'm laughing here, because the rest of this post has a completely oxymoronic premise. "Hi, I'm talking about curriculum! Let's start with unschooling!" And unschooling is about learning through following your interests, not following a predetermined sequence of skill-building exercises and fact memorization. Unschoolers don't try to recreate school at home, so who needs curriculum?

But I think of curriculum—all those books and schedules and lists and kits and guides and videos—as tools. Just because I have a good tool set, that doesn't mean I'm a carpenter. I might just be a person who likes to make stuff, in which case a good hammer and saw come in handy.

So what are some of the tools a household of unschoolers might use? Besides the obvious, I mean, the good books, the art supplies, the kitchen, the garden, pretty much the whole wide world. Here is a list of Some Particularly Cool Stuff My Kids and I Have Learned a Ton From or Just Plain Had a Good Time With:

Settlers of Catan, the board game. Jane got this for Christmas last year. We've been obsessed ever since. Except when our friends hijack it and keep it for weeks because it is that great a game.

Signing Time DVDs. Catchy songs, immensely useful vocabulary in American Sign Language. I trumpet these wherever I go. We talk about Rachel like she's one of the family.

Prismacolor colored pencils. Indispensable. I was amused to see that Jane mentioned them in the first line of her "I Am From" poem. She's right; they have helped color the picture of her life.

Uncle Josh's Outline Map CD-Rom. Because maps are cool, and maps you can color (with Prismacolor pencils, hey!) are even cooler. The kids are constantly asking me to print out a map of somewhere or other. You can find other outline maps available online (for free), but I like Josh's for clarity. And once when I had a problem opening a particular map (it's a PDF file), I called the help number and it was Uncle Josh himself, a most amiable gentleman, who quickly solved my problem.

The Global Puzzle. Big! Very big! Will take over your dinner table! (So clear off that laundry.)

Set. It may annoy you that your eight-year-old will be quicker at spotting the patterns in this card game than you will. There's a free daily online version as well.

Quiddler. Like Scrabble, only with cards. This, too, can be played online.

Babble. Like Boggle, only online and free.

Chronology, the game. Like Trivial Pursuit, only with history.

Speaking of online games: the BBC History Game site is awfully fun.

And Jane was fairly addicted to Absurd Math for a while there. Need more free math puzzles? Nick's got a bunch.

A Case of Red Herrings and Mind Benders. Logic and problem-solving puzzles: a fun way to pass the time on long car trips or in waiting rooms.

Zoombinis Logical Journey computer game. Stretch your brain trying to get the little Zoombinis to a village where they can bounce in peace.

Oregon Trail. The game that launched a massive wagon trail rabbit trail for my kids a couple of years ago—and they still aren't tired of the game.

Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots : Gardening Together with Children. Plant a sunflower house! Up-end a Giant Bucket of Potatoes and dig through the dirt for your rewards! Grow lettuce in rainboots! Boots! With lettuce growing in them!

Wild Goose Science Kits. Fun experiments with a low mess factor. Best prices at Timberdoodle. Note to self: remember the Wild Goose Crime Kit come Christmastime.

A microscope. Sonlight sells a nifty set of prepared slides with paramecium and other fun stuff for the kids to peer at.

If the scope sparks an interest in dissection, there's a way to do it online with no actual innards involved: Froguts! The site has a couple of free demos to occupy you while you save up for the full version. (Which I haven't seen yet, but it does look cool.) HT: Karen Edmisten.

Klutz kits. Over the years, we've explored: knitting, embroidery, origami, magic, Sculpey, paper collage, paper dolls, beadlings, and foam shapes. Look under any piece of furniture in my house and you will find remnants of all of the above.

Which reminds me: Sculpey clay. Is it possible to get through a day without some? My children think not.

Usborne's calligraphy book and markers. I think Anne-Marie sells Usborne so she probably has more information if you're interested.

But while I'm on Usborne, my kids also love and use at least weekly: Usborne Science Experiments Volumes 1, 2, and 3.

Muse magazine. The highlight of Jane's month. From the publishers of Cricket.

Classical Kids CDs. Beanie's favorite is the Vivaldi. Alice's daughter Theresa does a fabulous Queen of the Night impersonation from the Mozart.

Refrigerator poetry magnets. I gave Scott the Shakespearean set a couple of Christmases ago. Note to self: You are not as brilliant as you think! You were an English major, for Pete's sake, with a minor in drama. Thou knowest full well old William was a bawdy lad. If you don't want your little ones writing poems about codpieces, stick to the basic version. But oh how I enjoy the messages Scott leaves for me to find and then pretends he doesn't know who wrote them:

I am
so
in love
with my
delicate
wench.

And of course of course of course, Jim Weiss story CDs. I rave about these every chance I get because they have added such riches to my children's imaginations. For years, they have listened to Jim's stories after lights-out. Greek myths, Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, folk and fairy tales, the Arabian Nights, the Jungle Book: of such stuff are dreams woven.

A good source for much of the above (and lots more): FUN Books.

I'll continue to add to this list as more good stuff occurs to me. Your suggestions are welcome and encouraged!

Coming up next: Charlotte Mason. But bear with me: these linky posts take a while.

Tags: homeschooling, homeschool, unschooling, curriculum, education, educational games

And Then There's "Classical Unschooling"

Willa, one of my favorite bloggers and favorite people in general, pointed her readers toward this post at Dumb Ox Academy the other day. Faith's blog is new to me, but I like her already. It appears we have a lot in common; like me, Faith sees good sense in both traditional classical education and unschooling. Faith writes:

I am drawn to two dissimiliar methods of home educating my kiddos. One is the structured, rigorous and time-tested method of classical schooling, complete with chanting declensions, and in depth analysis of ancient classics. The other is unschooling, following one’s bliss and trusting in the Lord to provide the pilgrim with everything he needs.

Now, I would characterize unschooling a bit differently, since my vision of "natural learning" involves a good deal of behind-the-scenes path-strewing on the part of mom and dad; and from what I'm seeing on Faith's excellent blog, I get the impression she works this way too. This post goes on to share a terrific idea for using the fridge as an "unschooling bulletin board":

So far the categories I have come up with are: Quote of the Week, Latin Phrase of the Week, Root Word of the week, Spelling Rule of the Week, and Math of the Week. I showed them to the kids at lunch time (I was very busy setting it up yesterday morning and they were getting curious about what I was doing!). So I showed them each category. My 11 yo immediately said, “get me a pencil and paper!” And then got some himself and wrote E=MC(squared) and posted it up. I’d forgotten science! And apparently when he and his dad were attending a baseball game on Sunday, dh had explained Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to him.

Read the rest of the post to see what Faith has chosen for her first week of Fridgeschooling. She promises to share each week's selections on her new "On the Fridge" page. I love her first Quote of the Week. It's from A Thomas Jefferson Education, a book I found useful and interesting, living as we do in Mr. Jefferson's backyard. (And I have just remembered with a terrible pang that I promised to send my copy to a friend ages ago. Cindy, I'm so sorry, do you still want it? Mea culpa.) Like Andrew Campbell's superb new book, The Latin-Centered Curriculum, Oliver van DeMille's A Thomas Jefferson Education makes a case for an education steeped in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, with the parent serving as mentor, accompanying the student through the deep, unrushed study of a few key works. Multum non multa, as Campbell puts it: "Not many, but much."

Willa herself has written several thoughtful and eloquent posts exploring the seeming oxymoron of "classical unschooling." My own explanation of the concept is that classical ed informs the what, the content, and unschooling describes the how.