Unschooling Tools::Around Town

For us every day is an adventure.  Every day has a gazillion teachable moments and they don't just happen at home but they happen wherever we happen to be.   

Library

Going and doing and being and living are all part of what makes this unschooling journey of ours even more rich than it already is. 

Creating at the local woodshop. 

Much like Stephanie said in her Around Town post, our adventures are not "extras".  They are central to how we roll.  We don't go to a museum and pick up a clipboard with the sole purpose of checking things off.  Sometimes there's a specific exhibit we'd like to see but more often than not we go just to go and see where the adventure leads us. 

September 11th memorial in town.

Checking out the hydroponically grown plants at Water Fresh Farm.

Without these adventures our days would not be as rich.  Our learning not as natural and genuine.

Learning about beekeeping at Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

Contra Dancing

Exploring

Yoga Class

Old Sturbridge Village

Hiking

Art Class

In Boston.

Going to the theater in Providence.

And after all, part of the reason we are a radical unschooling family is because we value the naturalness of learning.  No matter where we go or what we do there is something that has been learned.  Something that has shaped us and helped us to better understand the world, who we are and our place in it.  Sometimes what has been learned is not so obvious. But chances are at some point it will become clear what has been learned.  Even if it's many moons down the road, and even if it's simply the fact that learning does not need to only take place in a classroom or during a set time of the day.  That it happens anytime, anywhere and to everyone.  The world is our classroom, and for that we are grateful.

Unschooling Tools::Reading

Ah, reading.  I have so many thoughts swirling in my head about this topic.  The one thing that I know for sure is that it will happen when it's time.  I have never been one to rush my girls (or any child for that matter) into doing something that they simply are not ready for, and this is especially true in the area of reading.  In my former life as a teacher I watched as many a child struggled through reading and all the skills that come with it.  I truly believe that if we allow children to take a much slower pace and really, truly build a solid foundation (taking time to first learn letter names and sounds, and then to put them together to form words, to then, and only then, be followed by the reading of sentences) that we will have stronger, more confident readers as a result. 

It was only recently, as she inches closer to turning six, that Grace has learned the letter names and their sounds.  And even then there are times she still gets tripped up on certain ones (H seems to give her lots of trouble).  She went from struggling to identify capital letters to seemingly overnight being able to identify upper and lower case letters and their sounds.  I think this is in part due to the fact that she got to determine when she was ready to learn these skills and not that it was decided for her when she should learn them.  She has also started to ask how to spell words and is trying to sound words out.  There is a lot of: "Mama, duck is spelled...." and then her saying each letter sound to figure out how the word is spelled.  And there is a little bit of reading happening too.  She surprised me very recently by reading a story called Zac the Rat (found on starfall.com).  To say she was proud of herself is an understatement.  Of course, a card appearing from Gramma and Grandpa only added to the pride and excitement that comes with reading your first story! It is that feeling of pride. Of knowing that she can do something.  Of knowing that she will do it when the time is right and that taking her time is OK  which has given her the confidence she needs in the beginning stages of aquiring this amazing skill.  Grace has always taken her time and I have no doubt that reading will be that way too.  Since she has always been encouraged to take her time, to do things only when she feels she is ready, she has always done whatever she has set her mind to well and with great success. 

 

And Emma.  Where is she in all this?  She is there, the every present sidekick to Grace, wishing she too was getting ready to turn six and trying her darndest to identify letters and sounds.  We often tell her that "it will happen when it's time" and while her time may occur sooner rather than later it has not arrived as of yet.  She is doing lots of pre-writting.  And lots of letter play.  And lots of drawing.  All essential skills to becoming a great reader.  Both girls have always loved the magnetic letters on our fridge, but Em has a true affinity for them. She can often be found using them to make up new words (words that only she knows).  Or sorting them by color into corresponding bowls.  A game that she came up with all on her own.    

I think the thing to keep in mind is that given the right support and encouragment, and by living in a print rich environment where a love of reading is clearly evident, that children will learn to read "when the time is right". It may not be when they are five.  And it may not be when they are seven.  It may not even be when they are nine.  And that's OK.  The important thing is to give them the time, space and  encouragement they need to learn this essential skill.  And while it may be easier said than done: try not to compare them to anyone else (traditionally schooled, homeschooled or unschooled).  Learning to read is not a race, and really all that matters in the end is that they fall in love with reading.

To help develop that love of reading in our girls here is a list of some of the things that we have used:

• Picture books
• Chapter books (American Girl stories, Little House on the Prarie)
• Magazines (Babybug, Ladybug, Highlights High Five, Ranger Rick, Big Back Yard, Animal Baby)
• Trips to the library
• Magnetic Letters
• Fridge Phonics
• Starfall.com (Learning Letters section and Learn to Read Section)
• iPad Apps (Intro to Letters, Montessori Crosswords, AlphaWritter, Ladybug's Bookshelf, Starfall, SuperWhy, ABC Food).
• Alphabet Rocks (pictured above)
• They Might Be Giants 'Here Come the ABCs'
• LeapFrog Letter Factory
• LeapFrog Talking Words Factory
• LeapFrog Word Caper
• Phonics Eggs (see picture at the end of post)
• Alphabet Hide and Seek
• Pen Pal mail-The girls send a picture/letter to their pen pal Ellie just about every month.  This activity has morphed as the girls have grown. 

Thanks to Stephanie at Ordinary Life Magic for organizing these Unschooling Tools posts!  It has been so great to share what we do and also to read everyone else's posts in this series!  Stephanie's post on reading in her family is simply wonderful. If you need more ideas or encouragement be sure to check it (and the other posts) out. 

Unschooling Tools:: For Creativity

Oh, how I am loving these Unschooling Tools posts!  Thank you, Stephanie, once again for gathering us all together! 

Creating has always been a major part of our world.  From a super young age we have always created with our girls, and as a result they have always been very creative souls.  I keep telling Dave how much we need a cabinet to store all our supplies so that they are easily accessible when the creating bug strikes and all of us can easily grab whatever is needed.  Right now, most of our supplies are stored in three bins.  The bins are stacked on top of eachother (with things stacked on top of the bins) so it does not make it easy for littles to get what they need on their own.  With any luck the aforementioned cabinet will be a reality sooner rather than later.

In our bins (and around our home) you will find:

• Crayons (beeswax crayons, Crayola crayons, homemade recycled chunky crayons)
• Markers
• Watercolor paints (We love the Stockmar tubs of red, yellow and blue.  Once mixed with water we store ours in the fridge in Mason jars-jelly size- where they will keep for a good long while).
• Tempera Paints (in no spill containers)
• Finger Paints
• Paint brushes
• Easel
• Glitter
• Glue
• Fabric Glue
• Mini Paper Trimmer
• Punches (various shapes)
• Glue sticks (large ones)
• Googily Eyes
• Stickers (lots!)
• Do-A-Dot Markers
• Stamps
• Stamp pads
• Scissors
• Old magazines to cut up
• Construction Paper
• Tissue Paper
• Easel Paper
• Pipe Cleaners
• Fabric
• Wool Felt
• Yarn
• Feathers
• Ribbons
• Beads
• Popsicle Sticks
• Brown Paper Lunch Bags
• Homemade Playdough (so much better than store bought!)
• Moon Sand
• Cookie Cutters
• Rolling Pins
• Garlic Press (makes great playdough hair or spaghetti)
• Plastic Knives/Butter Knives/Chopsticks (for cutting and poking playdough with)

Unschooling Tools::Televison

Fact:  we have never been a family that shunned the television.  David and I did make a very conscious decision before we were married that our house would, however, have only one TV.  We did not want everyone to end up in separate rooms watching different shows.  We wanted to be the kind of family that always watched TV together and I am proud to say that we have remained true to that original decision.  We love family movie night and the snuggle time that comes with it.  And Sundays are all about Cupcake Wars and The Amazing Race.  Since TV has never been something that was off limits the girls have never had any trouble when the TV was not on one of their shows.  They never sat there like zombies and they would often get what they needed out of it and move on to something else. 

It's thanks to the Wild Kratt's that the girls have learned all sorts of amazing animal facts (many that David and I never knew or had forgotten) and that show pairs nicely with their subscription to National Geographic Little Kids, Big Backyard and Ranger Rick magazines.  What would we do without those fabulous Kratt Brothers?! 

The They Might Be Giants Here Comes the ABCs  and LeapFrog's Letter Factory are the two DVDs that really helped Grace master identifying the letters of the alphabet!  Seriously, is there anything better than listening to the girls sing "The Alphabet of Nations"?! 

Other shows that the girls love or have loved are:

• My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic -This one has brought up many wonderful discussions of various social situations.
• Super Why - Letters, sounds, spelling.  The list goes on.
• Cupcake Wars- Teamwork.
• The Amazing Race- Geography, teamwork, problem solving.  This one pairs nicely with the Intro to Geography app by Montessorium that we have for the iPad. 
• Schoolhouse Rock DVDs- enough said.
• Fresh Beat Band
• YouTube - A variety of things from different types of music, to dancing, to anything we can think to look up!
• Dancing with the Stars
• The Voice
• Unwrapped
• Chopped
• Little House on the Prairie
• Franny's Feet-Franny goes on different adventures to different countries/places depending on what shoes her cobbler grandfather is working on for that episode.
• Pinky Dinky Doo-vocabulary building, storytelling, problem solving.
• A variety of shows and movies on Netflix

I feel like there are more but these are the ones that came to mind right away.  Our list of Family Movie Night movies is pretty extensive too.  Some favorites are:

• Charlotte's Web (the one with Dakota Fanning and Julia Roberts)
• Kiki's Delivery Service
• Pollyanna
• Fairy Tale: A True Story
• Despicable Me
• All of the Tinkerbell movies
• The King and I (orignal, of course)
• Sound of Music
• Cheaper by the Dozen (original, of course)
• Tangled
• Enchanted
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• The Wizard of Oz
• Bedknobs and Broomsticks
• The Eloise movies (Eloise at Christmastime, Eloise at the Plaza).  The little girl who plays Eloise totally reminds us of Emma!
• Princess Diaries (and it's sequel)
• Milo and Otis
• Mary Poppins
• Charlie Brown holiday DVDs
• The American Girl movies

If you have a list to share head on over to Ordinary Life Magic and link up to todays Unschooling Tools post.  Hope to see you there! 



Unschooling Tools::Math Play

When Stephanie posted that todays Unschooling Tools post would be about math, I began to wonder what we do that would  be interesting to people that would fit under this category.  Anyone that knows us knows that we do alot of baking.  And baking is math.  And reading.  And then I sat down and made a list and realized that there are lots of things that we do that fall under the category of math (including a fabulous new game that we bought yesterday)! 

Legos:The girls, especially Grace are really into Legos. They are way better at building with Lego's than I ever was (which just goes to show that they have a much more mathematical mind than I do)! Their ability to create things from these wonderful little blocks is just incredible and I love that Grace (and on occasion Emma too) will follow the diagrams shown in the books that come with each set to make the creations that make up each set.  Too cool!

Baking: We do lots of baking in our family. Not only is it fun, but it's yummy too! When we bake the girls have started to read the recipe (with help from mama). They love to locate each fraction on the various measuring cups and spoons, and we have started to talk about what fractions are. Grace even made up a little song that "two halves make a whole" and then she clanks the half cup measuring cup twice against the one cup measuring cup. Pretty smart if you ask me!

Beeswax: Very handy for creating numbers so that littles can see what each number "feels" like. And honestly, it's just super fun to play with! We have used our beeswax numbers to play all sorts of grames we've made up.  Games like: putting the numbers in a bag and then having one of the girls reach in, feel around and see if she can identity the number in her hand before taking it out of the bag. Choosing a number and then getting the corresponding amount of items (the girls love this one, especially if the items that they get are edible ones), and having a number hunt!  The possibilities are endless.

Games:  Games like Uno, Candy Land, The Ladybug Game, various puzzles, and now Number Hunt are wonderful and are all mathematical in their own right.  Number Hunt was purchased yesterday and has quickly become a beloved game.  It's a great way to work on number identification, counting, one to one correspondance and addition.  It gets two thumbs up for our family (and as an added bonus it's eco-friendly)!  

It's funny how at first I didn't think we had much to offer in the way of fun ways to incorporate math into our days but looking at this post we surely do!  And looking at all these super fun ways to experience different mathematical concepts sure makes me wish that this was the way I learned math. It's definitely way more fun (and natural) than completing lots of math worksheets!

Unschooling Tools::Games

My friend Stephanie over at Ordinary Life Magic is doing a series of posts on tools that unschooling families are using in their days.  The first in the series is about games.  Games are something that we love, and lately Dave and I have been on a quest to find new, wonderful games to add to our collection. So much of what we have come across just does not seem to be what we are looking for and so it was with that in mind that I had recently asked Stephanie what some of their favorite games are. I was thrilled to see this wonderful post about all the games in their home, and have already started making a list of ones to add to our game cabinet.  So without further delay here's a peek inside our game cupboard:

We don't have nearly as many games as we'd like yet but the ones that we have are indeed well loved.  Some of our favorites are:

Uno.  This was the girls first card game (and as you can see by the fact that Em's hair is super short these pictures are old).  When we first started playing Uno with the girls we had to hold the cards for them but now they are able to play without much help from us.  Such a great game for color and number matching! 

Candy Land.  Another tried and true favorite (and another old picture. This time from the October Nor'easter). 

Balancing Moon.  We bought this from Magic Cabin a couple years back.  It's a simple game.  All about color matching and balancing.  It's great for the very young but also is just as much fun when your a mama (or older!)! 

 

The Ladybug Game is simply fabulous! What makes it so fabulous is how simple it is. Since reading is not required kids can easily learn the rules and play on their own. 

And we love to put our alphabet blocks to good use and play Alphabet Hide and Seek.  A game that I made up one day when the girls had their Easter baskets out and were going on treasure hunts.  Why not hunt letters?  It was a blast! You can read more about it here. 

If you have any games to recommend to us we'd love to hear about them.  So far, as a result of a trip to the lovely toy store in Concord this week, and reading Stephanie's post we're looking forward to playing Blokus, Boggle Jr., Qwirkle, Mystery Garden, Math Animals and Mighty Mind.  Can't wait to see what else we discover along the way!