schooling/unschooling

While investigating our homeschooling options and throughout my decision-making-process, I have repeatedly come across the "unschooling" option.  After my initial research, my feeling about "unschooling" was disinterest and I brushed it off.  Having had my own education through the "bricks and mortar" schools, and having had my three eldest sons graduate from the "bricks and mortar" schools (albeit, a couple of them by a hair's breadth and simply because of lack of interest, rebellion, and lack of accountability in the school), I wanted our homeschooling experience to be very scheduled in conjunction with a core curriculum reflective to that of the public school's.  Homeschooling was not an easy decision to make; my biggest fear being that I would end up doing a disservice to my children; on the other hand, I felt by leaving my babies in our local public schools, I was already doing a disservice to them.  

Two years ago, we took the "plunge" and never looked back.  To this day, I cannot fathom even entertaining the idea of returning into our local school district.  We began by entering into a public school affiliated program called Connections Academy (CA).  Connections Academy has spread rapidly through the states, and ours was linked (at the time) to the Harris County school district.  All of the CA classes are done at home and over the computer (which is provided by the school).  It was a fantastic program, and the only beef I had was that the standards for progression were (still) rushing my children through their academics too fast.  Consequently, having dipped my toes slowly into the homeschooling pool, we left CA to dive right into the homeschooling pool; by this, I mean to say that we continue to work from textbooks (previously used in the bricks and mortar schools) but we work at our own pace.

Today, I had a new spark of interest regarding the "unschooling" experience; so, I researched, and I find that unschooling is to allow a child-led interest-driven learning, or to allow the child to learn through their own natural life experiences.  <hmmmm> In this rite, what child isn't unschooled to some extent?  I'm supposing, there are those parents that solely "unschool" their children... but still, I don't feel this is for us - I mean, exclusively.

So, we homeschool and unschool here.

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"Made" the kids go to lunch with us again today - I like that it's another opportunity for them to get our of the house, as well as being another opportunity for me and Roy to pick their brains.

I plan to run by the store after work for a few supplies for today's art project.  We'll be learning about, and creating our own Zen sand garden.  I'll post more on it tomorrow.