In Part I, I talk about how I believe God designed children to learn through play and being part of a family. Family life provides intimate relationships in which to explore and learn about God's creation. Children do this through conversation, observation, imitation, helping out in the family, as well as the child's natural inclination to curiosity and imaginative play.
In Part II, I talk about how my vision of Catholic Unschooling differs from secular, 'radical' unschooling because I believe in God-given authority and the fact that children need limits for their health, proper development, and the formation of their characters.
So how does one marry these elements, of freedom and limitation, in daily home life? I think this can be a very difficult issue for moms. We feel lost at sea without an externally imposed schedule. It is very hard to feel any sense of accomplishment because we are always dealing with housekeeping that is never finished; children that grow so slowly it is hard to see any gain immediately. If you are a Type A, this is hard to deal with because so much is necessarily outside your control. If you are Type B you may always feel inadequate because you compare yourself to all those curriculum catalog covers that show a beautifully put together mom with her scrubbed and smiling children in a sparkly clean kitchen working through their neat stack of workbooks. You know you could never do that!
Families! Become who you are! That is what St. John Paul II exhorts us to do. Here's a great article talking about the profound significance of the family and all the wonderful strength it has in its ordinary, hidden, un-glamorous life. We are the domestic Church!
The Church lives in tension all the time. We are a both/and Church, not an either/or. We believe Jesus was both God and man, fully both. We believe that the Eucharist is bread and Jesus' body. We believe we are made in God's image and yet fallen sinners.
We got this! We do tension all the time! That constant balancing act is what keeps us on the high wire! Without it, if the tension slackens, we fall! It's a good thing! It is not a problem to be solved, necessarily. We can fall into the trap of constantly worrying about getting it just right, but if we relax and hold the center still, we can magically balance. Except, we live in the real world so you are never going to be constantly at the sweet spot! As my mother used to say (and to mix metaphors) life is a road full of peaks and valleys. Just keep moving! Her favorite words of comfort were: This too shall pass!
I think for my 21 years of unschooling/homeschooling I was most influenced by ideas from Charlotte Mason and other Catholic Unschooling moms. But I would start off obsessing on getting just the right curricula. I would go on a planning jag where I would plan wildly into the nights and nothing I ever did lasted long than a few days. Why? I think because I was trying to make the kids fit my curricula rather than seeing curricula as a resource to use when the child needed it (not when I wanted the child to need it!). Trying to force square pegs into round holes is exhausting. I would burn out so fast! So we'd always wind up back doing the same things: regular read aloud times, copy work, outside activities, lots of conversation and rabbit trails. And around those things were household tasks like ten minute tidy ups and each child learning to do their own laundry and helping mommy cook, and setting the table, and deep cleaning the house for a Christmas party and spending a Saturday cleaning out the garage, and, hey, mom will pay us if we organize all the books in the study! That sort of thing.
- Living the liturgical year/holidays of the seasons - This gave a general order to the year and also naturally brought up themes to focus on as we moved through the year. This lends a sense of overall meaningful order. We also somewhat follow the Jewish year since my husband is Jewish.
- Regular read aloud times - morning, before and over breakfast - some read alouds were just for fun, some intentional on my part either because I wanted to present certain knowledge to the kids or we were following a rabbit trail inspired by their interests. We often read aloud over lunch as well, and then before quiet time and every evening as well. We probably spent on average a couple of hours a day regularly listening to read alouds.
- Pegging* copy work to breakfast - we did copy work right after breakfast most mornings. I can't tell you how easy and efficient I found plain and simple copy work to be in terms of teaching. It teaches penmanship, spelling, punctuation, grammar, literature (when copying quotes from famous authors), literary devices (metaphor, allusion, etc). It can also be used to teach other languages (we copied over Latin words and phrases), as well as rhetorical devices. If you are copying over Scripture and quotes from the saints, you are also learning the faith. Ten to 20 minutes about 3 to 5 times a week over the course of 11 or 12 years reaps a lot of learning!
- Using outside activities to give our weeks form - we were involved in co-op activities, music and art lessons, physical activities such as park days, tennis or swim lessons, PE classes at local gyms or community centers, scouts, etc. We did so much! It differed from year to year and child to child. We also would join occasional classes in the homeschooling community. When older, the kids had a math tutor (from 7th grade or so). In middle school or high school the kids could opt to take on line classes or attend the community college. In high school all my kids attended an academic co-op which focused on science. literature and history classes. Sometimes I think we were too busy and other times we could have been busier! We also took advantage of summer camps, sports, theater, workcamps, retreats, etc.
- Having quiet time every afternoon after lunch - for independent reading, listening to audio books or quiet play. My kids loved to listen to audio books during this time. They learned so much during this regular rest period. They listened to Jim Weiss audios, recorded books, Glory Stories, etc.
- Strewing information around the house via 'fridge schooling', learning stations, coffee table strewing, decor, Christmas and birthday gifts, field trips, educational TV/games, car schooling.
- Fridge schooling is what I call posting information on the fridge door you want your kids to see and take in. This started with me posting word roots flashcards on the fridge. Then I started posting other things like the times table, a parts of speech poster, common math formulas. I then started making my own spelling pages to post based on the Phonics Pathways book by Dolores Hiskes. Combining this with copy work was wonderful for teaching spelling in an easy, efficient way.
- Learning stations - we had a math station on the end of our kitchen counter for ages. It had a jar of pennies and a couple of scales and a fabric tape-measure or a ruler. The kids could play with these things whenever they liked. They counted and stacked pennies, I taught impromptu addition, subtraction and multiplication lessons with these. They weighed and measured everything they could think of. One of the scales let you choose between metric and English weights. I would also set up Montessori inspired 'trays' (because I used kitchen trays) on my coffee table, kitchen table and on the floor in our front hall. (I will do a separate post on this).
- Coffee table strewing was for library books, rotating our own books from our personal library, workbooks I thought they might enjoy, any little new game or toy or puzzle that might spark interest. Sometimes it would just be a dictionary and some geometric blocks.
- Decor - we had a globe decorating our family room for years. We used that globe so much to see where the things we were reading or talking about were. We had big timelines decorating our upstairs hallway, a big map shower curtain of the USA with capitals in the hall bathroom, we had word a day calendars and calendars with beautiful art. We decorated the back of our laundry room wall with Thanksgiving trees, Jesse trees, in fact right now that door is a prayer wall. We had magnetized letters for the fridge and the bath tub also had letters and numbers and washable tub crayons. Decorate your house like a school (somewhat!)!
- Christmas and birthday gifts were opportunities to give things like arts and crafts kits, science kits, books and audio books.
- Field trips - ran the gamut from big organized ones far away, mostly for older kids to short impromptu ones to a local nature center. We've visited farms, parks, nature trails, a bakery, an eye doctor's office, a restaurant's kitchen, a fire station, countless museums, etc. Vacations also count! We've traveled to Williamsburg, Kitty Hawk, Philsadelphia, New York, Boston. And also into Canada and across the Atlantic to Paris, France and Avila, Spain.
- Educational TV saved my children. For a long time I was a mother of 5 with a husband who traveled extensively and worked 60 to 80 hours. I am an introvert! By the end of the day I needed a break. I got the break I needed in 4 different ways: 1) When I could I would hire a mother's helper. This was usually a teen from the neighborhood who could come over one or two afternoons a week. Or for a couple of summers I had an older teen who would take my older kids to the pool. 2) Every afternoon we had quiet time. This was written in stone! (of course often I had a nursing baby/toddler with me during my 'quiet time.'). 3) I had set bedtimes for my kids. It was either that or taking to booze and child abuse! 4) And I used educational TV as a babysitter. I tried to be careful about what they watched, but honestly, we learned a ton from Reading Rainbow, Magic School Bus, Word Girl, Zoom, Fetch, with Ruff Ruffman, etc. The kids also played educational games. Math Blasters, Zoombinis, Age of Empire, Pajama Sam, Starfall, etc.
- Car Schooling - this was just another excuse to listen to recorded books. But we also listened to classical music, folk music from around the world, multiplication rock, and other things as well. The car is a great place to have conversations and quiz each other on things like the times table or capitals, etc.
- One on one short lessons as needed - my kids all were late readers. All needed special help learning to read. So after many attempts at different programs, I wound up using the Pathway Readers along with the teaching method of At Last! A Reading Method for Every Child by Mary Pecci.
*Pegging is what ADD moms like me do to keep on top of necessary things. Since I am no good with schedules and routines can vary widely in terms of when something happens (breakfast could be at 8 a.m. or 10 a.m!) pegging a task I want to get done to something that I know will happen on a daily or weekly basis, helped me develop rhythms. So I would peg copy work to breakfast because even if the other meals got done on the fly or with different people eating at different times, we did gather at the table every morning (well, not my husband) and have some sort of breakfast - even if it was just toast and a glass of milk, and pray a bit, read or listen to the saint of the day and then do a little religion or history reading. Sometimes I would strew worksheets for fun seasonal topics from Enchanted Learning. And then we'd do 10-20 minutes of copy work. I did this right alongside the kids. We required this because my oldest son was diagnosed both dyslexic and dysgraphic. He needed to practice handwriting, even though he found it very difficult to do.
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