Unschooling Moments of the Week 12/3/10

I covered unschooling math in this post.

Here are books we delved into this week:

Wednesday was the first night of Chanukah.  Which means latkes!

And Dreidel!

And chocolate gelt!

Advent continued of course.  Friday, day six = 3 regular stars, one star of Bethlehem and two sheep!

From our Latin Advent Calendar we've learned six Latin words:  spes (hope), nox (night), lux (light), aurora (dawn), pax (peace), infans (infant).

Josh did his usual Latin class, Biology class and math tutor.  We didn't meet for history or literature this week, but he did sorta, kinda do the Chapter 4 test in History of the Church.  Almost done with Augustine!

Will seems to have spent most of the week sleeping or practicing music.  For hours.  And hours.

There was so much more that went on but these are the highlights!

Freedom to Learn - Math

Since I've been on the subject of math lately and since last night I was chatting with some other homeschooling moms and the subject of math came up, I thought I'd post some links to interesting articles that discuss alternative ways to learn math.

Here's one that is sort of a gathering of anecdotal stories from unschooling/homeschooling moms.

And here's another from the same blog that discusses a 1929 experiment on teaching (or not teaching!) kids elementary math.

Enjoy!

Unschooling math this week - 12/2/10

Since Advent school started on Monday we haven't done any formal math, yet some how math has been taking place with the younger two (my teenager is in his own orbit.  He's got a math tutor he goes to once a week).

First my son got into Sudokus this week.

Another time my 11 and 9 year olds were browsing Toys r Us flyers making up a game where all the prices were really in cents instead of dollars (so they'd deliberately read something costing $9.00 as 9 cents for instance).  For some reason this made things fun!  Then they'd pretend they had a budget of only 50 cents.  They sat and did quite a lot of calculating this way!

I brought some books that had been on the shelf in our study for awhile and did my usual moving them to the family room coffee table just to see if they'd spark any interest.  This book which has been perennial favorite with all the kids, got a lot of perusing:



The kids were idly playing with these one day while I was reading aloud to them, so I decided to perhaps further interest in the solids by setting up a tray with the solids, a bowl of rice and a spoon.  I used to do this sort of thing all the time when they were little.

Fun, but a little messy.  But that's why God made brooms!

Wordless Wednesday

Catholic Illustrators

Just stumbled on this blog.  Enjoy!

Book Nostalgia

My 20 year old was home for Thanksgiving.  There is an 11 year age difference between her and her younger sister.  She's been kind of out of our homeschooling scene for three years now.  Her last year in high school she was busy working at Starbucks, taking classes at the community college and hanging with friends.  And then she went away to college.

Sitting in the recliner in our family room surveying the (messy) landscape of our homeschooling life, she said suddenly (I think moved by nostalgia):  "Mom, don't forget to read that book on mathematicians and that book on the history of medicine out loud to the little kids.  I still think about those books!"

So, dear Reader, I pass these words on to you.

Unschooling Elementary Science with your TV

So far, when my kids have reached high school level,  we wind up signing up for high school classes that are given in the homeschool community around here.  Going into a high school level science class with no formal science beforehand would be scary, you would think.  However, our mish-mash of exposure to science seems to be enough to provide a solid foundation.

I think it is very easy to unschool science in this day and age.  Our approach has been a mixture of interesting read a louds, science kits, and occasional science field trips.  Some years we've been lucky enough to participate with other families in co-ops that featured science topics and occasionally we've even participated in the local Catholic homeschool Science Fair.

But the thing that has been the greatest influence is watching TV shows that teach science.  All three teens have said that watching the Magic School Bus shows did the most to prepare them for high school science.  Here's the actual Magic School Bus site.

Of course Bill Nye is also excellent (we even saw him live once!).  These two aforementioned shows were around on TV for my oldest two (now 20 and 18).  But my younger three (ages 15, 11 and 9) watched more of Zoom and currently Fetch with Ruff Ruffman.  You can check out many of the PBS educational kids shows at  PBSkids.org 

My kids don't seem to be headed into careers in science, at this moment (one never knows though!).  I know some kids who just eat up the subject and are very self-motivated to learn more.  One can picture them designing space ships, for instance.  We don't seem to be like that, however, I do think my kids are very well rounded in the subject and can converse about scientific ideas with some fluency.

This little list is only scratching the surface of all the educational science shows out there.  I think science in particular lends itself well to learning through the visual medium of TV.