Unschooling Success Story

My oldest son, Kevin, is the reason I unschool. He is now 23 and in the Air Force. But the story started way back when he was around 12. Or perhaps it goes back even farther than that! He was always a precocious child teaching himself to read at age 3. By the time he was 12 we had tried all of the various curricula out there - ACE PACEs, Alpha Omega, ABeka, unit studies, a computer based curriculum....you name it, we tried it. He hated it all! He wanted to learn what he wanted, when he wanted. I had a new baby at the time so was busy and stressed and told him to go ahead and teach himself then!

Well, Kevin went on to teach himself computer programming, HTML, web design, C++, Perl, Java, and a slew of other programming languages. All we did was supply him with the tools to learn - books and computers. When he was in 11th grade we put him in a private Christian school (I was working there) and within 2 months he was promoted to 12th grade and graduated a year early. He became an apprentice for a company that did videos for Japanese tourists and he learned video editing, did all their computer programming for them, and also learned business management and bookkeeping. He decided to join the Air Force and so just after his 22nd birthday, moved to the states to start his basic training. By this time he had "burned" himself out on computer stuff (or so he says) and because he wanted to get off of Guam, took the first job opening that came up - Power Production. Which means he works on generators.

It's been over a year now, and Kevin is excelling in the military. He has risen to the top of his crew and manages them all, even those who are higher ranking than him. He has also begun to take advantage of the free college education afforded by the military.

In order to get his degree faster, Kevin has been doing CLEP tests. A CLEP test is where you test out of a course based on your life experience and knowledge. So far he has CLEPed English, Technical Writing, Managing and Supervising (not sure exactly what this course was called), just to name a few. His next one he plans on taking is Astronomy.

What makes this so amazing is that Kevin does not study for these exams. He looks to see what is available, thinks about what he knows and signs up and takes the test. And aces them. Why Astronomy next? He figures he knows a lot about the stars based on all the science fiction books he has read. He doesn't read science fantasy - but hard-core, fact-based, science fiction books. I figure he will ace that test too.

Why is he able to do so well on these tests? One of the main reasons is because he is well read. He has been reading since he was 3 remember? That is a lot of books over his 23 years of life. Not only does he read, but he knows how to research. When he was in 11th grade he discovered he had some gaps in his math. So after school he would come home, look online for math tutorials and taught himself about 4 years worth of math in a little over 2 months. He is fascinated with words and language so has taught himself Spanish and Japanese, and knows the etymology of most words.

Now Kevin may be an exception. I'm sure his IQ is "up there". But I feel that unschooling him was the best thing I ever did. It gave him the opportunity to learn what he wanted to learn, and as a result retain that knowledge more than if he had been forced to learn things that didn't interest him.

My other children have their own success stories. Eventually I will share them here as well.

Where do curls come from

My daughter Cassandra (Cassie) has beautiful blonde ringlets. They hang half way down her back in golden curls. When brushed out they are wavy lines of soft down. Her hair is still baby fine and tangles easily. And of course she has her older sister's sensitivities when it comes to hair brushing. Needless to say we sometimes neglect brushing as often as we should because I hate to cause my baby pain. A few weeks ago, Cassie's hair had really gotten out of hand. It was clean, don't get me wrong. She swam daily and her hair was always being washed to get the sand and sea salt out. But not brushed after wards. Eventually the "rat's nest" in her hair really could house a small mouse.

One night I went to a lady's night out. My husband was out too for some reason and we both ended up home around the same time. When I walked in the house I saw Cassie siting on the living room floor watching or playing a video game. Her hair was neatly brushed and hung in smooth golden waves.

"Wow, who brushed your hair?" I asked her.

Stephanie, my 14 yo came out of the kitchen and admitted to the task.

"I saw a brush and said, 'Cassie, let's take care of this mess' and I brushed it."

"Were there tears?"
"Oh yeah, but I tried to be gentle."

From the queen of tangles, this was quite the remark. Takes a sensitive scalped person to deal with a sensitive scalped person I guess.

And after all, I deserve it. I gave my mom such a fuss over my hair. My girls were doomed to inherit the same issues.

Tonight I aso discovered proof that I also passed on the ringlet gene.

Googling

Eric learned to google. Which is my excuse for not blogging more. You see, now that Eric can google, I have one more person competing to use the computer now. So of course, that computes to less time for Mom to blog. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

So was does it mean, for my 8, soon to be 9 year old, son to be googling? Sometime about two weeks ago, Stephanie taught her brother how to type a word or a question into the google search engine to find the answer to anything you want to know about.

Suddenly a whole new world opened up for this little boy.

You want to know how to make Root Beer? Look it up. <>

Curious about the weather? Ask Google.

The plus side of learning to google is spelling begins to count. Sure mom and dad can decipher his spelling, but if google doesn't recognize the word the hit results aren't as relevant. So now Eric is understanding that spelling is important and it is faster to spell it right than to sift through the guesses. Typing skills are being learned. And knowledge is gained as a little boy's questions can go beyond the meager knowledge of mom and dad.

And the secret is out that mom and dad just google it anyway.

The Notebook and a New Blog

First I want to explain about the Notebook. I don't want any of my unschooling friends to gasp and faint dead over my reference to the "notebook" in my last entry. My kids are always coming up with interesting facts, ideas, things they've heard on TV, things they've read in books (at least for Eric) . You know STUFF. I want to encourage them to record some of these ideas - either in the form of pictures, writings, 3-d projects, or whatever! So that is what the notebook is primarily for. A place for them to organize the huge mound of paper they manage to accumulate. We have this pile on our piano....it is scary. Someday I'm going to have to face that pile and decide what comic, drawing, silly saying or scribble I should keep or what to throw away. If I don't want to be buried in a pile of paper, I need to start teaching my children how to organize their own papers. That's the plan anyway. And I will use the Notebook for those projects we do from the FIAR books.

This week we will be "rowing" Peter Rabbit. I'm hoping Eric will be happier with this one as it is one of his favorites from when he was 5.

I also want to put in a plug for my new blog I started over on the Homeschool Blogger. A Canadian Gal lost on Guam. Catchy title?

I'm hoping to get it listed on one of those homeschool blog carnivals, where if you are witty enough you get noticed. I'm still working on the wittiness.

Rowing our first book

Well, this week I decided to try to row a book with my two youngest, Cassie, 5 and Eric 8. What does it meant to "row a book"? Five in a Row, or FIAR, is a very relaxed curriculum that has you read a particular book, 5 days in a row, with an emphasis on something different each day. I had gotten a great deal on FIAR volume II from a homeschool friend, and about 8 of the related books. So I picked "Mirette on the High Wire" to "row" this week (read each day).

I have to say it was a lot of fun, for me and Cassie anyway. Eric, is a different story.

Monday we began at about 10:30am only about 1/2 hour behind the "schedule" I had set for myself. I've put quotes around that word to help emphasis how much I hate having to follow a schedule. Appointments, that is different. But having to do something like learn at a set time just seems off to me. Must be the unschooler in me. Cassie wanted me to set up the Story Time Felt Calendar for her to do each day, like we did at GICA last year. For her, our coming to the office to do school is like a great game to play and she is eager every morning to get up and go to school.

Eric, doesn't like all this reference to "school" and starts to whine right away. I made the mistake of really catering to Cassie's excitement about starting school, that I forgot to figure out how to make it exciting for Eric. The only real change in our whole schedule/routine is that I want to get to my office 2 hours earlier, with just me and the kids, to spend some quality time together, reading books, exploring together, doing art projects. Fun stuff.

It wears one down to hear a child constantly whine about school when he isn't doing anything different than what he had been doing for the past year or more. The chief difference is little sister is giving a name to what is normal for Eric. Freedom to learn, study, draw at his own pace, is suddenly being called school. The horror.

All kidding side, we did have a productive week. Eric didn't enjoy the story as much as Cassie - and so wasn't keen on us reading it everyday. But after encouraging him to sit beside us while I read, I have compromised to letting him stay where he is in the room as long as he doesn't interrupt. Twice today he had to be reminded to save his non story related questions to the end of the story.

On Tuesday I bought the kids 3 ring binders, a pack of paper and a set of dividers and we put together notebooks for the school year. The dividers were to divide the notebook into sections for the typical school subjects. In our case it is Math, Reading & Writing, Science, Social Studies, and Art. Eric asked if he could decorate the dividers in his notebook, so I told him yes, and he carefully made his subject sections. Later, Cassie asked for help to spell all the subjects and then Eric helped her draw pictures to help her remember what section was what. Numbers on the math section, a globe on the socials studies page..... Cassie is very proud of her notebook.

For Art day we made color wheels and the kids learned about primary, secondary and complimentary colors. Cassie cheerfully colored her color wheel and attached it to a page in her art section of her notebook. Eric made a color wheel of sorts too. In his own order. He's a non-conformist and I'm never going to change that. But he did understand and ask intelligent questions about the color wheel.

Today we did Science and after reading the story we discussed copper and why they used copper pots to cook with. We then looked up and read some about copper, found some copper pennies and put them in a cup of vinegar to see if they will shine up, and Cassie colored a picture of a copper pot and read and spelled "pot" and then put that in her notebook under science, and wrote copper above it.

We also found Paris, France on the world map and we explored all the different places that the book mentioned.

Aside from the reading, and calendar time, we also did a bit of Math-U-See, starting with the Alpha books. I had used this in my class last year and Cassie had good success with learning her numbers and math facts. So I want to continue this with her. She asks to do Math if I forget.

Eric is being allowed to work on his numbers as he wants, but he's watching Cassie and I know that soon he'll want to join her. If I force him, he'll balk, so I have to entice him into wanting to show what he knows. Which is way more than I thought. I haven't done any formal math program with him, and yet he has figured out facts on his own and shares them with us as he learns. He actually has a firm grasp of place value and adding and subtracting. He can't stand it when Cassie calls it "take aways".
"It's minuses!" He'll exclaim to her as she sings, "8 take away 2 is 6," while she fills out her paper.

Let's see, we also started reading together "A Child's Story of America" by Christian Liberty Press. Just reading a few pages with them has already resulted in lots of discussions about why people used to think the world was flat. Science and Social Studies is being covered there.

I'm also trying to review Cassie's phonics. I picked up a copy of "A Writing Road to Reading" and like the way they present the phonemes necessary for reading. I started with the first few letters for Cassie and she practiced her writing. Eric needs to work on his letters and numbers as most of them are backwards due to bad writing habits, starting from the bottom, not paying attention to which direction it should face. Nothing dyslexic, I don't think, as he's perfectly capable of writing them all correctly if he tries. We made a deal with him. If he can write correctly "his way" then it's a good way. If he continues to make mistakes, then he has to agree that maybe "his way" isn't the best way and to try to do some of my suggestions. We find that gentle coercion like this works better with him than any other forms of correction we have tried.

Tomorrow is the last day of our first week using this new plan and I think this will work for us. Gentle, relaxed, with something tangible (the notebook) to show for all our discussions and learning.

What's on your skin challenge

Okay, my friend Dawn posted a challenge on her myspace blog. I'm still waiting for her permission to share the actual link, but in the meantime, here's what she asked us to do:

Go ahead.. I dare you to pick a 'main stream' beauty product, soap, or shampoo that you have and look up 5 ingredients.

She went on to write what she found in her beauty products, and it wasn't pretty.

So I thought, hey, what do I use on my skin? I'm mostly a water gal. I don't often wash my face with soaps and tend to just use water. But I'm getting older and getting worried about the sags and bags under my eyes. I was just telling my other friend that when I hit 45 next month that is halfway to dead. Sorry, too morbid. But hey, at least I'm predicting I'll live until I'm 90, God willing.

I recently joined a health and beauty product company. Why I do this I still haven't figured out, as I'm not into trying to sell products but saw a good deal to get a bunch of stuff at a discount, and then, of course, buy it from myself for cheaper than retail. The company is Jordan Essentials, formerly Country Bunny Bath & Body (I prefer their old name, more down to earth).

As my birthday looms closer, I figured it was time to invest in my fading beauty. I bought Age-Defying Serum to help counter the aging process on my face. Let's analyze this product first.

Ah...minor glitch. There are no ingredients on that bottle....might have to go dig up the literature that came with it somewhere (less than 25% chance I still have it). I'll be back with that.

Let's try this one: Kiwi Cooler, Shower Gel (love the smell!)
Water (#1 ingredient....starting off okay)
Sodium Laureth Sulfate - depending on who you believe this is nasty stuff. From Wikipedia: Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association (CTFA) and the American Cancer Society have stated that the common belief that SLES is a carcinogen is an urban legend, a view confirmed by toxicology research by the OSHA, NTP, and IARC.[6] SLES and SLS, and subsequently the products containing them, have been found to contain parts-per-thousand to parts-per-million levels of 1,4-dioxane, with the recommendation that these levels be monitored.[7] The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers 1,4-dioxane to be a probable human carcinogen (having observed an increased incidence of cancer in controlled animal studies, but not in epidemiological studies of workers using the compound), and a known irritant (with a no-observed-adverse-effects level of 400 milligrams per cubic meter).[8] While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration encourages manufacturers to remove this contaminant, it is not currently required by federal law.[9]
A lot of words to say this may or may not be nasty stuff.
Okay....
Cocoamidopropyl Betaine: Hmm...all I can really find on this stuff is that it is spelled wrong in Wikipedia, and that it can cause skin & eye irritant. Yup, most soaps hurt my eyes, but not my skin so much.
Sodium Chloride: I'm pretty sure this is just salt.
DMDM Hydantoin: ugh, contains formaldehyde. I know that stuff is used as a preservative, but I've heard some pretty bad stuff about formaldehyde. Wonder just how much it contains and what else do those letters stand for?
1,3-bis(hydroxymethyl)-5,5-dimethylimidazolidine-2,4-dione
Yeah that helped me too. I'm not even going to try to figure out what that all means. But it does say that it is a preservative that works by releasing formaldehyde into the product.
And helps prevent mold from growing on the product. Maybe your skin too?
Methyl Paraben: I found this quote on one website " The EPA states that all parabens -- methyl, propyl, butyl -- have been proven to have endocrine-disrupting effects." The website?

Can the Methyl Paraben in Your Shampoo Make You Fat?

Just what I need. Soap that makes me fat.

I'm almost scared to continue this research. Let's see, have I covered 5 so far? Gulp, that was 6! I think I'll quit while I'm still willing to use the product.

Maybe I won't look so hard for the ingredient list for the Age defying serum. Sometimes ignorance is bliss?

But in all honesty, and all kidding aside, this is scary stuff! Here I *thought* I was buying something organic and "safe". Lesson learned, always read the labels!

Reading And Writing

I have always loved to read. Consequently I have always loved to write. I suppose not everyone reaches the same conclusion. But it is true in my life. It is also true in my husband's life. And as a result, it has become true in our children's lives as well.

I firmly believe that if you emulate a love of literacy in your home, that your children will pick up on that love. Books are an integral part of our home. We have book shelves that line our hallway, books on the knick knack shelf that separates the kitchen nook from the living room, a book shelf in the corner of the living room and book shelves in each of our bedrooms. All of them are overflowing with books of all genres. We also have three bookshelves in our driving school office that are full of books. Books abound in our lives. If I'm not reading a book I feel lost.

Along with reading comes a love of writing. When I read a particularly good book I'll often think, "Hey I can write just as well! " So I write. On blogs, in journals, in emails, wherever!

And what have I discovered in my reading and writing? That as I do these things, so do my children!

Currently my 13yo DD, writes an average of 2,000 words a day. She started writing a few years ago because a story was in her head and she wanted to put it on paper (or computer screen). She toted around Strunk and Wagner's Elements of Style in her backpack so that she could consult it for proper grammatical writings. When she attended a private school from 2nd to 4th grade, she learned some basic grammar and spelling rules. Since then she has had no formal writing curriculum. Reading good literature (she read Les Miserables when she was 11 because she loved the musical), and practicing writing everyday, has made her understand correct style, sentence structure and grammatically correct writing. It's very natural to her. When she communicates with her friends online, she refuses to write in "chat speak" but writes complete, well though out sentences.

My older sons, too, are great writers. Occasionally I have come across something my eldest wrote from his days in 12th grade and I'm amazed at his writing ability. Yet, I shouldn't be amazed as he comes by it naturally.

Now, as my husband, Les, and I reach our mid forties, we look to our future and wonder what we will do. Both of us have concluded that writing is the "new career" that tantalizes us. Les has taken this dream one step further and actually started a publishing company so that when our books are written we can publish them ourselves. The result is his first published book: Monster Doctor. We actually have it for sale on his publishing website: Read For Fun Press.

To help promote Monster Doctor, I have been working on a blog Monster Doctor, MD.
I'm planning on having contests for illustrators interested in trying to create the various monsters described in the book. If you are an artist or know someone who loves to draw, make sure to check out the blog!