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Leonie
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| Posted: April 24 2007 at 5:35pm | IP Logged
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Very nice to read about your day, Donna. Thanks for resurrecting the thread. 
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Leonie in Sydney
Living Without School
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simplemama
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| Posted: April 24 2007 at 11:07pm | IP Logged
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I really love this style of learning. I do wonder though, as the kids get older as yours Donna, what do you do with your time as they do not seem to interact with you as much as a preschooler...
Also, does unschooling work for an unmotivated personality?
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MrsMJ
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| Posted: April 25 2007 at 7:18am | IP Logged
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Hi Simplemama,
You are right that we do not interact in the same way as we did when they were smaller, but we do still interact each day. We have a great deal of discussion throughout the day, attend activities together, shop together, watch movies and tv shows together and talk about them, play board games, discuss the books they are reading, cook together, clean together, dh and I help them find information if they are looking for something in particular, answer questions or help find the answers, etc.
We get to see a great deal of our family - we visit our daughter and her family, Rob comes home to hang out with us several times a week (he is my oldest son living on his own), hang out with their cousin who is my kids' age and my mom (my mom homeschool's my niece for my brother), we have the boys' friends over often and have cookouts. We are able to take extended "field trips" with my dh, going places like the beach or mountains or wherever we want to go without feeling like it will put us "behind".
It is just a different kind of interaction than took place when they were smaller. But it changed so gradually that it is only looking back that we can see the differences.
When they are occupied with their own activities, I spend more time doing my art and my crafts, blogging, organizing things at home, reading, gardening, playing my flute - all the things I did before but that were interupted repeatedly!  Now I have a slightly better chance of completeing them!  Dh and I get to spend longer periods of time together alone than we did in the past, which is nice because the romance is renewed and it has been fun!
As far as an unmotivated personality...hmmm. I used to think my 17 ds was unmotivated - and he will even admit to being unmotivated to doing certain things. Aren't we all in some areas? The key, I think, is waiting it out and letting them discover something that THEY are truly interested in knowing more about - suddenly the "unmotivated personality" is motivated. Yesterday we were watching this thing about robots and PJ said engineering would be awesome to get into. We began to discuss this and talked about the kinds of maths that engineers use. PJ said, "I'm just not motivated to learn that kind of math - but I love programming and I'm learning lots doing that". I'm not motivated to go outside my home to do an exercise routine - but I will sometimes do one inside my home.
I just don't believe that humans are unmotivated to do anything. I believe that often we've been told what to do for so long that we don't even KNOW what we want to do or how to figure it out and that can take some time and experimentation. And that can be hard when we first begin unschooling because we have to "retrain" our own minds and belief about what education really is while watching our children do what appears to us as nothing.
Hope this helped! God Bless,
Donna
Mice and Moonbeams
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JenniferS
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| Posted: April 25 2007 at 7:39am | IP Logged
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username}MrsMJ[/QUOTE wrote:
Quote:
| I just don't believe that humans are unmotivated to do anything. I believe that often we've been told what to do for so long that we don't even KNOW what we want to do or how to figure it out and that can take some time and experimentation. And that can be hard when we first begin unschooling because we have to "retrain" our own minds and belief about what education really is while watching our children do what appears to us as nothing. |
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[quote]I just don't believe that humans are unmotivated to do anything. I believe that often we've been told what to do for so long that we don't even KNOW what we want to do or how to figure it out and that can take some time and experimentation. And that can be hard when we first begin unschooling because we have to "retrain" our own minds and belief about what education really is while watching our children do what appears to us as nothing. |
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This is so true for my family!!!
Jen
p.s. hope I did the quote thing right.
edited to say: guess I still need to work on the whole quote thing. 
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JuliaT
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| Posted: April 26 2007 at 3:41pm | IP Logged
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When this thread started, we were just getting our toes wet with unschooling. Since then, we have fallen into it head first. Life is going so well. We love the learning lifestyle that we have now.
I guess you could call us more relaxed homeschoolers. There is an intermingling of structure and choice.
We start our days off with Bible and Math. These two are a given. My dd has a math learning disability so she needs to do math everyday. With my ds, reading is his area of difficulty so when he starts Gr. 1 in the fall, he will be doing reading everyday. Then we do one lesson in a subject of my choice. One day we might do history, the next day we may have an art lesson, the day after that may be for science. This is the structured part of our day. It takes about an hour. Then the rest of the day is up to them.
I, initially was surprised at the choices they were making as far as learning activities were concerned. My dd chose to do latin (Minimus,) science experiments and copywork. I kept a list one day of all of her choices for that morning. She covered most of the subjects through those choices. So now I don't worry as much.
I agree with Donna in that I don't think there is such a thing as an unmotivated person. They just need to be inspired to learn. If they are given the right learning environmant, then they will be motivated to make the right choices for them.
Blessings,
Julia
mom to 3(7,6,4)
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Juliainsk
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Leonie
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| Posted: April 27 2007 at 12:45am | IP Logged
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JuliaT wrote:
| I guess you could call us more relaxed homeschoolers. There is an intermingling of structure and choice. |
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I love this description, Julia.
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Leonie in Sydney
Living Without School
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: What does unschooling look like...
