Category: thoughts

We made it through the week and checked everything almost everything off the list!

Just that pesky unfilled triangle on the end there.

So I’ll read that tomorrow, that’s the next chapter of Hatchet, our book club book. The kids are really enjoying it. We read Minecraft: The Island last month, and it’s been fun to compare the two. Hatchet is written at a higher level than M:TI and Gloria was having a little trouble with the writing style more than anything. (Especially at the beginning, when Brian is feeling sorry for himself and furious with his mother. Later, after the plane crash, he gets less emo.) Anyway, that means I’m reading it aloud, and I missed today.

Gilbert is chugging along in American History, as am I! Abby had a headache for a few days, most likely allergy related, so she didn’t start yet. I want to make a timeline for the wall like we had when we did World History. It was fun to put the folks we learned about on the line. I’ve been jilted by the seller of the old Oak Meadow I bought, so I’m requesting eBay get involved. Bah. I know I can do this quite easily without a curriculum, so that’s what I’ll do. I asked the battle-scarred homeschool parents list I’m on for middle grade AmHist book recs, and man, did they deliver! Many that I knew and had planned but quite a few that I hadn’t thought of or didn’t know. I’m still planning that out.

Tomorrow is Batman Day at New World Comics, which is fun. A couple of the kids are sniffly, but I think it might be doable anyway. And now it’s bedtime, goodnight.

I just joined a radical unschooling group. For those not in the know, unschooling is at its heart learner-led learning, uncoerced. Radical unschooling is life uncoerced, even for little kids.

We aren’t radical unschoolers. But we are unschoolers. I know that in a world without school my children would thrive and learn what they needed when the time was right. But I don’t live in that world so I encourage the kids to stay at grade level for math. They naturally stay at grade level or above for everything else without any input from me. The reason I don’t just let things be is I think it’s important to have that cushion in the event they do go to school. The kids agree with that logic and do the math uncomplainingly. (Well, generally uncomplainingly.) I don’t ask anything if them until they’re 10 or so, now. I tried when Faith and Abby were younger and it was so unpleasant. Waiting until double digits made it faster and easier, rather than teary. 

That said, some people would say that means I’m not an unschooler. But frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. 

So today, drum roll, we checked off all our stuff! Math, history and a read aloud. Boy, did we feel official checking off the things we usually do anyway, heh. Gilbert is the only one doing history right now, but Abby will start with us soon. I hope Faith wants to as well. And maybe, just maybe, one or both of them will try forging ahead with Saxon Algebra. 

Trixie mathed, but I don’t have social studies really going for her and Gloria yet. Last year we read Paddle to the Sea. This year it will be Western Civ, sorta. Greek culture and myths.

And we’re all reading Hatchet and comparing it to Minecraft the Island, which works well.

So if the rest of the year goes as well as these first few weeks we’re gold.