"Can anyone give me an accurate example of unschooling? What exactly is it? Please if you could, give me an example of a typical day in an unschooling home. Thank you."

The question above was recently thrown out to the universe, (well, the 800 or so brave souls subscribed to the home-ed list) and in an attempt to both answer the question and outdo Pamm Kerr for sheer verbosity, I wrote this reply:

Unschooling - A typical (?) day...

First things first: My personal definitions of "Schooling" and "Unschooling":

Schooling: the process by which a predetermined (and often arbitrary) set of learning goals/outcomes is reached using predetermined (and often arbitrary) standardized curriculum administered by an authority figure to target groups of students sorted largely by chronological age.

Unschooling: the process by which a person acquires specific and non-specific skills and information as determined by the needs and interests of the person(s)doing the learning and by methods suited to and chosen by those doing the learning. A lot of unschooling learning is intrinsic, and some of the learning is often also accomplished by more "traditional" methods, but the what, how, when ,where , and why are determined by the learner and his/her goals rather than a bureaucrat in a government office who has never met my kids.

Unschooling is the process by which an individual learns to take responsibility for his/her learning and his/her life, which should (ideally) be one and the same.

Unschooling, to me, is more of an attitude than a system. A lion's share of the learning is incidental, i.e. inherent in our day to day activities. Some of the learning is conscious and some isn't. We don't separate ourselves into learners and teachers, but rather consider that we're all learning and sharing all the time. Actually, we don't much think about any of this unless someone asks us to explain it ;-) I'm as likely to learn something from the kids as they are to learn something from me. The structure of our learning comes out of our interests and the things we do to keep our family functioning. But I'll take a stab at a describing a day in our family.

I'll start with Monday, February 17, 1997, just because.

9:30 or 10:am the kids get up. Mom at the computer putting up the phoneline (here in Greater Vancouver we have a Homelearner's hotline telephone number where activities organized for homeschoolers are listed - I mark up the updated transcript every Monday and put it on a web page).

Usually while I'm working on the phoneline updates, the kids are making breakfast. This might be pancakes, French toast, cheese melts, cereal if they are in a hurry, eggs, etc. I cook most of the evening meals but Michael and the kids each take care of their own meal prep the rest of the day.

My husband sleeps in on Mondays (his day off) but gets up and usually has coffee and reads the paper while the kids are cooking. He always editorializes on what he's reading so there is discussion about current events, politics, some new science discovery, insider trading, or whatever is in the paper that day. They always devote a certain amount of time to box scores and who has been traded for whom during baseball season. My 12 year old has taken to reading the newspaper more lately because we listen to a Canadian current event satire radio show on Saturdays called "Double Exposure" and he has discovered that the jokes are even more hilarious if he understands some of the background.

We have group (ice) skating with other homeschoolers on Mondays from noon to 1:15, so we all head down to the arena where the boys work with coach Karen Magnussen (how's that for shameless namedropping?) while the adults skate and schmooze. It's usually 1:30 or 1:45 by the time we leave. Karen is chatty and the kids love to hear her stories of competing in the Olympics and for her World Figure Skating titles.

Next we pile into the car and hit the bagel place , where the kids watch the production while we get our supply for the week. This place has an open brick hearth where the bagels are placed on wooden planks and the planks flipped to turn the bagels. The bagels are hand formed and boiled in large vats before going into the ovens. This is all visible from the small retail counter at the front of the shop. Does this count as a field trip if we do it every week?

Sometimes one or both of the kids will leave skating to go home with one of their buddies; sometimes friends will come to our house after skating. If we have extra kids, one of the adults goes off to do the rest of the errands and shopping while the other goes home with the kids. If we have no visitors, we often all head off together. e.g., a few weeks ago the lot of us trooped down to the bank so Michael and I could sign the papers to transfer our mortgage. The discussions about interest rates and amortization etc. have been ongoing for the past 6 weeks or so while we looked at our options and made our decisions. The kids are included in all such discussions as far as they are interested.

The kids currently attend a math workshop from 4 to 6 on Mondays with other 8 or so other homeschoolers at a home a few blocks away. Most of the kids are 10 - 12 although my youngest (8) who is the family math geek and one 9 year old girl participate and keep up without any trouble. Bruce is a math teacher in the system who is trying out some ideas about working with kids and concepts which the system doesn't have a lot of room for. He uses logic puzzles, games, manipulatives and so on to help the kids to learn to recognize patterns and approach math problems from several different angles. There are no tests or marks, and no pressure, but a lot of fun and enthusiasm. Even Neal who thought he hated math looks forward to these sessions. What makes this an "unschooling" rather than a "schooling" activity (as with the skating lessons with Karen) is that the kids have chosen to be there and are doing it out of interest and for enjoyment. They are free to get up and walk away from it at any time, but they don't, even when they are having trouble "getting" something. They are learning to work through frustration and stick with something that's challenging just for the satisfaction of having done so.

Six o'clock and we head back home to get dinner. Evening meals usually stretch out for an hour or more as this is when we're all together and yakking about whatever. After dinner Neal usually heads upstairs to watch @Discovery.ca - a science newsmagazine program at which time I check e-mail. Nicholas usually corners someone to play mastermind, or some other strategy board game, or cards for awhile. On Mondays they often play some more with logic problems they have brought home from math. Michael has been teaching himself to play classical piano for the past several years and usually plays for an hour or more every evening. One of the kids might have a bath.

Monday night is hamster cage cleaning time. Nicholas puts the rodent in the ball to cruise while he cheerfully makes her environment pleasant for another week.

Neal has been working on writing a script for an episode of a British TV show called "Red Dwarf", so lately he's been doing a bit of writing most evenings.

We usually squeeze a read aloud during the evenings then the kids get ready for bed and "story" which started out with Michael making up an adventure for a cast of animal characters when the kids were small, but which has evolved into an ongoing chronicle of the adventures of Barry and Frazzle, two racoons who can fly and make themselves invisible and a cast of supporting characters who often find themselves in situations which parallel things the kids have been up to, but with far whackier results. The boys have been making up most of the story each night for the past several years, with Michael wedging a word in here or there when he can. Nicholas goes to sleep about 10 and Neal will often still be reading in his room when we go to bed sometime around midnight.

Other days have other activities. The kids have music, soccer, fencing and baseball will start up again in April. We attend "outings" and "theme days" with other homeschoolers, and once a month host a chess club which has expanded to include other board and strategy games as well. The kids get together with friends to play. I get together with friends to quilt or sing. Michael works and we get on with the day to day stuff like doing the laundry and making birthday cards or setting poems to music, or playing SimCity, painting pictures, sorting baseball cards, constructing paper aeroplanes, going to plays and concerts, cooking dinner, editing articles for a newsletter, researching slavery or the Apollo space program via the internet, or whatever.

They are learning about history, economics, literature by following up on questions which come out of discussions of books which their Dad and I are reading, or from items heard on the news, or from movies or from books they are reading, or from hearing about the interests and pursuits of their friends, or our friends.....

Somehow in all of this the kids have acquired enormous vocabularies and excellent communication skills, a working knowledge of the Canadian political system, the ability to read and write, quite a bit of math, an understanding of mortgages and RRSPs, the ability to carry a tune, a love of sports, more science facts than I picked up in my entire school career, and the ability to think critically, ask really intelligent questions, negotiate and problem solve, play cards, take responsibility and make decisions.

Sometimes they fight and sometimes they work together on things for hours at a time. Neither of them can spell anywhere near adequately right now, but that seems to be improving as they read and write more. There has been no interest in learning a second language and for some reason no one in this family can knit. Oh, well.

We totally ignore the Ministry of Education's ideas about what and how our kids should learn, but they seem to be covering a lot of the things their school peers are doing anyway.

We don't have time to "do school". Hope this is helpful, but remember that our day is just *our* day.

If you want to see how our family unschools during baseball season, see the article "Baseball as Curriculum"

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