Deschooling Week Three
We are closing in on the end of week three, and then we’ll be starting Spring Break. We are headed to Oklahoma, where Cash will visit his dad for the week, and I’ll work and catch up with friends and family. It sounds funny to say we’ll be taking the week off, since we are still in the deschooling period, but since I am still recording every day’s activities and notes and my reflections, we’ll still call it a break.
This last week has been great. Cash is still pretty averse to any formal learning, which is probably to be expected given where he came from. Whenever I get discouraged by this I remind myself of a few things:
Experts recommend up to 6 full months for someone in his position for deschooling. We’ve been at it less than 20 days.
He is learning. Every day he watches YouTube videos about different exotic animals, then recites all the facts for me. Friday night, he spent 20+ minutes telling my boyfriend all the cool facts that he learned this week, and he didn’t even realize he was reciting something he learned.
He’s healthier and happier than he’s been in ages.
The discussions and rabbit trails are alive and well. We’ve both learned so much every day just by following his interests. Coincidentally: Did you know that a coyote is actually faster than a roadrunner in real life? Thanks Looney Tunes!
This week, we spent a lot of time at Seaworld. They are having Dolphin Days, and we got to attend a special event where they talked about how they train and exercise the dolphins. Then we got to go to a special up close encounter where we fed them (Cash got to touch a big dead fish!), and pet them and give them commands. Cash also spent ages in his favorite Arctic Exhibit, hanging out with the walruses, seals, and beluga whales. Did you know that if you stay for more than 3 minutes, you can observe their behaviors and actually start to tell them apart?
We covered Presidential elections, the WWII pilot who O’Hare airport was named after, Tasmanian devils, road runners, coyotes, deadly ants, U.S. States, minecraft servers, making homemade caramel corn, building a solar rover, gardening, big kid go kart driving, vaccinations, and learned a new vocab word: chippy.
So, overall: not a bad week. Still fighting with my tendencies to pull out lesson plans and curriculums and mark things off on a chart, but until he’s ready for those waters, we’ll keep discussing which animal would beat which in a fight.