Deschooling Week Six
Life has certainly thrown a great big curve ball to all of us. Even though we were homeschooling before all of this began, we’re still not living the way that we used to. Nobody is doing normal homeschooling right now. A lot of our learning has been based on going and seeing. I miss our Seaworld days, where we spend hours observing the animals in their tanks, visiting with the kind trainers, and petting dolphins. I miss trying new foods and walking around all day looking at things. Cash has two sides: one likes to go and do and try it out without planning things, the other likes to stay home and relax and play video games and watch movies. The second side of him is thriving right now.
I know a lot of us are stressing out because our kids aren’t on a schedule anymore. They are consuming too much screen time, they are becoming lazy sloths. I’m fighting it too. But the truth is, they are really fine. We can go through a week of boring and not productive and still live great lives. We don’t have to mark things off a chart every single day. We can take some days of dull and unexciting, because they are always followed with days where life comes at us faster than we can process it. It’s all an ebb and flow, and it’ll be alright.
On a schooling level, I’m relating a lot to this post about tidal homeschooling right now. Natural learning does not necessarily happen with a steady flow of information being learned and processed on a schedule. It’s okay if he figures out 5 math concepts in one week, then learns nothing tangible the entire next week.
Things Cash is doing right now:
Minecraft for reading assignments. If he wants to learn how to activate something, or he wants to trade a Pokemon, he has to read the chat, read the descriptions, read google. I’ve been very busy with my work and can’t always look something up for him when he needs it. So he’s learning to read from necessity. Which is great for a kid who constantly and loudly says that reading isn’t important.
Listening to audible books. We are listening to The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart, because we are working our way through the Benedict Society books. But did you also know that Audible is offering a ton of kids books for free right now?
Wild Math curriculum. This is our first foray into real curriculum, and it’s not formal at all. No worksheets or tests, just activities you can pick up that help encourage learning math. Mainly in your backyard, and all hands on.
Helping me with gardening. Also listening to my exclamations about how much everything has grown and changed day to day, because I’m obsessed. We also placed some seeds in a ziplock bag with a paper towel, taped it to the back window, and are watching them germinate.
Trying out a Marine Biology curriculum. This part might be too soon, because it’s a lot of formal “read this to the children” and then “ask them what they see in this image” kind of script, which I’m not sure fits with his learning style. I do think it has some great experiments and interesting information though, so I might try and adapt it to make it feel more natural and still use it.
Watching YouTube videos. I’m not sure the name of the channel, but every day he watches YouTube videos from a guy who gives him weird and strange facts about animals. I can’t even believe how much of it he retains. It’s not something I found for him or suggested. It’s just something he found on his own and was interested in, and it’s definitely sticking.
He has also been helping me cook.
That’s it. I hope all of you are keeping sane, staying home and staying safe!