The School Year Begins, Unschooling Goes on as Usual

Spike would be heading off to school this year if we were a schooling family. Instead he's teaching himself to read and write, playing cricket, and gardening. We just got home from a holiday with fishing, canoeing, much sight seeing, wildlife everywhere, swimming, and lots of precious family time. Seeing him doing the stuff he does just makes me so certain that unschooling is the way forward. There's no way I could take him somewhere full of strangers, wearing strange clothes, wave him goodbye and leave him there. It wouldn't feel right.

I remember when Stylish started school I felt wretched. It felt wrong on so many levels but I couldn't have begun to understand why. I wasn't an attachment parent - although I tried hard to be gentle and thoughtful I didn't understand attachment - and everyone I knew sent their kids to school. My parents were teachers my partner's parents were teachers, school was normal and expected. It was a new stage in life to be embraced. But I never really embraced it, I just kept forcing myself to keep sending her, denying the rumblings from every fibre in myself.

Now I've been unschooling for over three years I just squirm when I hear about children crying on their first days at school and mothers with broken hearts waving bravely from the gate. How have we come to deny our feelings to such an extent that we ignore primal instincts to protect our small children? Why do we believe that forcing children so small and helpless to be independent of us is the only way they will ever learn independence? I understand that children adjust to schooling and it becomes their way of life, but that still doesn't make it right.

My heart really goes out to those mamas and babies who have no choice but to school. I am painfully aware that I'm extremely lucky to own my own house and have no debt that would require me to seek employment for money. I work from home and earn a small amount of money that I hope will one day be a little more generous but I've chosen to go without financial glory because being rich doesn't mean my life is enriched whereas unschooling, vegetable gardening, living slowly, does make me richer!

I really hope that all the children who have just started school will enjoy their years within the institution, and I hope that the mothers of unhappy schooled children will find their way home ... to unschooling.

Dora the What?

When I was a kid I loved my My Little Ponies (MLP). This is one I used to have It's kinda pony like, it's got a mane and a tail,  maybe it's a bit sappy, but you get the idea. I had a play set that went with them too, it was an apple stand, ponies like apples so that kinda makes sense. I really wanted the hot air balloon so my MLP's could go adventuring but my mum said it was too expensive for a pile of plastic that was made by child slaves. 

This morning I had kids tv on and there was an ad for a MLP. It looked like this.

That's not really pony like, unless it's a pony from the far reaches of outer space. Admittedly the MLP of the 1980s is a rather abstract interpretation of an equine creature but the MLP of the 1980s was seriously lacking in one area. SEX APPEAL. Yes that' right. The modern MLP has been SEXIFIED!  Its body is thinner, its legs are longer and thinner, its eyes are ... well they're kinda hard to describe given that they're on a pink plastic pony, but at a stretch they're sexy!

Wow! That's pretty stupid right!?

So the next ad was for a Dora the Explorer toy. 

But I think I must have missed something somewhere, because Dora is an EXPLORER, not a ballerina! And Dora is a chubby little girl, not a skinny long legged thing. Call me crazy, but isn't exploring, and going on adventures more interesting than ballet? Granted some ballerinas have wonderful careers, and ballet is fantastic, but it's not about cutesy, fluffy tutus, it's about strength, creative expression, often a tragic love story, but not frou frou.

Soooo the next ad was for some strange rodent like thing. It's probably a hamster but we don't get them in Australia as far as I know, we get guinea pigs so for the sake of familiarity I'll refer to them as such.

Finally something that's not sexified! Unless there are some sexy legs hiding underneath that fur. But! There had to be a but (or two in this case) when you look at the play sets, these are apparently SHOPPING guinea pigs! Guinea pigs who like fashion and accessorising! Perish the thought of them just living like normal guinea pigs! ALL little girls love to shop and wear fashion so it's appropriate that toy guinea pigs like it too if little girls are going to play with them. You wouldn't want to stretch the imagination would you. Adventuring guinea pigs would be uncool, no one would like them EXCEPT

BOYS!!! Boys like guinea pigs that BATTLE and have missiles strapped to them!

Yes, that's right. Angry, armed to the teeth, battling guinea pigs!!!

Gee. I wonder why there is such a high divorce rate? 

Missed Opportunities

One of the reasons people insist on sending their kids to school is so they don't miss out on any opportunities. This is an admirable reason, but what if we reframed it. What if LIFE was the opportunity? What if FREEDOM was the opportunity,  and by sending kids to school for 30 hours a week + homework + extra curricular activities you were actually stealing those opportunities?

Mostly this refers to the school trips and the computers and technological stuff, but also the socialising. Let's get the socialising out of the way first. We all live in a society. School is not a society, it's a school, it can be considered a part of the community, but it's not a society, and most of what happens there is anti social, not social. When someone can give me ONE SINGLE VALUABLE BEHAVIOUR from the playground (that can't be absorbed outside of school)  I'll eat my hat. My partner would like me to start with the green furry one but I'm volunteering my sun hat because it's a bit tight. 

Technology plays a huge part in our modern society, it's understandable that parents want their kids to have the best stuff. I went to a technology highschool and learnt how to use computers, modems, and other stuff, but these days everything I learnt is completely 100% obsolete - for which I am wholly grateful! My mac is a darn site better than the old apple macs that my school had! My lessons on the internet were apparently very advanced. It took about half an hour to go through the process of connecting, and then we got to send a single message to the neighbouring boys school, who returned a one sentence message in time to shut it all down and go to lunch. I wish I could remember the message, I vaguely recall it being hormone fueled and there being a fair amount of giggling.

Tomorrow my daughter is going on camp with her girl guides troupe. We often go on day trips, to the museum, the art gallery, bush walking, camping, the swimming pool, the library, the shopping centre and a huge array of other places and events. She doesn't miss out on anything! In fact, when we go, it's often on a school day and we are close to the only people in the entire venue, so we can spend as much time on any particular item as we want. We don't waste time counting each other, waiting for each other (we happily split into groups), we can eat when we're hungry, go home when we want to, and so on. My memories of school trips to the museum are not nearly as fond as my memories of trips with my mum. 

Look at it like this. While schooled children are at school, my kids are playing in snow, cooking their own lunch, caring for their pets, reading the books they're interested in, doing the projects they're interested in, growing their own vegetables, spending time in the community, learning how adults manage the house they live in, and not being compared to anyone but themselves! They know they have to do stuff that's boring because we all clean the house together, they don't need 30 hours a week of boredom to learn how to do stuff they don't want to do, half an hour a day is sufficient!

My daughter has sleep overs, she goes to the bakery with friends,  takes the dog walking and runs into the local kids and has a chat, she spends time with her cousins, and with all that I can't believe that I was once worried about her missing opportunities! But I guess that's just another part of the propaganda of schooling isn't it. If they didn't tell you about the wonderful opportunities they offer at the local school, if they said "Send your child to us! We'll ensure that they spend 30 hours a week sitting still, being talked at, following instructions, being compared to each other, and sometimes we'll take them on a strictly regimented day trip" would we still be concerned about the many "opportunities" our kids might miss? Maybe if we view LIFE as a great opportunity, we might start to question the way we remove children from society and prevent them from living as nature intended them to live - freely - for those early, most crucial, formative years.

How to pull your kid out of school

Schooling is so indelibly imprinted in our brains that the idea of removing our kids from a school can seem overwhelming, no matter how tempting it may be. I'm going to do a post about how to go about pulling them out based on how I did it, and what worked for us. Please add your own suggestions or link to blog posts in the comments section!

Step 1: Decide you want to do it 

A lot of people set arbitrary dates - I did - like at the end of that school term, or year. I set a date for the end of the term, but after much thought decided that there was no point leaving my daughter in the school any longer, so I pulled her out three weeks earlier than I'd planned. The day I pulled her I made the snap decision sitting in the playground waiting to collect her. My sister asked me why I had set a date and I really didn't have a good answer, so I asked my daughter if she'd be happy to finish that day and ... she never went back! 

Leaving the playground that day was so liberating! We walked along the street by the school and I said to her "are you SURE you're finished" and she said "no, actually, there's one more thing" and she stuck her middle finger up, and we kept walking ... it would be a lie to include any references to sunsets here because it was only 3pm, and this was really only the beginning of a sometimes bumpy road!

Step 2: Decide what you are going to tell the school 

We had a few problems with the principal and the truancy agents, so I suggest plotting carefully. Know the laws in your state. We were threatened with legal action if I didn't return my SON ... yes SON to school. The truant agent didn't read what the principal sent very well. We were hoping to avoid registration as home schoolers but when they threatened us with legal action we chose to register quick smart. 

Given my time again I would tell them we were going on a holiday, moving state, or maybe even joining a canabalistic religious sect. I would ask for all the appropriate paperwork as though I was planning to re-enroll my daughter in another school. I had a lot of reasons to pull her out though, and I wanted to tell them how lousy their school was. At the end of the day, the school wasn't my problem, I should have left them to work it out by themselves. I doubt they changed anything based on what I had to say. 

Find out what registering for homeschool in your state involves, be prepared to do it if necessary - or perhaps you'd rather register, that's entirely up to you, just know how it all works beforehand. 

Try this link

Emergency curriculum kit costs $45

The curriculum I used - feel free to copy it!

Step 3 : Now you're on your own!

A child who has been in school for a long time will have a lot of stress to let out, and a lot of de-schooling to do. There will possibly be some grief even if your child is really excited about it. Changes often bring grief. We tackled this in two ways. Firstly we did exactly what we would do on school holidays .... NOTHING! Three weeks of NOTHING! Holidays are normally two weeks, but we snuck an extra one in for good measure. Then at the end of that my daughter started to do what I've read is quite normal, and worry about not learning (because until now learning had all be judged and set in front of her ... and boring) so I wrote lists of useless activities for her to do and told her she was learning. Lists included things like 

Read the bus timetable (this was maths)

Read a book (english)

Make a pie chart of the colours of cars that drive past our house (maths again)

Choose a country, cook dinner based on that country's national dish (geography)

Research the ghost stories from the Tower of London (history)

And you get the picture. It was pretty mundane stuff but it made her feel like she was learning. The first week I put 30 things on the list and gave her a week to do it, telling her to ask for help if she needed it. She had the completed list to me two days early. The next week I put 20 things on the list, she got it to me early. The next week we did 20 things again but she had a bit of a panic to get it to me on time. The week after that she didn't finish the list and stressed that she hadn't done a good job. I asked her if she thought there were too many things on the list - she said she did. The next week I put less things on the list. Lists were getting boring by now .... so I asked her if she'd like to stop doing lists and (huge sigh of relief) she said she would. 

Step 4: The work of de-schooling begins

De-schooling will apparently take six months for every year of school your child attended. I found that this wasn't entirely accurate. What I found was that de-schooling was a process of ebb and flow. One step forward, two steps back. It was like that for the next 18 months. She'd binge on tv, stay up late, engage in mind numbing activities, and basically she achieved NOTHING that was visible. But underneath all the destructive behaviour was a whole lot of unwinding, and learning to trust herself, to self regulate herself and her activities, learning to entertain herself and basically becoming a free spirit again, she had to reclaim herself from the institutionalised worker bee she'd become. 

During this time I had to really look at myself and my own beliefs. it was hard to stop myself from making value judgements about the worthiness of what she was doing some days! It was hard not to suggest that she do something that used her brain (perhaps beg would be a better word). Sometimes I failed, sometimes I succeeded. I had to do a lot of reading about unschooling to keep me on track, to stop myself from being scared about it, and I had to really look at what I'd spent my entire life believing. It was a journey of self discovery for me, my daughter, and the whole family!

Step 5: wake up an unschooler!

De-schooling ebbs and flows, I really can't stress this enough. Sometimes it will be you that needs to unpack your stuff, sometimes it will be your kids. But eventually, one day you will wake up and realise that you are unschooling. You'll have stopped looking for learning opportunities, your kids won't be bored anymore, you'll look at the learning after it's happened and be amazed (and maybe even a little bit smug) at how far you've come, and how happy your kids are, at how liberating the whole experience is!

How big is a whale and other important questions.

For some time now Spikee has been comparing how big thing are to how big a whale is. I decided it was time to actually show him how long whales are so after some quick googling we found measurements for bluewhales, hump back whales, orcas, whale sharks, great white sharks, and finally the humble dolphin. 

We wrote all our information down on a bit of paper and headed to the park with some chalk and a tape measure. We drew a chalk line to mark the place we started measuring from and then drew another line every 5 metres until we hit the 30m mark, and the length of a blue whale, then we added all the other animals to our line.

He was quite impressed by how big they are, even though he had believed they were bigger, and the rest of us were rather daunted by the length of a great white. I knew they were big at 6.5m, but looking at that distance made me even more certain that I love swimming in pools!

I'm reading the first Harry Potter book to Spikee and he's really loving it. He has traded in his Superman cape temporarily, in exchange for some Harry Potter glasses and a wand. We're going to see if we can find some material and sew him a cape. He loves dressing up so much, far more than Stylish ever did, and this week he is refusing to answer to any name but Harry (given we'd only just gotten used to calling him Superman it's presenting us with quite a challenge)

Stylish has finally decided to give Harry Potter a go, and has read The Philosopher's Stone in two days flat. She's starting The Chamber of Secrets tonight. I think that seeing the movie really piked her interest. We've seen all the movies together, but the final one really seemed to awaken something in her. When asked this morning if she preferred the movie or the book, she had to confess to thinking the book was better. 

Stylish has been so creative with her frog tanks lately. She really adores her frogs. I'm told there are 7 of them, two species. She's been finding all her ferns and mossy branches at the park down the road, and she found a heap of good stuff when we had our snow hunting picnic. 

She also has a scorpion that came home on some drift wood she found at the beach. The scorpion is quite fascinating, it's quite enjoying its' diet of cockroaches (stow aways from Sydney), and we all love seeing it grab hold of them and poison them - maybe we're sadists, or maybe we've just lived with a few too many cockroaches!

Word Count

It seems that Angus has really started talking and I thought I should write a list of his words while I can still count them!

Mum

Dad

Hot

Up

Hello

Na Na Na (which is booby for some reason!?)

La la la (like Elmo's song)

Ernie (Bert and Ernie)

Most mornings he wakes us up by saying La La La, so we end up singing Elmo's song to him, every time he's anywhere near the fire he says "ot ot ot ot" very seriously,  and when I'm carrying him he likes to say "up" lots. I just love this stage! I can't believe we're planning a 1st birthday party already.

My kids could have been at school

Today we woke up with next to nothing planned. We decided to make the best of the winter by taking a picnic lunch and setting out to find some snow. We drove towards the Tahune rainforest and took the Hartz  Mountain turnoff.

It's all dirt road from the turnoff. We probably drove about fifteen minutes up the narrow road until we turned a corner and suddenly there was snow beside the road. There was no shortage of excited squeals from the back of the car. 

We kept driving until we couldn't go any further. The front bumper bar was dragging through snow and it was thick on either side of the tyres from 4wd vehicles before us. We left the car in the middle of the road and clambered out of the car to have a look.

We all threw some snowballs and climbed up the side of the road in the slippery white snow, loosing our footing when we weren't expecting it. Then we built a snow person and decorated it with bark, stones, and my scarf. Angus told us that the snow was "hot" which we assume was because his hands were burning from holding a little piece of it.

After we tired of snow we had to drive in reverse to get down again, there was nowhere to do a U turn safely in the snow.  We reversed a couple of km's and then found somewhere dry to turn easily. Then we headed for the picnic ground.

The picnic ground is such a pristine area, just outside the national park. We set up camp at a table there, ate our lunch, which was sausage sandwiches on homemade bread with baby rocket and home laid eggs with balsamic vinegar, chocolate and shortbread. 

Then we lit a fire using lots of wood that we found on the ground. It was quite wet so it took a good while to get it going, but once we did it definitely took the chill away. It was probably about 5C.  Then the big kids ran around and explored, finding lots of cool stuff down by the river for Stylish's frog tanks, and playing with toy cars, and Angus and A and I kept warm by the fire. Angus had lots of booby. 

In keeping with out new unschooling of food, I handed out liberal servings of shortbread biscuits as we headed to the picnic spot, and Spikee happily ate two home laid boiled eggs for his lunch.

THIS is why we moved here! In Sydney 20mins driving would take us to a large shopping centre ... here it takes us to a National park and in winter, to snow. 

Unschooling all of life

Banana and chocolate muffins

I often say to people that unschooling is easy, it's just LIFE, and with all of our lives we do unschool except one. Food. So now I've decided to take the plunge. What clocked me over was when I caught myself saying "but that wouldn't work for my kids". 

I was instantly reminded of all the people I've heard saying exactly the same thing only about unschooling. It was a light bulb moment for me. Since then I've been going over it in my head quite regularly. I've come to the conclusion that it might work with my kids!

They self regulate bed time, dressing themselves, computer time, TV time ... the only thing we don't unschool is food. I've had the "that wouldn't work for my kids" broken record playing over and over for quite a while now.

Bliss balls with cacao, berries, and coconut

So why do I think it won't work? 

Because my son has a damaged gut and he maintains the unhealthy flora with sugar, yeast, and carbohydrate cravings. However he will willingly eat quite a number of healthy foods, fruit, vegetables, yogurt, eggs, and nuts to name a few. 

So why do I think it will work?

Because the idea that children are unable to self regulate is not supported by common sense, nor any facet of my son's life. 

Why do I want to do it?

Because I believe it will self regulate his eating, and balance his cravings for unhealthy food with healthy food.

So now that I've gotten that off my chest I have to learn more about how it works and do some planning so that we can start soon!

Sugar free berry cheesecake 

Three Reasons to (NOT) Send Your Kids to School

1. So they learn to do unpleasant things. 

You pay bills, you clean the toilet, you wash the dishes and  many other mundane tasks. Is that because you went to school? I just do it coz it needs doing and I'm an adult. The fact that many of us live so irresponsibly when we leave school is proof that schools don't teach kids do do unpleasant stuff, they are just unpleasant! 

2. So they can be bullied, thus teaching them how to deal with bullying as adults. If bullying at school is such an important rite of passage, and it yields so many crucial lessons, why is domestic violence not credited with building resilience and creating character? When was the last time you heard a strong admirable person say that they owe all their success to the bullies from school?

3. So you can have a break from the kids. While you're driving them to and from school, washing and ironing their uniforms, scouring the playground looking for lunch boxes or hats,  and arguing about homework. Thats not really a break, it sounds like a second job to me!

The Propaganda of Schooling

I was recently asked what I would do if my child asked to go to school. My response was that it would depend on why they wanted to go, and whether or not that was a reasonable expectation of schooling.

I'm an unschooling mama but I'm not a stupid mama. If my child wants to go bike riding at midnight without a helmet, it's my job to say no because that would be unsafe. In my view, schooling is also unsafe. It's unsafe physically, emotionally, and because I take education very seriously, it is educationally unsafe as well. So it is likely that I would say no to any immediate request they had regarding school attendance. 

Some people might say that they enjoyed school, but it's like playing russian roulette. You may or you may not do well academically, you may or may not get teased relentlessly, you may or may not enjoy what you do there. One thing is certain, it's easier to excel at something when you enjoy it. My kids are too young to know how that works, but I'm not, so I get the final say on where they are educated. 

Society has a lot invested in making schools appealing to both children and parents. We need schools to churn out the worker bees that fill the most mundane jobs, the factory workers, the check out chicks, the sales reps, and the garbage collectors. Now, let's be realistic, those jobs are important in our society, but they're also unfulfilling, and undervalued on all fronts.

Despite what television shows / movies / books set in schools would have us believe, schools are not encouraging hotbeds of creativity. Not one single famous inventor, or successful entrepreneur ever credits their schooling years for their success. They all credit either their university, their family, or their life experience.

If sitcoms suddenly started portraying schools in their true light, with peer pressure, festering bullying, high stress levels, boorish classes, obsolete homework, backstabbing, sexism, smoking, rape and rejection more parents might seek out an alternative.

When any of these realities are shown in a creative dramatic context the ending is always happy. The bully learns hie / her lesson, the individual child is celebrated, safety is restored and life returns to "normal".

In reality a bullied child is rarely vindicated, a unique child learns to conform, and schooling maintains that status quo very successfully. 

If my child wanted to go to school because of a story they read about school, or a movie they watched I would explain to them that what they are expecting is not the reality of institutionalised education. In reality schooling involves many hours of sitting still and being talked at, and very few hours of the fun times shown on tv. 

My answer to the question "Would you let your child go to school if they wanted to?" is a resounding MAYBE. Firstly I would establish whether or not their desire was based on reality or propaganda. Then I would try and meet those desires in a home setting. Then if my child still believed that they had unmet needs that a school could fulfill I would have to consider schooling them.

I've been through it before, and each time our family encounters this hurdle to unschooling the outcome is more unschooling, and I think that's because it really is the best thing we've ever done as a family!

Natural Learning: firing on all cylinders!

Yesterday Spikee spent half an hour quizzing us about fire so today we did an experiment to show him how fire needs oxygen.

We got a 3 litre milk bottle and sawed the bottom off it. Then we stuck an candle into a jar so it wouldn't fall over. We filled the sink with water, put the candle / jar in it and lit the candle. Then we covered it with the bottle and watched as the flame went out. We did it again, and this time, as the flame dimmed we took the lid off the bottle and watched it spring back up again.

(Goofy grin anyone!?)

After that we went for a walk to the park. We did the platypus walk along the river and as we walked out onto the lookout we spotted a platypus! We stood transfixed, watching it dive down and come up somewhere new, for about 10 mins before Spikee announced that he wanted to go to the skate park. 

Ebb and Flow

I get about the online unschooling traps a bit, and one of the things I notice is a certain level of guilt about not facilitating consistently at all times. I know that I've felt it too! So lately I've been dissecting it a bit and I have a few thoughts I'd like to share.

First off let's compare unschooling with school for just a moment. When children attend school there are holidays and weekends, and schooling parents don't feel guilty that their children aren't learning during those times (well some might, but we can't cover all bases). Also, schooled children take mental breaks throughout the day, every day they attend school! After all who can sit in a room being talked to non stop and not zone out, at least occasionally? So it's probably safe to compare the ebb periods with week ends or holidays or just plain daydreaming. There's nothing wrong with daydreaming! I bet some of the greatest inventions, novels, scientific theories etc were dreamed up when their creator was tuning out. 

Unschooling parents are most commonly schooled parents. I can make that assumption because the overwhelming majority of people in our society attend the institution for their education. To that end, we tend to have ingrained ideas of what education and learning should look like, and deschooling ourselves is a complicated and ongoing process that I suspect takes longer than we know, and may not ever be truly completed, although we may come close. (actually I think deschooling ebbs and flows too, but that's another post). Sometimes our kids are hell bent on extracting every bit of knowledge they can possibly attain through all manner of sources, and in those times we feel involved, virtuous, we feel as though our choice to unschool is paying off because we can measure their progress. But when they hit that brick wall and the ebb stage take over, us parents often feel a bit wobbly about it all. But you know what? It's impossible to live in a state of "nil learning". IMPOSSIBLE! Even though what they're learning may not outwardly appear educational, or it might not appear at all, they are still learning stuff. They really are!

School analogy: A kid may go to school all day and learn "nothing" (many of us have asked a schooled child what they learnt only to be told "nothing") But on the bus on the way home they learn about bus route, bus fare, reading timetables, it's just that the schooling parent might not notice that and assign it any value, but the unschooling parent does. Using public transport to navigate your way around the world is a really useful and worthy skill.

Right now we're on an ebb period. Sometimes I feel like I should go and razz the kids up, get them off their computer games and make them do something that my previously institutionalised, schooled self deems appropriate. And sometimes in the past I have done just that. But this time I'm not doing anything. I'm not standing in their way, I'm not banning them from Mario Brothers, I'm not telling them to go outside and play, and I'm certainly not handing them text books and expecting them to complete set exercises. Why? Well strike the text books off first, simply by saying that they voluntarily complete work in text books when they feel like it, if I go and force them to do it they won't enjoy the books anymore and they won't learn from them if they're just using them to get me off their case. As for going outside and playing, well they do that every day anyway. They walk the dog, they play chasings, they sometimes play a ball game and most days they engage is some loud wrestling match that disturbs the overall peace of the household significantly. 

I have a feeling we'll soon get flowing again.

the ebb, sleeping near Mario Brothers

Our classroom this week

our classroom is where the faeries live!

our classroom is where the frogs live

our classroom is cold!

our classroom is reflective

our classroom is in the kitchen

Gladiator fights in Antarctica!

Spikee has always been interested in history, and he recently discovered Gladiators. In keeping with our "channeling revolting habits into good things" modus operandi we thought this was the perfect outlet for his rough play.

We hired a book about gladiators from the library and discovered that people used to hire gladiators in the days before dvd hire shops. We learnt all about diet, life for fighters, training, various types of gladiators and how they fought and defended themselves and a whole heap of other stuff.

Then we found ourselves in possession of some foam swords and in order to "channel revolting habits" we organised a gladiator day!

The kids made shields and practiced sword fighting, and then A and I took denarii (chocolate melts) and chose which gladiator we'd like to hire. We examined their muscles and asked them what type of fight they entertained with. Then we took them to the Colosseum, placed our chocolate denarii bets and they fought while we cheered from the comfortable seating by the arena. A fun time was had by all ... even those involved in the dramatic throes of death.

Examining the Gladiators for hire. I selected a fine, fit gladiator and named her Gladiola.

The fierce and entertaining fighting!

A's gladiator Titus, is victorious whilst I jeer at Gladiola for her poor fighting performance.

At the end of the games I had won 8 denarii and A had won 10. We were kind ... we fed it all to the gladiators.

The World Will Stop Spinning Without Maths

Some of the best numeracy I learnt, I learnt in the bath!

I've stopped calling it maths, I now say numeracy. Because, as with literacy there are many facets necessary in order to function in a modern society. Literacy is reading, writing, and comprehension, maths is sums. Numeracy is mathematical literacy, reading and interpreting graphs, (like timetables) telling the time, fractions (for cooking) percentages (for shopping) and many other things which we use daily but are unaware of.

So now we've covered that I should explain the reason this post is dedicated to numeracy / maths and doomsday. Today I was in a cafe and someone asked me what school Stylish goes to. I naturally responded with the truth, or a version thereof, "we homeschool". Technically we unschool or pursue natural learning, but I'm not playing semantics with strangers in cafes when all I want to do it eat my raspberry cream yo-yo biscuit and imbibe caffeine. The first thing she said to me was "how do you teach her maths?". Fair question! In fact it was the first question I asked before I began this journey. It's also the most common query I encounter as a homeschooling or natural learning facilitator. I get asked this practically every single time I mention it to someone with no experience of life without school.

There are a couple of reasons for this and they are both a result of institutionalised education and cultural indoctrination. Firstly, because of the grading that students are given for their ability to correctly complete arbitrary mathematical tasks. Grading fails students at every step of the way because it does not reflect numeracy nor the practical application of mathematics in life. It also fails to represent the full extent of variations between student capability. Whilst a student may not successfully complete tasks correctly in a test given one year they may well correctly complete the same test one year later. Children's brains all develop at different rates, thus making the comparison of their abilities a pointless exercise. Secondly, the over emphasis placed on mathematics within the educational institution. Whilst numeracy is very important, most of what is taught in schools as "maths" is not, and children will never encounter it in their adult lives. I am confident that I'm not the only adult who has never needed a quadratic equation. Which is just as well because based on the school's system of grading me on mathematics, I was a complete and unmitigated failure! Had they graded me on numeracy however, I would have been deemed successful.

So all the people who are curious about my ability to teach maths assume that she has to learn quadratic equations, complex algebra, calculus and all the other things they teach in maths classes that most kids hate and many fail to absorb. They think that because that's what their school told them and most likely it is what their parents believed. But that's not how we do it. As natural learners we recognise that the goal of education is to make children ready to live as independent adults not to teach them every single thing there is to know, because that is impossible, and fortunately we are never too old to learn new skills should we require them for real life.

All these people (including myself about two and a half years ago) also based their personal valuation of their numeracy on the grading they were given in a school and not the practical daily applications of their mathematical skills.

There are some fundamental problems with the way that schooling both teaches and judges the children they are entrusted to educate. The system leaves many children thinking they are dumb because they can not do completely useless, overly complicated maths. It leaves children (and adults in turn) feeling as if they do not have functional numeracy even though a more thorough dissection of this view would lead them to believe they are quite competent mathematically. There is no reason for children and adults alike to abhor maths other than the over importance and harsh judgment of their abilities as decided by the institution..

Unschooled children never encounter these obstacles to their numeracy, they just naturally absorb numbers and the skill to work with them. They are naturally driven to become independent adults and so they work on acquiring life fueled numeracy. They work with mathematics at a pace that they able to, and acquire the skills necessary to function in an adult capacity. The same way children learn to walk and talk, they absorb maths, and they find it interesting and they deem it something to strive for.

So that is how my kids learn maths despite my institutionally graded failings! They learn maths

passionately and they never lose faith in their abilities so they never stop trying to learn. And that is just one more reason that I love natural learning, or unschooling. It just makes sense on so many levels if you can get past the indoctrination we all live with.

Literacy taking off!

Today we went for a drive to the shops and out of the blue Spikee piped up from the backseat "S is for Snake isn't it, Mum". Then he went through lots of words and told us what letter they started with for about another half hour. He is also getting really good at reading numbers thanks to all our UNO playing lately.

Stylish is enjoying guides more every week and starting to form some friendships with the other girls there, and her other friend will be coming to visit for a few weeks at around the time she turns 13. I'm sure they are already planning lots of mischief and steamy talks about spotty boys.

Angus is completely mobile now and crawls about the house baby proofing it for us. He has a new push along walking toy that he loves because he is able to stand up on it and hold on, but he's even starting to let go and balance for a very short time now. He is just off 8 months and is getting his fourth tooth in two weeks (top left), he isn't an easy teether, he's been miserable the poor little thing. He's currently fast asleep in my lap, wearing an all in one polar fleece suit with dinosaurs on it. I'm sure it's the height of baby fashion!

Adding to the family

Today we got some new furry friends for the kids. They really wanted something small and cuddly so we got them a guinea pig each. Spikee has called his "Atomic Betty Rat" and Stylish has called hers "Guiness" although owing to the beer reference she's thinking of renaming it when she thinks of a name.

Poor Spikee came off his bike at the park yestersay and has a HUGE bruise on his face, grazing and a cut the size of a 20c piece on the inside of his cheek. He's also got a badly grazed knee and a cut on his forehead from where the helmet hit the ground and quite frankly I'm very relieved he had it on. I was reading something not long ago about how helmets are no use. Well maybe they aren't in a collision with a car, but for falling off the bike when the dog wants your pink crocs .... they're ace. He would have cracked his skull without it, no question in my mind.

Stylish is very pleased about the guinea pigs, she's been hassling me to get rats for ages and I kept saying no because she used to let them run around the house, but now we have the pink croc chasing dog that's not really an option. The pet shop said the guinea pigs were skittish, but they look pretty tame to me, one in each lap as the kids watch a movie!

Angus is crawling all over the place, he has two teeth through and it threatening to get a new top one any day now. He is really miserable with the teething. He stands up on furniture now and is close to stepping around holding onto stuff. He is making all sorts of baby babble noises and is starting to wave. He loves it when we sit out in the garden and he can crawl around.

Yesterday we took advantage of a glorious Autumn day and drove down to Southport for a picnic. The kids ran up and down the beach finding shells and feathers. We also found dead squid like things that when you walk on them they ooze purple ink. That's why I assume they were like squid, they looked like seaweed other than that! We saw a starfish, and wallaby, penguin, crab and dog footprints which we're sure was edumacational for them. A has drilled holes through many of the shells and the kids are making necklaces out of them.

Welcome to our classroom!

Our teachers are our family!
Our classroom is in the air (cable cars at Taronga zoo)Our classroom is at the park

Our classroom is in the back yardOur classroom is in the chook shed
Our classroom is in the sun
Our classroom is in the mud

Our classroom is out the front
Our classroom is in the rain forestOur classroom is a boat in the garden

Our classroom is in the bath.
Our classroom is in the creek
Our classroom is in the SPA BATH!
Our classroom is in the frog tank