Unschooling and Planning 3

The practicalities of unschooling . The nuts and bolts. What we do each day. How we do it - apart from just living and learning, that is.

Well, some of this is our routines, our pegs - our outside activities, our regular chores and meals and interests; regular, ongoing interests like piano/guitar/music/Latin/reading/movies...

Other things we need reminders for ~ things like getting to the library ( but, never, somehow, getting our books back on time. We help the libraries build new additions, in each state in which we have lived, simply via our fines!).

Perhaps we want to do more nature study or pick up a video from the video store. Or I want to strew certain items or books or introduce a new book or activity...
Once a month we re-do the bulletin board and plan a centrepiece for the liturgical year or plan for feast days that month.

How do we remember to do these things?

I use post it notes and my old, faithful diary and to do list.

Nothing special. Post it sticky notes can be moved from day to day or stuck on a wall, a fridge, on the breakfast bar, on a book on a child!

When my older three sons were little, I used to call this the "post it note form of homeschooling".

We keep the Post-it's factory in production ~ but it is so handy to have a note, a reminder, a to do list, that can be stuck on something , on a diary page, wherever, and moved ahead or around as it suits our schedule. And our life.

In this vein, I have given the kids their own diaries, in which to write goals and ideas and things they want to do, scratch down budget notes, and so on. Some kids use these more than others and that is okay. They all use Post-its - wonder where they picked up that habit?

And I have seen this Lifestyle of Learning Journal. A free printable!

This could also be a fun thing for the kids to do, to write in every day or so. Another form of unschooling "lesson plans"? Perhaps some of mine will be interested in this form of an unschooling journal...

Finally, being drawn to the unschooling philosophy, I remember, in my unschooling plans and in thinking about unschooling, the role of the child and of the Holy Spirit in our education. Of serendipity and of choice. Of relationship and of prayer.

"We can sum up very quickly what people need to teach their own children. First of all, they have to like them, enjoy their company, their physical presence, their energy, their foolishness and their passion. They have to enjoy all their talk and questions, and enjoy equally trying to answer all those questions.

They have to think of their children as friends, indeed very close friends,...They have to trust them as people, resect their fragile dignity, treat them with courtesy, take them seriously. They have to feel in their own hearts some of their children's wonder, curiousity, and excitement about the world....

Children don't need, don't want, and couldn't stand six hours of teaching a day, even if parents wanted to do that much. To help them find out about the world doesn't take that much adult iput. Most of what they need, parents have been giving them since birth....They need, much of the time, to share your life...in short, to go some of the places you go, see and do some of the things that interest you, get to know some of your friends,..." John Holt, Teach Your Own.