free range homeschooling by mom of beach

I was reading the blog of an Unschool Mom who lives in a state which requires quarterly reports.  At the time I read it I was jealous.  I wanted to write about all the things we do, all the little things that don’t make it into a blog or coffee conversation- all the technical jumble.  And I am so pleased with how well home school is going right now I found I wanted to write about it.  Yet each time I tried it was a big bore to read & quite frankly to write.  Even worse than boring it wasn’t really accurate, not that I wasn’t being honest but that one day didn’t represent what we were doing.  It didn’t do us justice.    

What I realized was this: our home schooling doesn’t have time it is time and if I want to really share what is going on I would have to be willing to take the time to write a daily account of it.  And guess what? I’m not willing to do that any more than I would be willing to write a detailed account of chicken chasing.  

I don’t want to write it & I’m guessing you don’t want to read it.

What I will share is as Beach has gotten older the jumping from subject to subject (25 minutes spelling, 30 minutes math…) has gone away, replaced by long stretches of staying within the same subject.  And I am loving it!!!!  I organize piles (usually 3-4) one for each subject ‘pending’ on the kitchen table.  Each pile has games, books, art ideas, etc supporting the topic/subject.  I let Beach pick where we start and we go until we run out of fun things to do.  Then we start a new pile.  Some piles take days others only hours to complete.  The materials in the piles can change to support new branching ideas or can be cut due to loss of interest.  I would call it loosely Unit Study and I would now say we are Free Range Homeschoolers, that is we are Homeschoolers with Unschooling tendencies.  

Okay that explains the center of what is working for us right now.  It does very little to really tell you what it is like in the middle of the day to sit in the back of the field on a wool blanket eating fresh baked cookies and reading Little House on the Prairie.  ~Timelessness~

That’s so funny I now have a second big goal in life: First one is I never want to run 26.2 miles straight and the second one is I never want to have to write a quarterly report on home schooling.   At this rate I might even get smart enough to not want to climb Everest…