Child-led Learning Blog Post: Free of School, Poolside Challenge

The stars aligned and somehow I arranged a five-night stay at North Myrtle Beach one month in advance of my birthday week.  It has been three years since my family has used our timeshare points to go anywhere and three years since we have gone to the beach.  We live only three and a half hours from Myrtle Beach.  Life has been busy and crazy, crazy busy.  Yet, here I am with my three amazing children and my awesome husband.

We are homeschoolers, unschoolers, life-learners.  I use the term homeschooling for most people especially those who are not homeschooling or when I first meet people.  If you are a homeschooler and I feel comfortable talking to you, I will tell you that I am an unschooler.  I don’t like that term because it is negative.  I like to say we are “living and learning” yet I use it to identify myself as someone who does not purchase curriculum in an effort to recreate school at home.   We live life together and we learn.

I learn more from my children than I could possibly teach them.  I choose to homeschool when my oldest was school age.  He had attended a parent’s morning out, preschool, as part-time daycare from age one until he was four.  From that experience, I saw that he was learning academics at home with us based on his interests and not at “school”.  I wanted to continue to nurture his love of learning and allow him to learn at his pace and in his way.  I respected my child as an individual.  I attended 13 years of public school and then four years of college.  I did well in school, got all As and Bs, except once I got a C in handwriting once and there was a C-, on a curve,  in Anatomy in college.  Shh- don’t tell my employers!  Like they care.

Read more of this post on my Child-led Learning Word Press blog:

http://wp.me/p3fDXw-2S