While we don’t call ourselves unschoolers, we have a very unusual homeschool schedule. Or lack of schedule and minimal ‘requirements.’ After a certain age, my kids make their own plans for how to spend their day. When they’re young, we do more one-on-one.
Sometimes, a youngster isn’t into what I’m offering. Sometimes I’m busy and don’t offer much. Then they take the day on their own and ‘school’ themselves. Then it looks a lot like the families I know who do call themselves unschoolers.
I decided to keep track of what my youngest did when there was no assignment, encouragement, or planned activity. While I didn’t tail him everywhere, I tried to keep track of his activities.
Here is a list of activities my 7-year-old son decided to undertake on a recent day with the approximate time spent on each. It’s free-form, self-directed elementary education!
- Look at the world map on the wall and ask me to check the weather in various far-flung places, 30m
- Set up a post office in the living room and demand we use the services, deliver mail to us, 90m
- Swing on the inside swing while calling out states to his sisters, asking if they know the capitals, 15m
- Watch videos about jellyfish and digging holes from Mystery Science, 30m
- Ask and have a conversation with his dad about what jury duty is and how it works, 15m
- Read easy readers to himself on the couch, 45m
- Ask me to read to him, and then read together, 20m
- Take out the recycling, organize the shoes, 10m
- Set up a Playmobil town, 60m
- Help bake an apple pie, 20m
- Annotate an old worksheet with his approval or disapproval for each item, 10m
- Watch the Smithsonian’s baby cheetah live cam, 10m
- Draw 3-D shapes on the whiteboard in the kitchen and show them off, 20m
- Play with friends in the woods, 2h
- Invent a game where he spins a fidget spinner and tries to put a pen through the spinning hole, 10m
- Dig through a bag of LED light strings and attempt to untangle them, 30m
This is a perfectly lovely way to spend a day and a decent education. Sometimes days are more planned, more structured, and filled with more opportunities provided by adults. Sometimes he’s working on a specific project for the whole day. We’re always reworking the balance and letting the learner inform where to direct our efforts.
