Non-Formal Homeschooling
I should start by saying that I am not a parent, but I plan to homeschool when I do have children (God willing, of course). I had this idea about how I want to do it, and although it is years and years away, I get excited about it and wanted to share. lol Also, I apologize if this is already something that people do...but I've never heard of anyone doing it exactly like this before. Let me know what you think.
If you don't know what un-schooling is, it's basically where parents are legally homeschooling their children, but they aren't actually teaching them anything. The children only learn what they want to learn, when they want to learn it. For the record, this is NOT what I am suggesting I want to do, but hearing about this did give me an idea.
I want my children to know things like math, reading, and spelling at least as well as everyone else their age, so un-schooling is not an option for me. However, I thought about it, and there IS a way to un-school without the kids having all of the control and learning nothing. My idea is to make a list at the beginning of each year of all of the things that they need to learn that year. Then, instead of having a formal school day every day with books and everything, you just casually teach those things in their every day lives without them even knowing that it's school. For example, teaching a kindergartener to count money. Instead of sitting and reading about/doing work sheets about how to count money, you can just take them to the grocery store with you and explain money while in the check out line, and then have them practice counting it for you. Another example would be learning to read. You can use those flash card games or Leap Frog computer games when they are young to teach them what each letter sounds like, and then you can turn that into reading by reading their favorite books with them (like every parent does anyways) and having them sound out the letters to make a word. Those are only a few examples.
Of course, as they get older, there will be a few things that you have to teach with actual text books because there will be no way to apply them to your life (algebra, for example). But for the most part when they are young, they can learn almost everything they need to know without even knowing that they are in school. My reasoning for wanting this is because so many homeschooled families have told me that they have trouble ballancing school time and family time, and I think it would be neat if they could simply learn casually during your family time. My other reason is that I want to teach them things that they are going to need to know in life rather than a bunch of information that they will forget as soon as we are done learning it. It's different from un-schooling because the children still have to learn everything that the parents want them to learn, but they are just living their lives and being taught along the way instead of calling it "school" and having a set amount of time for it every day. People have said that doing this will make your kids undisciplined because they won't know that they need to do work when they are told to, but I don't really see how that's true. They will still have to help a lot around the house, obey whatever they are told to do, and do school work whenever it is something that can't be taught in every day life. I don't think that not having to sit and stare at a book for hours every day is going to make them undisciplined.
Does anyone here do anything similar? Did it work well for you? Are there any reasons why you see this being a bad idea?
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Many times they become so interested they take off on their own and become much more skillful or knowledgable about whatever it is than me LOL.
I plan on unschooling certain subjects (like science) until my LOs are like in 2nd or 3rd grade and other things I'll just follow their lead on, like reading and handwriting and stuff.
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