We are settling into a new week which also means we are about to get back into some unschooling and curiosity adventures here. Because we tend to have two days with appointments, I try to create as flexible a schedule as possible; even so, I also tend to have internal debates and dialogue with myself about needing to do more school while arguing that we’re doing plenty. Either way, my hope always is to encourage all of us to look at our homeschooling as adventures in curiosity and things we want to learn more about. That always starts with the nonfiction picture books but also includes our read aloud options.
In an effort to create a bit of harmony across the different set things we study but also complement those aspects of our unschool approach, I took some time to select a few supplemental books and activities for us to dive into. I like to provide and include options that I hope might appeal to each of our teenagers and find a way to pique their interests and natural curiosity. I am all about the organic process of learning, and, when I get to watch that happening, it brings me not only joy but a sense of getting this homeschooling thing right.
Recently, the greatest encouragement for getting this schooling journey right came from my 17 year old when she said she doesn’t necessarily like to refer to things as school projects or pursuits because she considers what I do with them, and the way I have tried to approach our days and structure our learning as something well-above plain old school. This came in response to a conversation we had about possibly finding some books and other materials related to her interest in hair metal/80s rock music, specifically around how bands create their albums. As a caveat to that conversation, I was quick to point out (based on some pushback in the past to not “making this or that about school”) that she needed to embrace more readily these sorts of options and projects.
What I’m noticing is that there is more interest and even willingness in our school things. It doesn’t always work, but what I do appreciate is we have greater options these days because there is not only flexibility in our days and our schedules, but in all of us as we consider what to focus on each day. And, as I’ve written about previously, this approach serves our neurodivergent family pretty well. Honestly, I look forward to our reading times and even the Mystery of History study we do. I look forward to getting to learn alongside my teenagers, but I also look forward to watching the multiple ways the two of them are growing and discovering new ideas. Even more, I like the way we can be mutually surprised in our school time, either by a story or some event in history or about a person none of us had ever heard about before that day. That’s what puts the un in our schooling just about every day so that we are pleasantly surprised by learning each day.