Half an Hour of Unschooling

With the exception of Bible and math, our homeschooling has mostly been what I could call "unschooling," a word which means different things to different people; but to me it means that I provide an atmosphere conducive to learning, and my children learn what and when they will, for the most part.  If they express an interest, I encourage their interest and help them pursue it, but if they don't, I leave them be (for now--I plan to introduce more formality and structure as my children get older).  We aren't striving for complete mastery of everything we talk about; we're just exposing little minds to lots of interesting information, and hopefully inspiring a love of learning.  Here's an example from the other day.

Elijah (age six) has recently had a few questions about clouds and weather that I wasn't able to answer with certainty, so I picked up this book at the library:

Most of the books about weather at our library were sensationalistic, focusing on tornadoes and hurricanes, and with lots of exclamation points  But this one is a fine general overview of the atmosphere and weather.

Elijah read through this book on his own shortly after we got it, and Noah (age 3) looked through the pictures.  But then one morning at breakfast, we were looking out the window at the clouds and talking about the weather again, and I decided that after breakfast we would read the book together.  We read the way we usually do, with lots of pauses to answer questions and to talk about things in more detail.  

When I read the following sentence: "The sun's energy travels through space in the form of visible light waves and invisible ultraviolet and infrared waves" Elijah asked "What does that mean?"  I started to explain that "waves transmit energy," but couldn't remember enough to explain it well, so I said "Hang on a minute" and went and fetched the "L" volume of our encyclopedia.  I opened to the page on light, which had this illustration:

Elijah already knew that white light can be separated into different colors with a prism, as we'd had a conversation about light and color after seeing a rainbow a couple of weeks ago.  Now I explained that the different colors were actually different wave lengths; and with this illustration in front of us, it was easy to explain that ultraviolet rays have shorter wavelengths, and infrared rays longer wavelengths, than the visible spectrum.  I sent Elijah to get a scrap of paper and a pencil, and drew the following illustration:

As I drew the top lines I talked about waves in the ocean, and how energy moves through the water, and how the sun's energy travels through space in a similar manner.  Then I drew the waves with the bracket to the left of them to show that violet light has shorter wavelengths, and red light longer wavelengths; and finally I drew the ultraviolet and infrared waves.  I explained the big words as I went: "wavelengths" are "the distance between the peaks of each wave," and I made little tick marks above each wave to demonstrate (and added "nanometers are a unit of measurement" because Elijah had noticed the word "nanometers" in the encyclopedia).  The "visible spectrum" is "the waves that we can see, or light." etc.

We proceeded on through the book in similar fashion.  Both boys listened with interest at first, asking questions and making comments.  But after half an hour they started to get a bit wiggly.  We weren't quite done with the book, but at this age I don't push them for too long when they start to get fidgety.  So we skipped through the last few pages, only stopping to admire the photographs of snowflakes and hailstones; then we were off to our next task--boiling a kettle of water to pour on the fire ant hill by the garage. :)

So, that's an example of what I call an "unschooling moment."  (Not all "unschooling moments" are so obviously academic.  Most of them come when we are busily "living life"--baking, doing yard work, grocery shopping, etc.)

Did Elijah actually understand what we talked about?  I think so, at least sort of.  Will he remember it?  In this case, I think he will, because he had an opportunity to discuss what he'd learned later that day with his dad and then again with his uncle (both of whom happen to work in physics).  And a few days later, we were listening to public radio and heard an interesting segment about an infrared telescope, so we got to talk about infrared waves in a different context.  I like to look for those opportunities to revisit what he's learned.

In my opinion, if you want to "unschool" small children, the following are absolutely essential: a parent who likes to learn things herself and likes talking to her children about them, the patience to thoughtfully answer all (okay, most) of a child's questions, and the willingness to do some research in order to answer them properly. Also necessary: a good dictionary and encyclopedia (quite cheap at second-hand stores), and access to a local library.  Not necessary: special training, special facilities, expensive curricula.

Sorry this is so long! --Sharon