Homeschool Review 2008

Inspired by the title of Homeschool Mistakes 2008.




I continued to ebb and flow with too many things on our plate and then not enough.



Too much structure then not enough.



The peaks and valleys are not nearly as high or as low as they used to be when we started this adventure.



From the early days knowing unschooling was where I wanted us to be to B4 School. B4 School was the name I created for our "school" when ds was 2. The B4 stood for 4 B's. Beach and our last name were 2 of them but I'm at a loss for what the other 2 were. Yes, I do have a note book for those early years but I'm not sure it goes back quite that far. It was more of a dry erase board with categories for the themes, letter, number, story, song, of the day... then week... then month... then I finally listened to ds and dropped it. That was a a serious altitude change lol. That lack of trust in the learning process even though I know that USing was the way I personally learned best.



To this last year of being ready to fly on our own without using our public charter school. The drama of trying to get IEP services for dd. Not a new IEP mind you, but one they have been serving her for the prior 2 years. The whole school went down the tubes :sigh: the hoops I jumped through for those services. Only to finally realize that if I trust the process I have to trust the process. DD and I could now communicate, unlike when we started speech therapy 5 years ago.



Jerick became a reader as I changed my thoughts on what a reader is. I envisioned a reader as someone who loves to curl up with a book and read. Someone, like me, who always has multiple books being read and a stack waiting to pick though when one is finished. It was when I looked at my dh and drew, yet again, parallels to ds. Dh reads. He's a public school graduate had a BS in Criminal Justice he's been schooled. lol. He reads on the computer, he reads the newspaper before the rest of us wake up. He will even read a book now and then. I've known ds for 24 years. Most of that I never saw him read anything. It wasn't fun for him. In the last 2 years he has read maybe 6 books. That is huge! But they were books that were of interest to him. He's finally far enough away from a traditional educational environment to enjoy learning from a book. Sure, he's still much more likely to learn something from watching it or doing it but the reading part is there. Ds, same thing. He absorbs information from everywhere but will read when that is the only way to get the information. I was the one who had to change to see the progress.



That highlights the biggest change in this last year. I've learned that I have to stay out of the process some of the time. As Pam Sorooshian stated during one of her talks at DragonTree, Unschooling is like a dance, some times you lead some times you follow. I was leading and not paying attention to when I needed to follow. Our family is in a much better space as I'm improving my ability to follow. A work in progress to be sure but we are on the right trail for this adventure at this time.