HCECF - Homeschool Cooperative

I heard a mom, not too long ago, talking about unschoolers and how they don't "teach" their children anything. "They don't use books.".  I could have croaked! It can be HARDER to be an unschooler; no, we don't use TEXT books per say...UNLESS the child wants to use them. If my child wants to learn about something, say...a butterfly we saw when we were outside. We would take a picture of it ( if we can). Then come home or..run in the house to the computer and start looking it up. We then read, read, read about that butterfly and many others along the way. We draw it...paint it, whatever. My one daughter would either print a picture of it out and draw one, then put it in her nature book and then she would write something about it. Next, she would like to head to the library to get more books on butterfly's, ...so along the way of seeing this one butterfly we would spend hours, days, sometimes months learning about that one butterfly and whatever else that has caught my daughters eye while learning about it.

 So, for people to say that we don't teach our children.....well.....no,..... we don't.... we "help" our children learn. We are like a guide, we do anything that we can to help them learn about whatever they choose to learn about. I have heard through the years so many, many times "well my kid would never learn to read if I didn't make him"  .............ummmm, yes he would 'cause I am SURE that sooner or later that child would have come to its momma and said..."Momma, I want to learn to read"! and then that momma would do whatever she has to inorder to help her child to read, if that means that that child would like to use workbooks then so be it we go buy workbooks. .What an unschooler won't do is FORCE that child to learn..

People/children don't want to be dumb, they do want to learn, but they want to learn what's important to them not someone else. If you MADE me sit and learn about...how electricity works, how it runs through the wires from house to house...I would want to RUN... no kidding I am NOT into that, it blows my mind how it does work, but it also boggles my mind on how it works and I choose to stay ignorant about it ! LOL, now I know you will think I am nuts!, but really if someone MADE you sit and learn something that you have no interest in would you really, really soak it all up? or would you soak up just enough to pass the test??

What Unschooling isn't, is NOT learning, what it is, it is finding out what interests your child has and then going from there and along the way they will learn way beyond  that one butterfly they saw in the yard.:~))

Peace always,
Heidi
( Unschooler ~ facilitator of child led learning to 3 kids ages 16,14,8 )