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Saturday, September 26, 2015

Cool week!

This week was supposed to be SCIENCE WEEK...but in true unschooling form...other things took our attention but I still say it was an awesome week. What I tend to do with my daughter, Qwyn, is introduce her to various things and if she is game we run with it...if I get the "meh" response then I pull back and let it go...and at least I put it out there. Qwyn is a naturally curious kid...yes I know most kids are...but she likes to look up things on her IPhone and then randomly share what she's learned in some conversation along the way(could be 1 day later or months). But there are days when I want to see if we can do some learning together and I can appease my inner guilt that she should be doing something "schooly" on a daily. This is how we came up with SCIENCE WEEK. Lol. So I am always on Pintrest (http://m.mentalfloss.com/article.php?id=53612) and found this cool pin for fun science experiments that could be done with things you already have in your house. I presented the link to Qwyn and asked if there was anything she wanted to try...she came up with 7: Rock Candy (what kid passes up the opportunity to make camdy), Magic Plastic Bag, Gummy Bear Torture (do you see the theme here), Ivory Soap Monstor, Walking on Eggs(can't wait to do this one), Dancing Oobleck, Chain Reaction(involves wood sticks and building...love it already). So far we only did the rock candy which she said is growing daily (she is even doing a log!!!) and she did the Magic Plastic Bag which was fun and it was funny to see Qwyn challenge herself and add more skewers. The rest of them we might continue next week but we are off to a great start...more than we did last year. It was fun doing things with Qwyn this week especially with hubby in tow. We have a friend who is a performer who is willing to work with Qwyn on vocals, performing and piano and we all met with him yesterday for preliminary work. Hubby and I were in awe of how much Qwyn knew about music theory and she was able to follow him and he was amazed at how fast she was able to pick up. Many know that Qwyn is a songwriter and singer and he is going to help her fine tune thinga even though he said there wasn't much to do. He is going her help her learn how to transition her songs from guitar to piano as well as learn how to improvise on piano. He even invited her to come and practice with his band. Opportunities like this are wonderful and she loves it. She was so excited she actually played her guitar all the way home...in the car. I'll attach the video of a cover song called 20 Years by Bad Suns. This is why we unschool...she NEVER plays her guitar in the car. We turned off the radio and just let her go at it.  Our day and week ended with us exploring and learning how to Geocache. Boy did we learn many things during our very 1st two cache searches. 1. Make sure your phone is charged if you are going to use it as a GPS. 2. Qwyn only tolerates one search then you have to feed her. 3. If you don't find the next quickly enough, Qwyn will get totally bored and lay down in the middle of a baseball field and let her parents run around looking (will explain in a future blog) 4. Geocaching is addictive. Overall, we had a week of cool adventures and  learning...for all of us. 

MAGIC PLASTIC BAG

Rock Candy










Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Our First Day of "Official" Learning


This is what our first day of defined learning looks like. Everything seems so much better when done in bed...#1. Qwyn loves my bed...she falls asleep in it ...often. So why not engage her in a discussion about her upcoming year in a place she feels most comfortable...my bed. It worked...we talked about things that I wanted to introduce her to, but also I was able to get her to give me ideas about places and things she wanted to learn about. I posted pics of things I jotted down in an old copybook (repurposed from past years English work...I hate wasting paper). I was able to turn everything into talking points and Qwyn actually seemed interested. There will be loads of writing opportunities this year and I gave Qwyn a creative reflection copybook (also repurposed...lol) to write her ideas and opinion about weekly Ted Talks we will watch together. We actually watched one today called Adults Can Learn From Kids....interesting and well presented. For the month of September I will choose the talks however I encouraged Qwyn to pick future ones. We talked about 3 reasons why she felt it would be a good idea for her to watch Ted Talks...she came up with good ones...1. To gain other people's perspective. 2. To develop her own opinion on the topics 3. Open her mind to new ideas (I helped with this answer). Last year she worked on researching facts about all 50 states and all the presidents. This year Qwyn is working on all 7 continents and she chose various countries to research(at least 2 on each continent) and decided to do a power point presentation on them, which will not only meet her geography requirements but also computer skills. Qwyn even helped me develop a 10 question worksheet of things she would like to know about each continent and country. To jumpstart English, we both downloaded a free pdf of The Alchemist (http://www.book4free.us/2013/10/the-alchemist-by-paulo-coelho-epub-mobi.html?m=1) so we can read it together. I'm going to use the Sparks Notes guide that I found online to foster discussion. As a writing aide, I reviewed a chapter in her writing guide which includes the format for writing a 3 paragraph opinion paper. She is going to use that guide for Ted Talks and there is a guide in there for research papers as well. Which leads to the next discussion which included the African American women in history. I explained why I wanted her to focus on that theme this year...she seemed ok with it....can never tell with 13 year olds. When I talked about potential field trips which might expand on those themes...she seemed a little more interested. We talked about the need to find a way to incorporate science experiments into cooking lessons...so that is something I will do. Pintrest might be chock full of ideas.  We went back and forth about her learning algebra this year...she wants to learn pre algebra....I'm trying to sell her on Algebra. We will see. What interested her even more was the final topic...what was for lunch....we are agreeing on cheese steak stromboli and are trying to persuade daddy to agree to pick it up...and pay...lol. I think our first day kickoff  was a success!

Now I'm sure some readers are asking the question about our unschooling process and how this looks more like defined homeschool agenda with carefully planned lessons...trust me there is lots of ideas but little organization; also there is no deadline for the work and there is much room for deviation. I still struggle with  giving the evaluator something tangible at the end of the year. What I'm looking forward to are the various opportunities to learn this year....for both of us.