Unschooling Friday

We had a little school crisis last fall. No one wanted to do their work! At first, I was very annoyed at this and spent each day pushing them through their work. I didn't want to think that all the wonderful books I had carefully chosen for them (and spend plenty of money on) may not be the right ones. So we made each other miserable day after day struggling to get our work done. Finally, I thought is this the way it has to be? NO! So I changed it ;) I kept the parts we liked and let go of some of what we don't. There are some things that I feel you have to learn from textbooks, math for instance. Maybe you don't, but I'm just more comfortable with it that way.

Brandon's work was the one that changed the most. He hated so much of what we were doing and it was breaking my heart to watch this boy who once loved learning, drag himself to the table everyday. One of his most hated was his language arts curriculum. The worst part was the dictation. Honestly, I've never been a fan of dictation, but I've heard such good things about it I thought we'd give it a try. He hated all that writing! I was afraid this meant he'd never like to write anything and he'd be in a world of hurt later on when there's so much writing! But I took it out, and you know what? He's writing a book! His own idea! He calls it The Adventures of the Monkey Brothers. Some time after he started it, we were heading to a field trip and he told me maybe he'd like to be an author someday! I can't tell you how surprised I was! Armed with this new knowledge and seeing how much fun he was having writing his book, I bought him this for Christmas.
*edit* oops forgot the picture!
He is having a ball with it! You get to write and illustrate your own story and then send it off for a hardback copy!

This has made me really think about what/how/when of learning and it has led us to make other changes as well which leds me to....Unschooling Fridays! We don't do book work on Fridays...not testbooks anyway. We read, do projects, science experiments, play learning games, take field trips, those sorts of things. All good learning activities., but also great family-bonding activites. We started this shortly before Christmas and at that time, we read ;) Now that things have settled down some, we're incorporating more things into our Friday. Some things we did last Friday:
Does salt and sand melt ice at the same rate? No! And we learned why!

Here's our new bird feeder we hung Friday. It's been a very fun project!
Brandon's reading Harry Potter. He'll read anywhere...even his sister's pink chair ;)

Since we've been sick, we've continued a little unschooling this week:
Working on Chinese New Year things
Brandon's learning about Japan, so he wrote a Haiku (a form of poetry that originated in Japan):

In the spring, a lake
It's waters calm and still
A beautiful sight.

I think he's excited about fishing this spring!

We haven't really changed much of Kristen's school. She just wants to get done! She takes her ACT (or is it SAT?) next month then we'll get her college application submitted. My baby's going to be a Buckeye! (more on that another time....)