How can I Unschool any subject without making plans? Let me start by saying I am not a planner and never have been. I believe a lot of time people are scared to homeschool their kids because of the planning, they think it is very time-consuming and hard. Actually, any subject can be taught with no plan at all. I do not write things on a calendar, I have no idea what we are going to learn tomorrow and love it that way.an
Honestly, it might drive an “A” personality crazy to Unschool any subject without making any plans. I think more and more people need to relax when it comes to Unschooling. It is about letting the child lead the learning process. One day your child might be interested in ants, bugs, and butterflies, next day fairies, how potato chips are made or want to learn about pirates. Mine ask 100s of questions, I help them find the answers or lead them in the right direction to find those answers (i.e. Google). We might go to the library, read a book, watch a movie or youtube video or ask another adult or a mentor.
Here is an example:
My oldest asked to learn about the human body this year. So I have been doing research on Pinterest, Google, asking relatives to help out with ideas. I find videos, websites they can read, items we can make that are fun. My two kids are in middle school. So, for fun, they came up with some questions and then found the answers (on their own). This process could take a couple days or a couple weeks to complete.
In the meantime, they may make a fairy door, watch video on bears in the Smokey mountains, or discuss why they do control burns. Some days we watch Tinkerbell movies, or the all the Hobbit movies and we may discuss how the movies are different than the books.
My point is that we study every subject without even trying, we use our brains to come to amazing conclusions with no regard where it might lead us. Tomorrow will be completely different than today and it might start with a simple question in the morning. How can that guy text on the phone, smoke, drink coffee and drive a stick shift car with only two hands, he must be an alien! Do aliens really exist?
Here some ideas to teach every subject
- Keep a notebook to write down questions for later discussions or better yet have your kids do this
- Google and Pinterest are your friends
- We love YouTube, Netflix, Ted Talks, and Ted-ED Lessons worth learnings
- Movie days are ok, even better if you can find a fun history series like The Librarian or Liberty Kids where the kids can learn some history.
- Outside play is always fun, kids learn even from playing with sticks
- Play tourist in your hometown
- Find local tour and pretend you are from a different state, sometimes they treat you different if they think you are a tourist. Bonus: learn about the town you are pretending to be from, for fun have the kids come up with new names
- Visit a Zoo, farm or Animal Park
- Join a co-op and do field trips with a group
- Do Kitchen Science, it’s always fun to blow things up
- Homeschool Tools like game design and fashion design
- We use TTRS (touch type read spell) because my daughter asked for help with her reading and spelling. She has improved so much in the last 3 years
- The library sometimes offers homeschool classes
- When my kids were small, I would make them choose 2 fun books, 2 educational books and I would pick out movies that we could watch. I would choose money movies, learn Spanish and find movies we didn’t own at home.
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