I love telling people that I homeschool my kids mainly because I love the reactions I get as they are trying to process the information.  Many older retired couples (we run into a lot on the road) love the idea that we are traveling and homeschooling.  The younger generation think I am nuts and I get the usual excuse: “You’re a saint I could never homeschool my kids”.

The hardest part of telling people I homeschool is trying to explain how we homeschool.  Most people think of the traditional kind of homeschooling. They imagine the girls sitting at the kitchen table while I stand in front teaching something on a chalkboard.  I could never homeschool traditionally and I think those people are saints and wish them the best of luck but it just would never work for me.

I am not here to say one way of educating your child is better than the other. What I do want to talk about is why Unschooling has such a bad rap.  Most people suppose unschooled kids are unruley, uneducated and we learn absolutely nothing all day.  They assume that we watch TV all day and play video games and never go outside.  Ok, we may have some days like these, we just finished watching all six ‘Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Ring’ videos, but hey it been raining for 3 days. Most days this is far from the truth, we learn every minute of every day, and don’t get holidays and summer vacation because we think learning is fun and try and learn something everyday.

SOLE Education

I would now like to summit a NEW term that my Uncle (who motivated me to try Unschooling) came across other day that I think I’m going to start using instead of “Unschooling”.  It’s SOLE— for “Self Organized Learning Environment”  Really seems to fit my thinking better and doesn’t have the “negative connotations” that Radical Unschooling does.

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