Thursday, April 21, 2011

The beginning of my unschooling journey

This book was a completely fascinating read and, though written by a woman who spent much time in (and believes in) the school system, it revolutionized my thinking on early schooling from "early and a lot" to "none at all."


I was a "whiz kid" myself and always trying to be ahead of myself. Graduated college at 16, that kind of thing. I always wanted this for my kids so the natural thing seemed to be to homeschool them early.

However, I began to change my mind about early formal schooling when I came across a book by Jane Healy called "Your Child's Growing Mind." This book also explains what kinds of exercises/ experiences to expose your children to (at every age) in order to help them fulfill their maximum potential.

 It is based on pediatric neuropsychology and neuroscience, and goes into a lot of different things parents and teachers can do (and many we shouldn't do!) in order to help our children's minds grow best - for reading, spelling, writing, and math. It's very interesting to any parent but especially a homeschooling parent, because it opens up a whole new avenue of thought besides "Oh she's just being stubborn, I know how smart she is" and makes you think "Maybe she just isn't neurologically ready for this yet." I know for me, I really always thought it was better for kids to be ahead of their grade level (early readers etc), and indeed it can be very impressive if I want to show off my kids, but now I see that there are good reasons to wait on certain aspects of learning and allow them to have more hands-on play time etc. So, for this reason I backed off on trying to increase the sit-down homeschooling time. 

You can read more about my unschooling journey and results by checking out my main blog, http://44socksontheline.wordpress.com/category/life-learning/

In the meantime, see if your library carries this book, but if not, consider purchasing it through my link above! :) (I've already loaned out my copy, or I'd let you borrow mine!)

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