Posts by Joan Concilio

14Jan
12

It’s not all about numbers: Unschooling math

Unschooling math

In our family, we don’t “do” subject areas. We don’t really do tests, quizzes, essays or worksheets.

We’re radical unschoolers, and we believe that learning happens all the time, and for us, it rarely happens in tightly defined areas like “social studies” and “grammar.”

That said, I get a lot of questions from people who are unfamiliar with unschooling and wonder, “But how do you teach math?” (Or any other subject!)

That’s why I agreed to take part in the iHomeschool Network’s “5 days of…” Hopscotch series this week, in which I’m joining a bunch of my fellow bloggers to share how we “teach” language arts, math, science, history and fine arts.

It’s a little bit of a trick… because I’m not going to talk about teaching at all.

Instead, I’m glad to share how we learn, radical unschooling, eighth-grade-ish daughter style!

If you wonder how our learning happens “beyond the curriculum,” read on. Today, we’re tackling my favorite subject, unschooling math, and sharing some looks at how it happens in our lives.

Unschooling and real-world math

This is actually such a big thing in our lives that I gave it its own five-day series in July 2012!

Unschooling and real-world mathI hope you’ll check out five days of real-world math.

In that series, I share posts about the math you need at the grocery store, the math you need in your kitchen, the math you need to manage your money and the math you need to play sports and do other fun stuff.

I also share my list of top real-world math resources you’ll love – our key to unschooling math at a practical level.

Unschooling and algebra

Because my daughter, Ashar, is now a teenager, the question I’m most often asked is about algebra. I admit that this makes me smile sometimes.

To be blunt, Ashar’s arithmetic knowledge (like, 7 times 8) is sometimes not the strongest. HOWEVER. She does algebra for fun, and does it well.

It actually started with science. Ashar decided on her own that she wanted to learn chemistry this year. While we haven’t been working straightforwardly through any particular text or lesson plan for this, she’s hit on something she really seems to enjoy…

Balancing chemical equations. She starting doing this via Uzinggo and moved on to doing some other examples she’s found in a variety of sources.

This is 100% algebra, and somehow Ashar finds it fun – because it has a practical application to a topic she enjoys.

Meanwhile, because there are REALLY only so many chemical reactions you can balance, in our quest to find her something similar, we started playing around with the DragonBox algebra app. I say algebra app, and that’s really what it is, but Ashar treats it like any other app game for her iPod Touch, and she’s enjoyed flying through the first five “worlds” of levels.

One thing I need to be really clear about: We’re not doing these things because we they’re algebra. We’re doing them because Ashar is interested in them, and the fact is, it’s cool that we can ALSO say, “Oh, hey, by the way, did you know that you now know how algebra works?”

Fundamentally, algebra is about sitting a system of equations on top of the real world. DragonBox has helped Ashar see all the ways you can conceive of and manipulate those systems; Uzinggo has shown her an example application of when you might apply such a system and why.

But the thing that fits in with that is that we aren’t trying to have “algebra course” come out of this. We’re not doing algebra worksheets to solve for X. While we’re occasionally diving into the stories in Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra 1 with Biology, we’re focused MUCH more on the biology piece of that, actually, as the math is a little simplistic at this point. (And we’re doing this infrequently – just as it catches our interest among our other reading!)

What we are doing is using the things Ashar has already encountered on her own to start conversations that drive us deeper. We might not work out algebra problems even weekly, but we talk about how algebra works in everything from grocery price calculations to our family budget almost daily!

Unschooling and advanced math

“But what if she needs to learn trigonometry or calculus?”

Well, my answer to that is simple – if Ashar wants to or needs to learn those things at any point, I know that she has the skills needed to do so, and I know that I can help her, either directly or by putting resources in her path. (I’m looking at you, Life of Fred college series!)

The bottom line is, as a math major, I learned one thing above all else. Advanced math is NOT about computation or memorization. It’s about knowing how to learn, which is very different.

And I’m confident that my daughter is doing great at learning to learn, which means I’m not worried about advanced math in the slightest, should her need for it arise!

Side note: Since I mentioned Life of Fred, I want to add that while it is described as a Christian series, we are a secular homeschooling family and haven’t had any problems using the fairly few spiritual references we’ve found as talking points about what different people believe, which we like to do anyway.

The rest of the series

Monday: The power of words: Unschooling and “language arts”
Today: It’s not all about numbers: Unschooling and “math”
Wednesday: Exploring the world and how it works: Unschooling and “science”
Thursday: You can’t escape the past: Unschooling and “history”
Friday: There’s beauty in everything: Unschooling and “fine arts”

You can read all the posts here!

More great resources for homeschooling and unschooling math

This post is also part of the iHomeschool Network’s Massive Guide to Homeschooling Math.

Click the image to read many, many more posts full of great math advice!

Also, if you’re into the things we do in our family homeschool, check out my previous “5 days of…” series, 5 days of real-world math.

Finally, this post is part of the How to Teach Without a Curriculum linkup through the iHomeschool Network. Click the image below to read more posts on teaching without formal curriculum!

teach-without-curriculum

13Jan
14

The power of words: Unschooling language arts

Unschooling language arts

In our family, we don’t “do” subject areas. We don’t really do tests, quizzes, essays or worksheets.

We’re radical unschoolers, and we believe that learning happens all the time, and for us, it rarely happens in tightly defined areas like “social studies” and “grammar.”

That said, I get a lot of questions from people who are unfamiliar with unschooling and wonder, “But how do you teach math?” (Or any other subject!)

That’s why I agreed to take part in the iHomeschool Network’s “5 days of…” Hopscotch series this week, in which I’m joining a bunch of my fellow bloggers to share how we “teach” language arts, math, science, history and fine arts.

It’s a little bit of a trick… because I’m not going to talk about teaching at all.

Instead, I’m glad to share how we learn, radical unschooling, eighth-grade-ish daughter style!

If you wonder how our learning happens “beyond the curriculum,” read on. Today, we’re tackling unschooling language arts – the ways things like reading, writing, spelling, comprehension, grammar and all that good stuff happen in our lives.

Unschooling and reading

I’m cheating, a little bit. I’m starting with the most obvious example of how learning happens in unschooling, and that’s by reading.

We read constantly. Every night before bed, we all get together in Ashar’s room or mine and read aloud to each other, or read in companionable silence, depending on what’s up.

In fact, this is such a big thing that we have a Family Reading Roundup series of posts that we update most months, sharing our current books.

Unschooling reading is an awful lot like public-school reading, or reading in more formal homeschool methodologies. We read from a variety of genres, both fiction and nonfiction, across all sorts of levels, from “simple” to college textbooks.

The biggest key is that we believe – and have found – that we don’t have to direct or require any particular type of reading in order to achieve this balance. It happens naturally out of Ashar’s own interests when we’re engaged with her in her learning.

Let me say that again, because that’s a key theme throughout this week’s series. Unschooling requires engagement. When I’m not engaged in what Ashar’s interested in, she either doesn’t read at all, or reads the same books for weeks. That’s fine – and it certainly happens – but that isn’t me being an unschooling mom at my best.

How we facilitate and learn reading skills:

  • By strewing books related to Ashar’s current interests. (Read more about strewing from my friend Aadel here!)
  • By making reading a family activity, both by reading the same things together and by modeling a love of reading in our own free time.
  • By going to places that have lots of books! We love used bookstores, new bookstores and libraries.
  • By talking about the things we read, and using them as a springboard to other types of learning, like movies, TV shows and trips.

Unschooling and writing

Let me be honest here and say that while reading comes naturally in our family, writing is not a passion of Ashar’s.

Or, more accurately, writing in a prescribed format is not.

We write all the time, just like we read. You can see a few of our “writing projects” here. But let’s be clear: When I say that we do not give assignments or require particular projects, it should be easy to guess that Ashar doesn’t just then randomly sit down and write research reports or essays for fun.

Oh, but wait. When a two-page informative paper was required for the 4-H project Ashar chose to participate in, she had no problem coming up with it. Why? Because while we don’t require the “proof of concept” of an essay in day-to-day life, Ashar has read tons, seen me write them for classes, proofread them for me, and generally become familiar enough with the expectations to do as serviceable of a job as I ever did at her age!

How we facilitate and learn writing skills:

  • By reading. There is NO better way to be sure you know how to write in a particular style (if needed) than to read as many examples of it as possible. This holds for thesis papers, friendly letters, Facebook statuses and emails.
  • By talking about the writing process. Since Chris and I both write for a living, well, that’s easier for us than in many families, I think! It’s been great to expose Ashar to all parts of the process and to lots of professional writers.
  • By encouraging the kind of writing that DOES come naturally – especially the kinds that Ashar will be mostly likely to need as an adult, which are digitally focused.

Unschooling and spelling

Remember how much we love video-game learning?

Video games are almost completely responsible for the massive growth in Ashar’s spelling ability in the past two years. Some of it is direct – the need to type in commands, spelled correctly, for instance. In other cases, Skyping while playing Minecraft and talking to friends has led to the natural consequence of better spelling, because Ashar wants to be understood.

Oh, and then there are all the ways in which we encourage and model – but do not force – correct spelling in day-to-day stuff, like grocery lists and texts and emails.

How we facilitate and learn spelling skills:

  • By reading and writing. Notice how these things build on each other in life learning? I would attribute the fact that I’ve always been a good speller to the matching fact that I’ve always been a heavy reader, and Ashar is no different. Once she’s read a word several times, she adopts the correct spelling!
  • By using correct spelling in our writing to Sarah. It’s super-easy for me to lapse into textspeak, even in emails and handwritten notes, and that does happen at times. But more often than not, I’m making sure to write clearly and spell well.
  • By interacting in writing! This means Skype chats, texts, emails, handwritten letters, grocery lists, you name it. In our family, there’s a lot of writing that goes on, and spelling flows naturally from that.
  • By focusing on words that Ashar most needs. We don’t do spelling lists by a long shot. Sometimes, Ashar still misspells words like February. (Yes, working on that. More next month than this one.) But she can spell lots of crazy words for parts of the alpaca, most of the elements, even the weird ones, and so on. When it matters TO HER, she learns!)

The rest of the series

Today: The power of words: Unschooling and “language arts”
Tuesday: It’s not all about numbers: Unschooling and “math”
Wednesday: Exploring the world and how it works: Unschooling and “science”
Thursday: You can’t escape the past: Unschooling and “history”
Friday: There’s beauty in everything: Unschooling and “fine arts”

You can read all the posts here!

More five-day fun

This post is part of the iHomeschool Network’s January 2014 “5 days of…” Hopscotch series.

iHomeschool Network January 2014 hopscotchYou can see how some of my fellow bloggers are spending their five days here.

Many of us are sharing on how we teach or learn in these subject areas, from a variety of styles and perspectives! We sure are an eclectic group – I hope you’ll check out more!

And if you’re into the things we do in our radical unschooling family, check out my two previous “5 days of…” series, 5 days of real-world math and 5 days of video-game learning.

Finally, this post is part of the How to Teach Without a Curriculum linkup through the iHomeschool Network. Click the image below to read more posts on teaching without formal curriculum!

teach-without-curriculum

03Jan
13

From beakers to boron: Best resources for studying chemistry and the periodic table

Our biggest science focus this year has been chemistry – and we’ve spent a significant amount of time exploring everything from its history – researching the early alchemists – to the periodic table, visiting the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s museum, and so on.

Chemistry resource and learning guide from Unschool Rules

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!
Lately, Ashar has been on a quest to learn more about atoms and elements and how they really work. He is fascinated by the fact that there are bazillions of molecules in a raindrop and routinely brings that up in dinner conversations. We read, we play games, and we watch TV with an eye for the chemistry involved.

And today, I want to share some of the many ways we’ve compiled to explore this subject in our unschooling, not-usually-very-subject-based-at-all home!

While most of the items on our chemistry resource guide are tailored toward an upper-middle-grade or high-school-aged student, there are ways to adapt almost all of them. Some of these are resources we’ve used for several years and could easily be adapted for younger students; others are even now pretty complex and require me to really play an active role in “translating” them for Ashar.

Even more than many other topics we’ve learned about, this has been one that we’ve really tackled together, and it’s great!

Fun with a chemistry experiment on Unschool Rules

Ashar having a good time (and just being weird) with an experiment.

Free online chemistry courses

I’m mentioning this separately (even though I’ll share a ton more online resources below) because of how awesome it is.

Longtime readers know I’m a huge fan of taking free online college courses via Coursera, so when I saw that there are many chemistry courses available, I was thrilled!.

If you’re new to Coursera, I’m glad to help you with anything related to getting registered and navigating the course; I’d also just love to compare notes with other unschoolers going through their courses!

Books

  • The Disappearing Spoon: This book is a FUN read on some chemical and elemental trivia and miscellany. I’m reading it and sharing interesting tidbits with Ashar as I go. Among other things, the title? It refers to a prank involving chemists, Gallium, and tea – and the spoon really does disappear!
  • The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments – All Lab, No Lecture: Ashar received this book as a Christmas gift, and it’s fantastic. (Thank you, Aunt Adriane!) It is full of serious experiments, not baking-soda-and-vinegar volcanoes, designed to cover as much as several high-school or beginning college lab courses might, and it’s designed specifically to be used at home, though getting all the required supplies to do the full set might be costly!
  • Why Is Milk White? & 200 Other Curious Chemistry Questions: Now THIS is fun. Written by a chemist and his curious 11-year-old neighbor, and presented as answers to a series of questions you’d really ask. You know, like why is milk white? How does superglue work? We’ve been jumping around in our Kindle version of this and having a great time with it.
  • DK Eyewitness Books Chemistry: This is one we’d requested from our local library because of how much we’ve always loved the Eyewitness Books series! While this is slightly more elementary in some ways than Ashar’s level, it’s full of fun facts that have led him to explore more. We highly recommend this for upper-elementary and lower-middle-school-aged students especially.
  • The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry: This is one that we actually don’t yet have, but it’s high on our wishlist – a comic-style illustrated historical AND scientific look at our favorite subject.
  • The Elements, A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe: We have been eyeing this up ever since seeing many of this “visual explorations” on our trip to the Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum early in 2013, and I think we’ll finally be getting a copy with some Amazon giftcards we got for Christmas. It’s exactly as described – a beautiful photographic journey, including some phenomenal microscope photography, about all of the elements. Super-cool.

Supplies, toys and activity kits

  • Chemistry sets: Can I be honest? I don’t really like most chemistry sets presently sold. The lab equipment is generally low-grade, the “chemicals” included could be purchased in most grocery stores, and the experiments aren’t particularly exciting. We were lucky enough to pick up an OLD version of a current set at the local curriculum fair, but I don’t recommend the version you can buy new. If I had the money, I’d have pledged $900 to a Kickstarter campaign from a few years ago for Heirloom Chemistry Sets by H.M.S. Beagle, which is really the first kit I’ve seen in a long time that I loved. (Alas, no $900 was forthcoming, so we don’t have one!) If you have a set you recommend, please comment and let me know, and I’ll be glad to add a link, but for now, the best I can say is, get the nicest one you can and be prepared to supplement, or be willing to assemble things on your own!
  • Flasks: Ashar is probably the only 13-year-old I know who was excited to get a set of five Ehrlenmeyer flasks for Christmas. If I can make one suggestion about something to spend money on, over and above a solid chemistry set and basic text, please, make it good glassware! Especially if you’re working with “real” chemicals, it’s best to have something of quality.
  • Beakers: More glassware. If you’re wondering, a beaker has a wide mouth; a flask has a narrow mouth. Both are good for various kinds of experiments, and good beakers are next on our list to get!
  • Full glassware kit: Hit the lottery, have six kids (or a co-op) who need to learn chemistry, or just really like it? This 95-piece full glassware set is super-nice and will take care of absolutely any home chemist’s needs.
  • Periodic Table Playing Cards: These are actual playing cards (a set of two decks, with jokers) that happen to feature facts about the elements instead of ridiculous designs. (Even including the name of each element in French and Spanish, as well as the standard periodic table information.) Play and learn? Win/win!
  • Molecule kit: We picked up this fairly simple kit to make basic molecular models at our local A.C. Moore craft store with our educator discount. There are certainly more advanced versions, including some that are way more reusable and durable, but the simpler one worked for us. (If you’re in the market for a more detailed version, this organic chemistry modeling set is pretty good!)

Movies/TV

  • MythBusters: Ashar has been a huge MythBusters fan since we picked up our Netflix subscription early in 2013. We’ve learned a ton from this show – some of it relating to physics, but some of Ashar’s favorites most closely relate to things like the chemistry of Diet Coke and Mentos, the chemical reactions alcohol consumption produces, and more.
  • Star Trek: This is absolutely Ashar’s passion right now, and I admit that I wouldn’t have immediately tied it to his interest in learning more about chemistry. But the more we’ve watched and read, the more it’s amazing to talk about the reality and the fiction used in the various series – from the ridiculous “science” in the original TV series to some pretty high-tech and plausible stuff in the new movie reboots. How could planets be made habitable for humans? What kinds of chemical changes on a planet’s surface cause massive crises that the Enterprise crew needs to address? Watch this and look for chances to talk about chemistry, and you might be amazed.
  • Breaking Bad: OK, maybe you don’t want your elementary-schooler watching this. Ashar, however, will tell you matter-of-factly: “They make meth. Making drugs is a kind of chemistry too.” Lest you think we’re encouraging that, please know he is aware it is not a good kind of chemistry. And while we’ve actually never seen more than a couple episodes all the way through, seeing references to Breaking Bad come up in pop culture has given us a seriously good chance to talk about the ways – good and bad – that science can be used.

Music

Places to visit

  • The Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum: We’re incredibly lucky to have visited this Philadelphia museum earlier this year. They have a wonderful museum with an incredible (and HUGE) digital periodic table, exhibits depicting chemistry from its roots in alchemy to modern research, and more.
  • The Koshland Science Museum: This museum in Washington, D.C., is on our to-visit list (a simple day trip for us). It’s an interactive science experience targeted specifically at teens, part of the National Academy of Sciences.
  • The Museum of Science and Industry: This science museum in Chicago specifically features a lot of chemistry-heavy exhibits – and, in fact, a lot of cool stuff overall, as it’s the largest science museum in the Western Hemisphere!
Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum in Philadelphia

Ashar at the Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum in Philadelphia in early 2013. Their interactive periodic table is amazing!

Apps

We’re just starting to dig into some science apps on our new iPad Mini, which is fast becoming one of our best learning tools. Some of our favorites so far:

  • FREE! GoReact is an amazing free app available for iPad, iPhone and Android, though I admit I like it much better on our tablet than our smaller screens. It was produced by the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and shows you what elements react – and what they make. It’s pretty amazing; we can play it for an hour easily!
  • FREE! Oresome Elements (iPad): It seems simple, match the chemical symbol with the appropriate element on the periodic table, but I’ve been surprised at how much we’ve learned from this drag-and-drop game (including some digging we’ve done on our own into things like why gold is abbreviated Au!)
  • FREE! Nova Elements (iPad): This app is a little more advanced, but you can build each element of the periodic table by inserting the right number of protons, neutrons and electrons, then build molecules of all sorts, plus watch amazing videos. It’s incredible!
  • FREE! Periodic Table (Android): A winner on Android, this app includes a fun quiz function plus YouTube videos of chemistry terms.
  • There are also a bunch of FREE periodic table viewers with varying levels of complexity. Some of them include EMD PTE, iElements (iPad and iPhone), The Periodic Table HD (iPad) and the K12 Periodic Table of the Elements (iPad and iPhone).
  • One premium app is Periodic Table+ (iPad, $1.99) – though it also has a lite version for free.

Online resources

  • Khan Academy is a great go-to for tons of science topics, with chemistry no exception. Their first-year chemistry course is incredibly detailed, and we’ve picked pieces out of it to watch here and there. There’s also an advanced organic chemistry that would work for higher-level students!
  • Easing into Chemistry With Soap Making is a cool project I found by Felicia on The Zoo I Call Home. Soap making was one of our first homeschooling projects and Felicia’s guide is super cool.
  • Building a math and science library online with UzinggoUzinggo is one of our favorite places to watch and learn about chemistry. Specifically, Ashar spent a ton of time learning to balance chemical reaction equations, and using the online labs to learn about some things we couldn’t demonstrate at home! (You can read more about our Uzinggo experiences in our review here; we’ve continued to use it pretty regularly since we posted that!)
  • Dynamic Periodic Table … pretty much what you’d think. A periodic table where you can click to read more about each element. A great resource.
  • Elements: Experiments in Character Design is a fun artistic look at a few of the elements as “characters.”
  • Periodic Table of Videos is a YouTube channel full of crazy looks at fun chemistry questions, like “What if ice did not float?” as well as profiles on various elements, complete with experiments.
  • BBC’s Volatile History of Chemistry allows you to watch a three-part documentary series on chemistry history. It’s fascinating stuff – not always told from a worldview I support, but still interesting!
  • The Modern Alchemist (also known as Dr. Peter Wothers) is offered by the Royal Institution of London and is amazing. These video lectures (actually amazing video experiments) are well worth watching.
  • Printable periodic table and element resources from FiveJs.com includes a full-color table you can print, plus blanks and partial blanks to help you fill in what goes where!
  • My friend Phyllis of All Things Beautiful is studying chemistry with her family this year, too, and she’s got a wide variety of resources – including recipes for making your own slime, gak and more!
  • Gold, Silver and Other Precious Metals is a great guide that was recommended by Sawyer and other learners in a STEM club run by Olivia Ingram. Sawyer, thanks for the tip! I didn’t even know that some of these things, like palladium, were considered precious metals, and all the things they are used for. You taught me something today!
  • Sawyer and the STEM pals also suggested Chem4Kids’ Element-by-Element Guide. This is a great look at the early elements especially, which are found all around us, and tells not only where each element occurs, but how it got its name, what it is used for, and more! Thank you again for the great suggestion!

Have you studied chemistry? Any ideas for good resources? Please comment and share; I’d love to add them to the list!

Read more

If you found this resource guide helpful, I hope you’ll check out some others we’ve created for topics and places of interest to our family! We like to focus on things that are free or low-cost, and that focus on hands-on or life learning over textbooks.

Earlier guides include:

I hope you’ll check them out and let me know what you’re learning about!

03Oct
4

A new way for us to build: Making planes, robots and more with BionicBlox (now called Brackitz)

BionicBlox Brackitz natural wood building blocks

We build stuff. A lot.

Disclosure: In exchange for the honest review of our experience which appears in this post, our family received one BionicBlox/Brackitz set for free. We were compensated for our time completing the review, but all FUN had was definitely our own!

I said earlier this year that our two biggest sets of blocks and our LEGO collection were among the “toys” that had stayed with Ashar into her teenage years.

So when I heard about BionicBlox earlier this year, I thought, “OOH! More blocks!” Probably not what you’d expect from the mom of a teenager, but one of the best things we’ve found about homeschooling is that it allows us the freedom to do the things we love, regardless of “traditional” ages or grades!

And Ashar definitely agrees. Funnily, when things arrive at our house to review (which is fairly often), we usually open them, figure out when we’ll try them out (we like to do so as close as possible to the date our review will be published), and then sit them aside until then.

The BionicBlox came out IMMEDIATELY. “Mom, I’m going to make something with these while you’re working. OK? Please?”

And she went to town!

BionicBlox Brackitz 3-D airplane

BionicBlox or Brackitz as a 3-D building teaching toy

The BionicBlox themselves are two-part: A set of natural wood “planks,” and a set of multi-angle plastic connectors. In our 100-piece Visionary kit (now the Master Builder Set), we have red, white and blue connectors, which works well since those are Ashar’s favorite colors!

I admit – I didn’t even get to see the set before Ashar started building. I was working, and she was in the dining room, with all the pieces spread out across the table. I had no idea what to expect – and when she walked out a half-hour later and said, “Mom! Look, It’s a plane!” I was floored.

This girl who struggles mightily with concepts like angles and spacial relationships had figured out how to take these planks and connectors and make a (very identifiable) plane!

I admit: 3-D visualization is NOT a strength of mine, either. She gets that honestly. But when I saw she had figured this out on her own, including how to use different parts of the BionicStar connectors to get different angles, I was pretty stoked.

Ashar explains how she made a BionicBlox Brackitz 3-D airplane

BionicBlox or Brackitz as an awesome toy for girls

So the other cool thing Ashar did (again, while I was, to be honest, not paying any attention!) was to create a set of about 20 BionicBlox “robot guards.”

She was wandering around the house, and after a while, she said, “Mom, look around. Do you see anything?”

I looked up… and everywhere, there were tiny little three-block, one-connector “robots” looking at me (including one literally in front of me on my desk, which I hadn’t seen!)

I was super-excited to see Ashar thinking creatively. One big frustration she has with LEGOs and other building toys is that they’re “meant” to be built a particular way. Ashar is an incredibly creative girl, and being told what to build, with detailed instructions about what block goes where, is fun but not super-stimulating.

So if you have a super-creative girl who wants to do her own thing – we can definitely speak highly of BionicBlox!

26Sep
4

Our radical unschooling "school supply" must-haves: Technology, travel, toys and more

So the kind of cool thing about our radical unschooling lifestyle is that we require very little in the way of traditional “school supplies.”

Sure, we have notebooks and pens. There’s the occasional binder. But really, our must-have items focus on some different areas, like technology, travel and toys.

Today, as part of an iHomeschool Network series on homeschooling must-haves, I thought I’d round up some of the things that we do need to make our life – and our learning – happen. (You can read more about our “Top 10” in this 2012 post, as well!)

Radical unschooler must-haves

Technology

  • Our Netflix subscription: This is HUGE. From Mythbusters to Star Trek to Mission: Impossible and more, we use movies as a huge part of our learning experience. Some are more “educational” than others, but to us, there’s something to learn from and talk about it all of them.
  • Laptops and phones: Here’s where we connect with other humans. Yes, we have “real-life” friends, but we just as often connect through gaming and chatting (World of Warcraft and Minecraft for Ashar, Facebook games and groups for me). This is also our primary way of answering all the questions that come up day in and day out, like how lightbulbs make light or how the fridge icemaker works.
  • Video-game systems: We’re big fans of learning through video games. We also just plain enjoy them, whether it’s rocking out as a family to Guitar Hero or working through a challenge in Assassin’s Creed.

Travel

Our family field trips are pretty much the highlight of our years. We’ve gone to Philadelphia and Jim Thorpe, as well as dozens of smaller places, here in Pennsylvania. Most recently, we went to the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., which was phenomenal!

But travel isn’t just field-trippy stuff. It’s spending our days hanging out in our town’s antique stores and bookshops and video-game stores. It’s going out to dinner at new restaurants and talking to people along the way at all of these places.

Toys

This is a top-10 list in itself! We’re huge fans of learning through playing, and some of our best times have come from the toys that have lasted us into Ashar’s teenage years.

Some other favorites

I think I could list dozens and dozens of must-haves, from our local libraries and parks, to any number of books or websites, to our county 4-H program, to ANYTHING to do with animals, to art supplies, to time! You can read more about some of those here, if you’re so inclined. And if you’re interested in some of the things we’re hoping to get for future use, Ashar’s wishlist is a pretty fun look at what we have our eye on!

Read more

Make sure you check out the other must-have posts from my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers here!

13Sep
5

Building our unschooling math and science library – virtually! – with Uzinggo

Building a math and science library online with Uzinggo

So, if you hadn’t noticed, we really love science. This year, Ashar’s decided she wants to pursue biology (in an introductory sense) and chemistry (in a rather startling amount of detail). Since my last science courses were, I don’t know, a decade ago, and since we often shy away from formal curriculum for various reasons, I’ve been pondering how to help make this happen!

Disclosure: In exchange for the honest review of our experience which appears in this post, our family received access to the Uzinggo service for free. We were compensated for our time completing the review, but our continued use of the service is simply because we’ve been so happy with it!

Meanwhile, we have a kind of a love-hate relationship with math. Ashar has made some huge leaps in her understanding of it during our time homeschooling, but it’s not like she begs to learn more about it like she does with science. And, as unschoolers, we firmly believe in real-world math, not textbooks, so we’re often looking for ways to help explain how concepts algebra and geometry work in real life.

So when we received a chance to review a new math and science online tutoring program, Uzinggo, it seemed like a good way to expand our resource library.

Using it, we’ve found we can dig deeper into the topics Ashar’s passionate about (more than we could on our own) and also get quick explanations of the things that she’d rather not spend much time on!

Using Uzinggo as unschoolers

Uzinggo is designed to offer online learning in math and science for middle-schoolers and high-schoolers. In our case, since Ashar is in eighth grade (ish), and since her interests and understanding span a variety of levels, we chose to review both the Middle School Math & Science Combo and the High School Math & Science Combo.

Middle-school math includes Math Foundations, Pre-Algebra and Algebra Foundations, each with 4 to 7 subtopics or “Zingpaths” containing as many individual animations or videos, well-illustrated and narrated, with built-in practice problems, assessments and enrichment activities.

High-school math covers Algebra 1, Geometry and Algebra 2 in the same way.

The middle-school science bundle includes Life Science, Physical Science and Earth and Space Science.

The high-school science package comprises Biology, Chemistry (our favorite!), Physics, and a more advanced Earth and Space Science.

There are also prep courses to help students get ready for the advanced topics, and review courses to help solidify learning in both the middle- and high-school programs.

One of the biggest benefits to us as unschoolers is the ability to work in any order we choose. While you can certainly work through a topic, such as chemistry, “in order,” you can also pick any individual Zingpath (or any individual online lesson) and pull it up as needed.

Meanwhile, in a huge benefit when compared with other online services (for us), the built-in assessments, while amazing, are optional – meaning we can get the information without a “test” requirement!

This is great for how we learn!

Virtual science labs

THIS was the part of Uzinggo that Ashar dug into. She spent more than an hour doing virtual experiments in the Chemistry Zingpath demonstrating the law of conservation of matter and how to balance a chemical equation – with all of the results, but no Bunsen burner required!

I have to admit, I was surprised at how well Ashar picked up this fairly advanced math and science topic. She was able to balance fairly complicated chemical equations with almost no help from me (though I was watching along with her, in case she needed help tackling this high-school topic!), and she aced the 10-question quiz afterward!

Her opinion? “It’s really fun. I like chemistry!”

Short and sweet. I like it. And even more, I like that in less than an hour, she was able to cover the basics of types of chemical reactions (decomposition, synthesis and double replacement), learned to balance equations, and found out WHY and HOW these reactions occur and why you have to end up with what you start with, albeit arranged differently.

This is incredibly important for a learner like Ashar, who wants to “get the information and go.” So many courses would take an hour on each concept, but instead, Ashar was able to practice with a few key problems and move quickly through the material.

Online learning from Uzinggo offers detailed progress reports for each learner

Unschooling and homeschooling resources

As I mentioned, we’re not particularly “completist” about our learning. You can see above our summary of the Zingpaths Ashar has been working on (heavy into chemistry, of course!) as well as the percentage complete.

While I’m not sure our intention is to get 100% done, this is a hugely valuable tool to track progress, and here in Pennsylvania, it’ll be a key addition to our required portfolio documentation!

Creating and customizing a character in Uzinggo online math and science learning program makes it even more fun

Making learning fun

Earlier this year, I took a course on gamification – the application of game theories and experiences to non-“play” situations.

We are big fans of making things fun in our family. So when Ashar found out she could create her own Uzinggo character, and use the “Zings” she earns by completing learning activities to change her outfit and “home,” she was thrilled!

She also loved the round of applause the system gave her when she completed a Zingpath, as well as the badges she earned for her great scores on her assessment!

I highly recommend the Uzinggo platform, and further, I highly recommend that if you’re going to participate in it, you make use of the game experience part as much as possible. For instance, Ashar found out by browsing the “badges” that you can get one for logging on five days in a row. Guess what she decided to do tomorrow because of it? These virtual rewards are a real motivator!

Get a discount on Uzinggo

I’m thrilled to be able, as part of the review team, to offer a 15% discount on the Uzinggo service! Just enter promo code iHomeschool15 when you check out here!

The code is good for 15% off each month for up to a year, if you’re buying a monthly-access pass, or off the total yearly cost of a package. And it’s good FOR a full year, so if you buy one package now, say middle school, and want to add high school later, use it again to get another 15% off!

Don’t forget to check out more from Uzinggo on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and Google Plus! Also, if you join, look for SarahTheAwesome in the leaderboard – that’s us!

26Aug
12

A day in the life of radical unschoolers

Earlier this month, I’ve shared our “un-curriculum” for the coming year and a look at our learning spaces as part of the iHomeschool Network’s Not Back to School Blog Hop. This week, it’s Day-In-The-Life Week, where we’re supposed to show what a typical day looks like in our family’s particular style.

I don’t think we have a typical. Or a style. Unless haphazard and wonderful is a typical style. In that case, yes, yes we do, and you’re welcome to take a peek.

A day in the life of radical unschoolers

Our radical unschooling days

Last week, on the first day of classes for our neighborhood public school, Ashar got out of bed at 1:15 p.m. When I told her, “Happy first day!,” she laughed and said, “Or afternoon?”

Generally, Chris (and my mom) are up earliest – sometime between 8 and 9:30 a.m. I’m NOT a morning person – so while I’m often awake at 9-ish, I like to lounge, talk with Chris (if he’s writing at his desk in our room), play on my iPad, check Facebook and email, and do all of that good stuff before getting out of bed.

By about 10:30 or 11 a.m., I’m downstairs answering emails and doing work tasks that I couldn’t do as easily from my phone or tablet; Chris is usually writing, puttering around the house or getting ready for work; and my mom, an earlier riser, is looking for lunch.

Ashar gets up any time between about 9:30 and 1:30 – often she’s “up” and hanging out in her room before she comes downstairs, sometimes for hours. (Us introverts need our quiet time – especially when we’re sleepy!)

Once Ashar’s up, she’ll come down, check her phone for Kik and Skype and text messages, and make herself something to eat. If we’ve got any errands to run, generally we’ll see if she wants to come along and we’ll head out pretty quickly, because by about 2 p.m. at the latest, we’re dropping Chris off at work.

During the summer, or when homework isn’t heavy, the neighborhood public-school contingent shows up around 4 and sits in my living room to play video games, or Ashar goes with them to skateboard around the neighborhood or walk to the convenience store or generally “hang out” by sitting in our driveway, often perching on the trunk of my car.

Other than that, our afternoons are filled with work (me), gaming and Netflix-watching (Sarah) and doing stuff around the house, like laundry and dishes. Around 4:30 or 5 p.m., Mom, Ashar and I start working together on dinner – whatever’s on the menu, plus substitutions for personal preferences.

During this time, Ashar and I usually get a couple of emails from Chris. He sends us links to interesting things he finds online, random facts about things we’ve seen or talked about, photos of cats and monkeys, whatever. These are often good for a fun rabbit-trail conversation.

In the evenings, Ashar and Mom hang out (often watching NCIS or Star Trek) and I head to tae kwon do (most nights). When I get back, I do one last round of online tasks, including blogging, and by about 9:30 p.m., Mom heads to bed. At that point, things are usually quiet, so Ashar gets some uninterrupted World of Warcraft time while I sit next to her and write.

If I’m in the middle of an online course (right now, I’m juggling two – Virology and Animal Behaviorism), I’ll sit and watch the video lectures, and Ashar will often stop what she’s doing and lean over my shoulder. We snack a bit, tidy up, and when we start to wind down (any time between 10:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m.) we head upstairs.

Our radical unschooling nights

This is our time. We are night owls – oh, so much so. If you watched us from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., you’d maybe be tempted to think, “OK, that’s neat, when do they start doing things?”

First, let me say that I very much believe that we’re all learning a ton through all of those things above, even though none of them look a bit like school.

Second, I wish someone could be a fly on the wall as we sit on the bed in our master bedroom, either Ashar and I if we’re waiting for Chris to finish work, or all three of us on the awesome days when he’s off.

Sometimes, we watch movies or TV shows on Netflix, sitting in bed (Ashar in the middle, laptop on her lap, Chris and I on either side).

Sometimes, we read aloud together – right now, rotating between Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra 1 with Biology and The Titan’s Curse in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. (As a note, while Life of Fred is described as a Christian series, we are a secular homeschooling family and haven’t had any problems using the fairly few spiritual references we’ve found as talking points about what different people believe, which we like to do anyway.)

Anyway, also during our evenings, we often play iPad games; logic puzzles like Rush Hour and all sorts of trivia apps are our current favorites.

On occasion, we draw or color – maybe something like fractal art I’ve printed from a website, maybe just a drawing on blank paper to accompany one of our favorite stories.

And we talk. We talk about what we read, weird facts from trivia questions, ideas for projects we want to work on together, news from the day. We pull up Wikipedia articles on how animals are classified and talk about the garden toad we found. We go down a rabbit trail about biology, classification, being a carnivore and speaking Latin.

By about 2 to 3 a.m., when Chris gets home from work (if he’s not there already), we’ve usually spent 4 hours or more just being together, talking, exploring, creating, and, yes, learning.

The extra-special stuff

Once or twice a week, we head to the alpaca farm for a few hours of work with Ashar’s show animal, Gia.

Most weekends, Mom, Ashar and I (and sometimes a collection of friends) can be found making art on our dining-room table. You’ve actually been seeing some of our art in recent posts – and the graphic with today’s post comes from a work of Ashar’s that won a pretty special award this weekend! (Yes, more to come about that!)

When Chris is off, we often all “skip out” for the day and road-trip – to state parks, to antique stores, to the used bookstore, to a town baseball game, to the mall, to a new restaurant in a neighboring town for lunch, to museums (the latest being the International Spy Museum, which was perfect for James Bond fan Sarah!)

On the way, we do exactly what we do in the evenings – play together, chat together, ask questions together, and generally enjoy being what we call “The Us.”

People sometimes think it’s funny that we do mundane stuff together, but even grocery-shopping becomes special when it’s family time. We do that every other week, and believe it or not, it’s a LOT more fun as a team.

Sometimes, an episode of MythBusters or a book we’re reading will spark an idea for a science experiment, and the dining-room table will be transformed.

Sundays, we might attend an event like a martial-arts tournament for me or visit Chris’s mom or – honestly – sleep in (when he works until 3 a.m., it’s occasionally a problem to get up)!

We visit friends. We go to art galleries. We go to farmers’ markets.

And all along the way, we make it a point to seek out interesting people and experiences, not just for Ashar but for all of us.

 Our teachers are all the people we meet, day in and day out. The coworker friend of mine at the baseball game who talked to Ashar about her job, getting ready to move, her recalcitrant cat and her favorite brands of clothing. The bookstore owner who sets aside a newspaper replica because he knows Ashar might like it. The husband of my best friend, who fixes his motorcycle in our driveway and shows Ashar the parts of it as he’s disassembling them. The artist and gallery-owner who takes the time to show a new work to us because it fits our style.

That’s what unschooling looks like for us. It’s funny in a way to write this post – we rarely look at the individual days. We don’t need or choose to “do math” or “do school” for a particular amount of time, nor do we “have to” accomplish much in particular in a learning sense, and sometimes, weeks go by where we’re all so caught up in our personal interests that we don’t have time for much else.

But over time, as the days build into weeks and months and years, we grow. It’s like watching a tree grow – maybe you don’t see the change each day. But when you step back, suddenly you think: This is so much bigger than it used to be.

 That’s how we feel about our life. Our free approach, rather than limiting what we learn, has made it so, so much bigger.

And we love it.

Read more about our unschooling approach

If you’re newer to Unschool RULES, maybe you’re wondering about this radical unschooling thing we do.

Here are a few posts that tell more about our lives!

Join the NOT Back-to-School Party!

Not Back to School Blog Hop calendar 2013Want to see the typical or not-so-typical days of my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers?

Check out the rest of Day-In-The-Life Week at the Not-Back-To-School Blog Hop here (and you can link up your posts, too!)

04Aug
23

The unschooled version of an eighth-grade-ish curriculum plan for 2013-14

So last year, I joked that the unschooled version of a seventh-grade-ish curriculum plan for 2012-13 was the worst title for a blog post ever.

But, uh, it worked! I heard from people literally around the world who loved our un-plan and our approach.

So, why mess with a good thing? This year, under an awfully similar title, I’m chronicling what might be our life, unschooling 8th grade-ish style, with tons of input from Ashar and a generous helping of new resources, as part of the iHomeschool Network’s Not Back to School Blog Hop!

Unschooling 8th grade on Unschool Rules

Most days, we have no idea what we’re going to learn about until it happens. We make plans – of sorts – but the best opportunities always seem to be those that just arise naturally.

But I see great value in joining the “curriculum week” blog hop, mostly because I want to show other not-exactly-planning, not-exactly-at-a-grade-level, not-exactly-textbook people – and I know you’re out there – that you CAN make this homeschooling thing work!

If you haven’t already, I also invite you to check out our later ideas, the unschooled version of a 12th-grade-ish curriculum plan (2017-18), the unschooled version of an 11th-grade-ish curriculum plan (2016-17), the unschooled version of a 10th-grade-ish curriculum plan (2015-16) and the unschooled version of an ninth-grade-ish curriculum plan (2014-15). There are also earlier ideas at the unschooled version of a seventh-grade-ish curriculum plan (2012-13).

So with that, here is…

The Conciliotto family’s unschooling 8th grade-ish curriculum

We like books.

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!
We like alpacas.

We like video games.

We like taking trips – to well-known destinations and, uh, some crazy out-of-the-way ones, too.

We don’t like quizzes, tests, requirements and reports.

We love going with the flow.

So how does this turn into “curriculum” – and what else will we be mixing in?

As well as I can, I’m going to try to do a subject-by-subject look; that’s NOT how we learn, and most of what we do is what would in my state documentation be called cross-curricular, but this way, if you’re using a planned curriculum in some subjects and want to mix in something we’re using in another, you can see how it might fit.

History, social studies and geography

History and geography? Really not a problem for us. 

They’re some of the areas Ashar is most passionate about, and we plan to continue doing what we’ve been doing – reading fiction and nonfiction, watching movies, taking trips, and generally doing everything we can to immerse ourselves in whatever periods and places he’s most fascinated with at the time.

Oh, and did I mention, we own a rather large map? With that beside Ashar each night, there’s almost an unwritten rule in our house that we need to leave time to peer at it daily.

Specifically this year, there are a few time periods that I know we’ll especially focus on.

  • Ancient Greece. This interest started last year and shows no signs of waning. We’re working our way through the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series (we’re a little over halfway through the third book out of five, and we cannot wait to see the new movie opening this week!) Along with it, we’re checking out our favorite Greek fictional characters in a book we recently picked up called 30-Second Mythology.
  • The history of chemistry. We’ve been on that kick for a while too, but as I’ll talk about more in our science plans, we expect to keep delving into this topic.
  • The Revolutionary War. You’ll never guess what drew Ashar’s interest in this… Assassin’s Creed 3! Not the video game everyone would choose for their 13-year-old, I know, but we’ve been really into it. (The only thing we’ve found objectionable has been some brief language, and trust me when I say it’s nothing he hadn’t heard on the middle-school bus.) Anyway, it’s gotten us talking about some huge facets of the time around the Revolution, and in fact, I’ve got a whole post planned on what the Assassins Creed series has brought up in our conversations!

As unschoolers, we tend to have VERY focused books on our shelves pertaining to whatever topic Ashar is most passionate about at the time, whether that’s ancient Greece or the Civil War. Where we’re sometimes lacking is in resources to answer the “in between” questions that come up, or to give more of an overview. And while I hear great things about Story of the World, Mystery of History and other “large-scale” history programs, even as reference materials if not for focused study, they’re a little – often a lot – more than we normally are looking for.

So underpinning all of these things and more this year, Ashar and I are going to be looking for some fun ways to get a  quick glimpse at the breadth of history, such as using history coloring books and timelines.

Math

Let me be very clear about math: We don’t require any “book work” for math. We are huge fans of how math appears in the real world, and we firmly believe that learning through math-in-life is how Ashar will succeed.

Any resources we use above and beyond that are only if Ashar is interested, and not anything we do “formally.”

That said, there’s one curriculum-ish thing I’ve talked about a lot as it relates to math, and you might not be surprised to see it back this year: The Life of Fred series.

Last year, we bought the entire 10-book elementary series of Life of Fred, which starts at “Apples” and ends at “Jellybeans.” We read them for fun, when Ashar wanted to, and got midway through Ice Cream, the next-to-last book in the series, before his interest waned.

This year, I started thinking differently about Ashar’s math skills. Working through the elementary Fred books, it became pretty clear that Ashar has now caught on to the concepts behind arithmetic – adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, plus dealing with fractions and so on – in a way that had eluded him in public school.

I won’t claim that he knows every math fact cold. He knows a lot – and can generally tell you plenty of them if he’s not rushed to do so quickly. But sometimes, yeah, 7 times 9 doesn’t exactly remind him of 63.

So IF I was going to continue to have Fred on hand for our reading enjoyment, I had a choice to make: Keep rehashing at the lower levels, going through fractions, decimals and percents, or say, “You know what? Ashar’s arithmetic is what is it; he knows how to figure things out (by hand and with a calculator), and he’s capable of understanding more complex concepts, so why not get on with them?”

Bet you can guess which I did. 🙂

Ashar and I sat down and talked about what he might be interested in reading more about. He said he missed Fred, but was getting tired of the “boring parts.” So after looking at our options, we ordered Life of Fred Pre-Algebra 1 with Biology. Ashar said he picked this one because “I hope to learn a lot about biology!” Math and science together – win!

I want to be clear about Life of Fred: While it is described as a Christian series, we are a secular homeschooling family and haven’t had any problems using the fairly few spiritual references we’ve found as talking points about what different people believe, which we like to do anyway.

In addition to our heavy focus on real-world math, and Fred as Ashar’s interested throughout the year, we also agreed to review a middle- and high-school video/animation-based tutoring series for math and science called Uzinggo. You’ll hear more about that later, but at an early glance, Ashar and I think it’s pretty cool!

Science

Well, obviously, one of our key focuses this year will be the biology we pick up from Life of Fred!

We also expect to spend much of our time working with Ashar’s 4-H alpaca club. The hours he devotes to that would likely be enough for a science “credit” on their own, between practices, shows, meetings and project work.

But because science is one of Ashar’s favorite things, another key focus will continue to be chemistry. We’ve spent a significant amount of time already learning about this topic mostly through its history – researching the early alchemists, talking about the periodic table, visiting the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s museum, and so on.

Lately, Ashar has been on a quest to learn more about atoms and elements and how they really work. He is fascinated by the fact that there are bazillions of molecules in a raindrop and routinely brings that up in dinner conversations.

At a recent used book sale we went to, Ashar asked if I could “get him a book of chemistry to learn.” We found a college chemistry text, and a REALLY BORING high school one, but… eww. Not what he was looking for. Heavy on chemical equations, light on real-world applications, and NO PICTURES. So, we’ll have to see what we can dig up instead!

Mixed in with this, I’m reading a really cool book called The Disappearing Spoon about some of the bizarre history of the elements and the periodic table, and while it’s fairly dense reading, I’ve been sharing neat stories from it with Ashar as I go. We’re also going to add as many other periodic table resources as we can find, including those videos from Uzinggo that I mentioned when we were talking about math. (We’ve watch the introduction to chemistry already and are loving it!)

Chemistry and alpacas and biology – what a mix! 

Language arts

In some ways, this is both the hardest and easiest subject to explain.

We’ll read books – lots. We’ll talk about them. We’ll encourage Ashar’s writing, spelling and comprehension abilities as they come up naturally. In large part, the biggest key to strengthening his spelling and writing has been his passion for online multi-player games like Minecraft and World of Warcraft!

As with our other subjects, we don’t create assignments in this area. But between 4-H projects, things Ashar does for fun and his own day-to-day use of language, I’m sure we’ll have more than enough to satisfy our state’s portfolio requirements for writing!

Specifically this year, some of the things that I think will come up:

  • Talking about movie adaptations of books.
  • Figuring out how to learn about a subject from different types of texts (first-person, fiction, nonfiction, reference, blog and more).
  • Continuing our exploration of series fiction via the Alchemyst and Percy Jackson series, as well as some others like The Sisters Grimm and the Pseudonymous Bosch books.
  • Digging more deeply into higher-level texts, like National Geographic magazine and some high-school and college reference books.

We’ve got shelves and shelves full of things we’re reading, and I’ll be sure to share those as we go in our reading roundup posts, but you can see some of our favorites here!

Music, art, technology, home economics, faith, physical education and other good stuff

It’s funny: I’m devoting the least space to this, but this is probably the largest part of our learning, because it’s everything that happens in the real world that doesn’t fit neatly into a “subject” box, and that’s, uh, most of it!

I’ll try to list a few highlights here.

  • Music: We’re attending a Celtic Thunder concert in October, hitting a couple of local marching-band shows at other times in the fall, attending our area high schools’ spring musicals if possible in the spring, and listening to all sorts of music any time we can.
  • Art: Lots of our art is digital. Photography, website design and graphics work are some of the biggest things we do together. We also paint, scrapbook, collage and generally do all sorts of other crafty things together. Ashar’s newest interest has been in putting together hobby models, which definitely requires an eye for artistic detail!
  • Technology: This is Ashar’s passion. He has his own cell phone, tons of social-media accounts, gaming access and more. We don’t restrict him in this area because we, as adults, make our living by being online almost every waking hour, and we see Ashar’s skills leading him into a similar path. He has great typing skills (over 70 words per minute), and we’re going to continue to get him exposed to as many kinds of technology as possible, both at home and through things like the Bricks 4 Kidz junior robotics camps.
  • Home economics: We cook, we clean, we shop. In our family, those things aren’t “chores,” they’re just ways we interact together as a family, and we’ll keep doing that. Personal finance is another part we lump into this (and it’s also heavily mathematical)!
  • Physical education: We go on lots of hikes. Ashar loves to ride his scooter. And our biggest source of exercise is actually part of our science “curriculum” – walking alpacas, maneuvering them through obstacles and otherwise putting in the hard work required on a farm!
  • Travel: This is a big one. We’re planning a major family road trip to St. Louis, Missouri, in October, because I’m speaking at the Financial Blogger Conference. Chris and Ashar will be doing a lot of sight-seeing while I’m working! We’ve also planned a whole bunch of smaller trips – to area ghost-town Centralia, to local factories offering tours, to visits to state parks in remote corners of Pennsylvania.

So how and when do we “do” all this stuff?

I’ve mentioned before that the one thing we can count on almost every day is our family time before bed. For night owls like us, this time might start anywhere from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. and go for a few hours!

Unschooling 8th grade on Unschool Rules: How to homeschool at nightThis is our time to be together and be even more intentional than we try to be the rest of the day about doing stuff as a family.

We read aloud together almost every night. We watch movies and TV shows on Netflix. We play board games and draw pictures and talk and laugh and pet cats.

It’s funny, because our days are often filled with work (for my husband and I) and online gaming (for Sarah). We see a lot of benefits to that too, but people who only know us during the daylight hours probably think we don’t do much together! We’re proud of our approach, though – because we spend our “prime time,” the hours we’re most alert, together!

Meanwhile, we also love to travel, and that’s a big part of our lifestyle. I mentioned some of our upcoming trips earlier in today’s post, and we have dozens more that we’d like to fit in. Chris and I both have somewhat flexible work schedules, and that makes a huge difference. One of our favorite things to do is take Wednesdays off and day-trip as a family!

Read more about our unschooling approach

If you’re newer to Unschool RULES, maybe you’re wondering about this radical unschooling thing we do.

Here are a few posts that tell more about our lives!

Join the NOT Back-to-School Party!

Unschooling 8th grade: Part of the Not Back to School Blog Hop 2013Want to see what my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers are learning this year?

Check out the rest of Curriculum Week at the Not-Back-To-School Blog Hop here (and you can link up your posts, too!)

This post is also part of the How to Teach Without a Curriculum linkup through the iHomeschool Network. Click the image below to read more posts on teaching without formal curriculum!

Unschooling 8th grade: Part of the Teach Without Curriculum series

01Aug
3

A birthday celebration: Small steps and giant leaps from Neil Armstrong

It seems that for the past two years, we’ve had our heads in the stars… studying space. Even our family Netflixing is centered around Star Trek!

So it’s probably no surprise that as the iHomeschool Network celebrates some noted historical figures born in August, I’d choose to commemorate one of our favorite space personalities – Neil Armstrong!

Neil Armstrong unit study guide for homeschoolers and unschoolers

All about Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, in Ohio. (Yes, I’m celebrating two Ohioans this month – Annie Oakley being the other!)

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Armstrong is best known for being the first person to walk on the moon (as part of the Apollo 11 mission with Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins), but his original career choice was not in spaceflight.

His goal, actually, had been to be a test pilot, and he was a great one, reaching records in both speed and height for the time and, over the course of his career, flying more than 200 different types of aircraft.

He also served as a Navy pilot during the Korean War, flying 78 missions over Korea. In 1962, he was invited by Deke Slayton to join NASA as part of the “New Nine,” or second set of astronauts.

While his Apollo 11 moon-landing mission was probably the most commonly remembered, Neil Armstrong went into space earlier as part of the Gemini 8 crew; that mission went up in 1966 and involved docking two spaceships together while in orbit. A critical systems failure required the mission to be aborted after only a few hours, but Neil (and the rest of the crew) thought quickly and all survived.

We’ve watched footage of the landing many times, and heard and read many stories that say that Neil Armstrong intended to say “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” but recordings have always seemed to indicate that he dropped the “a,” which kind of messes with the meaning a little. Just in the past few months, however, research by linguistics experts seems to think it might have been there after all!

When Armstrong passed away on Aug. 25, 2012, America lost one of its greatest pioneers. Always a humble and private man (perhaps even MORE so after the famous landing), it was fitting that his burial at sea was relatively private, but the photos I saw from it touched me deeply.

Much more about space exploration

Solar system and space unit study guide for homeschoolers and unschoolersSpace exploration is a topic that we spent a LOT of time reading, watching and otherwise learning about in recent years.

If you’re interested in digging deeper into this topic, please check out To the moon and back: Best resources for solar-system study. 

That learning guide post that wraps up so many of the great books, movies and trips we found valuable!

Read more about Neil Armstrong

Ideas for discussion

I admit it – we’ve talked SO MUCH about space that it’s almost hard for me to boil down our questions to a few interesting bullet points you might want to discuss. That said, here are a few of the many!

  • Being first. Was it right that Neil Armstrong, not Buzz Aldrin, walked on the moon first? Was it right that Armstrong got so much more attention for what he did? And what about Mike Collins, who had the unenviable job of staying up in space, circling the moon, while Buzz and Neil were in the LEM (landing module)?
  • The future of our space program. I admit that in our family, we’re not happy with the turn away from space exploration following the Apollo missions. That said, we’re incredibly interested in things like the the recent decision to start working on the Human Spaceflight initiative to promote deeper-space human travel, as well as private space exploration like SpaceX. What are your thoughts on space exploration? What are the benefits vs. the risks?
  • Rights and responsibilities. Who “owns” space? What are our responsibilities when exploring – and, in the future, possibly colonizing – moons and planets? When I took my astrobiology course via Coursera, we talked about these issues in some detail, and surprisingly, they came up again in my recent archaeology course!

Join the birthday party

If you’re interested, there are many more cool “August birthday” lessons from my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers. Click the image below to check them out!

And thanks for stopping by to help me wish Neil Armstrong a happy birthday!

You can check out more posts in our Learning Party series here!

31Jul
4

A birthday celebration: Learning about Annie Oakley, a wonderful woman of the Wild West

Perhaps you’ve never heard of Phoebe Ann Mosey, born in Ohio on Aug. 13, 1860.

Or rather, you probably have, but not by that name. You might remember her as woman who would go on to become a noted sharpshooter in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, more commonly known as Annie Oakley, a woman whose story is so fascinating even 153 years later that I was thrilled to include her in an iHomeschool Network celebration of noted August birthdays!

Annie Oakley unit study guide for homeschoolers and unschoolers

All about Annie Oakley

Phoebe Ann “Annie” Mosey (who last name was also sometimes noted in records as Mozee, Moses, Mosee and Mauzy) was born Aug. 13, 1860, in Ohio.

Disclosure: This post has some affiliate links. I only link to things we legitimately use and recommend, so if you see such a link, it's because we really do believe in the book or item!
After Annie’s father passed away when she was 6 years old, she started helping the family in any way she could – including hunting for game, which is where she developed her shooting talent. She sold extra game that she trapped and shot, and by the time she was 15, her income helped pay off her mother’s mortgage.

The same year, a touring marksman brought his “shooting show” to a local hotel. That marksman, Frank Butler, often promoted his show by doing a marksmanship contest against a local shooter. Well, I bet he was surprised when the hotel’s proprietor put him up against a 15-year-old girl named Annie – and Annie won!

The two sharpshooters were quite a pair. They eventually married, toured together (at times with Frank getting “top” billing and at times with Annie taking the lead and Frank as her manager) and grew older together. When Annie died on Nov. 3, 1926, Frank stopped eating in his grief, and he died just a few weeks later on Nov. 21.

Among the many things Annie Oakley was famous for included touring with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, along with Sioux chief Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull was a friend of Annie’s, and he gave her the nickname Little Sure Shot.

Annie also knew another celebrity of the time, as it were: Thomas Edison. In 1894, he made one of the first “movies” by filming Annie shooting; you can see that here!

There have been a variety of books and movies about Annie’s life, some much more realistic portrayals than others. The most famous, the Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun, is also probably the most loose adaptation, but certainly still interesting!

Read more about Annie Oakley

Ideas for discussion

We spent a lot of time last year talking about “cowboy and Indian” times. Along with that, we touched on issues ranging from the current state of Native American reservations to the role of women in the West to the discovery of gold in California and beyond!

Here are a few ideas based around what we learned of Annie Oakley to help your family dig deeper!

  • Reality vs. tall tales. Annie Oakley’s accomplishments sometimes were portrayed as almost larger-than-life. Yes, she was an amazing shot, but even the most amazing of her feats, like shooting the ashes off a cigarette, have been exaggerated in retellings. Her family members started the Annie Oakley Foundation to help prevent the spread of misinformation. What are some “tall tales” you’ve heard about someone famous, and what’s the true story?
  • Women in the West. (And, really, women’s history in general!) This is a fascinating topic, and Annie Oakley is definitely an example of a woman who was allowed many freedoms that weren’t common in her time! Even so, she was denied some opportunities because of her gender; in fact, during both the Spanish-American War and World War I, she’d offered to lead a regiment of female volunteer soldiers, and also offered to train the (male) soldiers to shoot, but she was turned down. That’s a topic worth discussing: How has that changed in the past hundred-some years, and what issues still remain?
  • Being “rich.” Touring with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and performing in other ways left Annie Oakley a wealthy woman. In the end, it was discovered that she spent all of her earnings on her family and on a significant variety of charities and causes. What would you do if you were really wealthy? What causes would you support?

Join the birthday party

If you’re interested, there are many more cool “August birthday” lessons from my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers. Click the image below to check them out!

And thanks for stopping by to help me wish Annie Oakley a happy birthday!

You can check out more posts in our Learning Party series here!

More great history resources

Unschool Rules: Part of the iHomeschool Network Massive Guide to Homeschooling HistoryThis post is part of the iHomeschool Network Massive Guide to Homeschooling History.

Make sure to check it out for tons of other great history resources, including links to a dozen more Unschool Rules posts!