Posts by Joan Concilio

25Sep
5

A day in the life of unschoolers, 2017 edition

Earlier this month, I shared our “un-curriculum” for the coming year 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 – in my case, a day in the life of unschoolers.

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 unschoolers: Unschool Rules

Different types of unschooling days

Our days vary a lot based on the work schedules of the various adults. Kaitlyn, Chris and I all work full-time about an hour away from home, with Kaitlyn and I heading in one direction (north) and Chris heading in another (east). Chris also works primarily evening shifts, getting home from work around 12:30 or 1 a.m.

But one to two days a week, Kaitlyn and I can work from home, and Chris often gets midweek days as his only off time. Add into that our commitments with 4-H, Ashar’s various theater groups, my grad school program, my martial arts lessons and more, and it can get pretty complex.

So while I want to show you one cool day in Ashar’s life, please know that they can all look very different – and that’s what we love!

A day in the life of unschoolers, as documented by Chris, Unschooling Dad Extraordinaire

When I told Chris I was working on this post before he and Ashar spent a day together last Wednesday, I was hoping he’d take a couple photos and make some notes. Instead, because he is a great blogger himself, in addition to being Amazing Unschool Dad, he wrote the most detailed look at a day ever.

Up around 10 a.m.
Dressed and ready to roll.
Gets his laundry.
Explains the story of “It” to his grandmother.

He and I drive to the Galleria (Note from Joan: This is the mall across town from us). Discussion includes:

Talk about Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico. He wants to know where it’s going and where the other hurricanes are.

Unprompted, he asks: “When were women first allowed in the military?” So I do my best to fill him in off the top of my head, starting, correctly, with the women who served as military nurses in World War II, moving through World War II, Korea and Vietnam and then correctly tell him that the first woman who fought in combat missions were during the Gulf War. He wonders why it took so long, especially if women can do everything men do.

Then he switches gears to: “Do women have equal pay yet?” I tell him no, and that it’s wrong that they don’t, and progress is unfortunately slow, but that speed is the reality, given all the years of institutional tradition in play. He think we should get to equal pay faster, but understands the obstacles that make it slow going. He understands that a lot of people – most people – want equal pay, but that doesn’t mean you can snap your fingers and make it happen.

Then, as we’re discussing the slow politics behind equal pay, he asks: “Would we be better off if the president wasn’t sexist and racist?” “Yes, yes we would,” I reply. (Note from Joan: Ashar is REALLY into politics – and has very strong political opinions and very little filter. You don’t have to agree – and I don’t normally share any of our politics, which vary in our household – but this was TOO “classic Ash” to pass up.)

“We need people in Congress, too, who are good people and aren’t sexist and racist,” Ashar adds.

So that conversation happened. I wish I had taped it. But I was driving.

Unschool Rules Day in the Life of Unschoolers: Ashar loves Hot Topic. Really, really, really loves Hot Topic. Did I mention he loves Hot Topic?

Ashar loves Hot Topic. Really, really, really loves Hot Topic. Did I mention he loves Hot Topic?

Then we went to Hot Topic, one of his favorite stores. He likes The Walking Dead and heavy metal and Deadpool and he was hoping to find a Funko pop figure of Dustin from Stranger Things, but they had everyone but him.

Then we went to FYE and browsed more pop-culture stuff.

Then he ate McDonald’s for lunch and grilled me about Pennywise.

Unschool Rules Day in the Life of Unschoolers: Ash's stamp book - and some of Chris' many postcards to send to Postcrossing friends.

Ashar’s stamp book – and some of Chris’ many postcards to send to Postcrossing friends.

After we came home and a short break, we added some stamps to his Stamp Book, including James McNeill Whistler, Booker T. Washington and a stamp from the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. (Note from Joan: The Stamp Book is a cool project Ashar and Chris are working on with his stamp collection!)

Then he picked out a postcard to send to his pen pal Christina in Taiwan. And he specially picked all the stamps to put on the card.

Ashar wrote the note to Christina, mostly telling her about his burgeoning community theater career. I addressed the card.

Unschool Rules Day in the Life of Unschoolers: Ashar loves writing to his pen pal, Christina, in Taiwan! You can tell because it's his neat handwriting.

Ashar loves writing to his pen pal, Christina, in Taiwan! You can tell because it’s his neat handwriting.

Then we had to take a break to help Coby, who had been outside too long and was very overheated. (Note from Joan: Coby is our almost-14-year-old Goldendoodle, who is not in very good health.)

Then Ashar helped me pick postcards for about a dozen of my new Postcrossing recipients around the world. I read Ashar each recipient’s profile and likes and dislikes. Based on that, Ashar then chose which card to send them.

Then Ashar discovered that Norman Reedus has his very own custom postcard set, of his own photographs, for sale.

Ashar didn’t understand Reedus’ signature, but I showed him how it’s a fancy N and R.

Then I showed her how she should could sign his own initials in the style in the style of Norman Reedus, so he tried a couple.

Turning our attention to the model cemetery that we have, we started a list of other items that we might want to build or acquire if we construct a small model railroad set and landscape that includes the cemetery. The things we came up with, so far, are train tracks, tunnels, a small town (which we will call Derry), a clown for the cemetery, a prison, a road, cars, a farm and a mountaintop. (Note from Joan: HARD NO ON CLOWNS. Nice try, Ottos. I’m terrified of clowns and you know it.)

(Another note from Joan: The week before, I received a text that says “We bought a graveyard!” I came to find that they’d visited the local antique mall and purchased a wonderful model cemetery. This has been SUCH a cool find, by the way, that it will soon be the subject of its own post!)

Then Ashar took a break to wind down before his theater rehearsal by playing Grand Theft Auto on the PS4.

Then he ate salmon and french fries for dinner.

Went to rehearsal (Note from Joan: This is for Anthony and Cleopatra, which premieres this weekend!)

Came home.

Watched Stranger Things episode. (Note from Joan: This is something Chris, Kaitlyn, Ashar and I are doing together; Chris and Ashar already saw all of Season 1, but Kaitlyn and I are trying to catch up before Season 2.)

Spent 45 minutes in the upstairs bathroom laughing at videos on his phone.

Went to bedroom. Laughed a little while longer.

And, Chris concludes, “After that I don’t know because I fell asleep.”

Other things that make up our unschooling days

I don’t have too much more to add to Chris’ summary of a perfectly awesome day in our lives. When Chris and Kaitlyn and I are at work, Ashar and his Mommom (my mom) are home together and enjoy TV shows or movies or kitchen projects together. Interspersed with that, Ashar will sometimes take walks around our neighborhood, play basketball outside, hang out with our pets, work on Instagram photo edits for his fan account or read a book.

Then there was a recent Saturday when Kaitlyn and I took Ashar shopping at the big mall in the next town over to use some giftcards he had. On the drive, we happened to see a hot air balloon, so we followed it to see if we could see where it was landing, and ended up getting some cool pictures through our car’s sunroof. We talked all about how hot air balloons work and where you might go in one, then we finished it up with a restaurant dinner where we talked about how calories work for weight loss and weight gain.

Our teachers are all the people we meet, day in and day out. The woman at the doctor’s office who explains why you can’t have a fresh tattoo and get an MRI. Ashar’s Nana, who is an occupational therapy assistant and explains to her various stretches that help with muscle pain. Someone at the library who asks him about the kinds of books he enjoys and recommends others.

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!

Unschool Rules: Part of the 2017 iHomeschool Network Not Back to School Blog Hop 2017

Want 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!)

21Sep
8

Our unschooling planner system: Documenting relaxed homeschooling

For being part of a family that doesn’t ever need to go back-to-school shopping, I LOVE school and office supplies. It’s probably not surprising that I’ve been a planner junkie since high school, when my best friend Phil and I had matching Five Star First Gear planners that went everywhere with us. Fast-forward ::cough:: some number ::cough:: of years later, and now I have an unschooling planner system that helps me organize my life and keep track of our relaxed homeschooling lifestyle.

Documentation is one of those things I’m ALWAYS asked about. In some cases, people ask me specific questions about what they should record and how. In other cases, I hear from readers who love the ideas of unschooling but wonder, “How will I know if they’re learning?”

That’s why I want to share a look at our family’s unschooling planner system today. The goal is not for you to replicate this system by any means – but I thought if I show how I think about what I track, maybe it will help other families figure out what will work best for them!

Unschool Rules: Documenting relaxed homeschooling with an unschooling planner system

Planning supplies I use

Last year, I started using the Extra-Large Flexi Planner from Orange Circle Studios. These run from August of one year through December of the following, so I started my new “2018” one last month. You can see all of the 2018 design options here; I’m using the “Hello Aquarelle,” as I am not really into flowers and actually am allergic to pineapples, and thus didn’t want to stare at them all year. I like this because there is a set of monthly calendars in the front, followed by pages with lined sections for each day in week-by-week format behind the monthly pages.

Let me be really clear: You don’t need to buy anything fancy to implement a planning system. While I drool over the Instagram accounts of those $200-in-planner-supplies people, I have no desire to become one. Get a dollar-store calendar and a pen, and you can do pretty much everything I show here.

But if, like me, you HAPPEN to have a lot of craft and office supplies on hand, you can probably use some of those. Here’s absolutely everything I use for my planner, which is WAY more than is required:

Unschool Rules guide to an unschooling planner system: My base planner is the 2018 "Hello, Aquarelle" from Orange Circle Studio.

My base planner is the 2018 “Hello, Aquarelle” from Orange Circle Studio. The “Stay Curious”
owl sticker was actually a freebie at a tech conference I went to for work, and I loved it so much I carefully carried it over from last year’s planner.

A word about bullet journaling

Before I used this planner, I was a devoted user of the bullet journal system. I’m not going into detail about what that is, but my friend Jen McGrail’s “Bullet Journaling 101” post is a great place to start if you don’t know much about it.

I was doing a LOT of work by hand in my old bullet journal, though – writing every day’s date, drawing my monthly calendars, etc. The system I have now takes the parts of bullet journaling that were working well for me, but gets rid of a lot of the routine work.

Is it as fully customizable? Definitely not, but the time saved is a great trade-off for me.

Why use an unschooling planner system?

Another point of radical clarity: I am not a proponent of over-documenting your unschooling. If you try to make a list of everything your kids “learn” in a day, you’re kind of missing the point.

So why keep track of unschooling or relaxed homeschooling? A few reasons:

  • I like sharing what we do on this website. My month-in-review wrapups are designed to show people some of the things unschoolers do – especially for those who are just starting their journey and wondering, “Will my kids ever learn anything?” So for myself, I don’t necessarily need to keep track of the cool rabbit trails we go down, but jotting short notes about them makes it easier to share and help others.
  • It makes our end-of-year portfolio creation and transcript updating easier. Not all states require any kind of documentation; ours, Pennsylvania, requires a few specific things. Luckily, the evaluator who reviews our family’s portfolio is VERY unschool friendly. I often will just write a paragraph summary on a topic and list a couple places we went or methods we used to explore it and call it good; the hard part of that, though, is remembering in March what topics we were into in September, so our short notes help. Read more about the Pennsylvania homeschooling portfolio – and see samples of ours, as well as Ashar’s transcript – here.
  • It can help you be more present with your kids. Let me be realistic: I work full-time away from home, and, since she’s in her late teens now, a lot of Ashar’s free time is spent engaged in activities I’m not part of, like acting with local theater groups. Taking the time every day or couple of days to stop and think, “What have Ashar and I really been talking about lately?” is a good reset point for me when I don’t feel like we’ve been well-connected. If I have three days in a row where I have no idea what she did, my first thought isn’t, “Wow, she wasn’t learning,” it’s “Wow, I’m not engaged with her.” That helps me make it a point to check in and find out what’s up!
Unschool Rules guide to an unschooling planner system: An overview look at a month's unschooling documentation.

An overview look at a month’s unschooling documentation.

The monthly log

This is the first section of the planner I use, and it’s where the unschooling record-keeping piece comes in.

Almost every day, I jot down a few things we did. These aren’t necessarily “educational” things in any traditional sense – but if we watched a movie or TV show, had a cool conversation, tried a new Universal Yums snack box, went to a restaurant or store, took part in a music lesson or play practice… that’s what gets written in the square for the day.

You can see that some days have more than others. That has nothing to do with how much Ashar is doing or learning or experiencing – as I mentioned above, a lot of my focus in the record-keeping is to be engaged with what Ashar is doing. On the days where you only see one or two things, it’s where I was at work all day and Ashar was at play practice all night and then I sat down to do grad school homework and we barely said two sentences to each other.

Monthly log basics

  • Each day, jot down the highlights in the main calendar box – a book, movie, conversation topic, place you went, etc.
  • In the sidebar, keep track of important family notes, like paydays or bills or number of stuffed penguins you mailed.
  • Don’t stress, and don’t overdo. If you miss a day, either add one thing you remember or just skip it. If you run out of room, don’t write anything else.
Unschool Rules guide to an unschooling planner system: A closer look at the monthly unschooling log. Items are highlighted once I mention them in my monthly wrapup post on Unschool Rules. Other things like bills, paydays and stuffed penguins sent are in the sidebar.

A closer look at the monthly unschooling log. Items are highlighted once I mention them in my monthly wrapup post on Unschool Rules. Other things like bills, paydays and stuffed penguins sent are in the sidebar.

The daily log

The monthly log might be where the basic “unschooling planner system” comes in, but the daily log is how I run my life.

Here, I list all our appointments, my freelance work projects, my grad school assignments, our trips to the library, house-cleaning tasks, and a ton more. Basically, if it needs to get done outside my 9-to-5 job, it goes here. (The day job has its own set of to-do lists, on a Page-a-Day Calendar + Notepad, which I fear they have stopped making effective 2018, which is a little bit making me lose my mind.)

But anyway, the daily log: This is where everything goes that I need to accomplish (or make sure someone else accomplishes, like getting Ashar to a class or practice).

Daily log basics

  • My biggest goal: Don’t add more “to-do” items to a day than there are spaces. You would think this was obvious, but…
  • Write appointments in a different color. (You can see mine are teal.) That keeps you from overlooking them among the things that can migrate to another day.
  • Controversial tip: Use Wite-Out Tape for the things you didn’t get done that you’re moving to another day. Some people follow the bullet journal method of crossing it out with an arrow, then carrying it forward. I need the mental freedom of not seeing a list of things I didn’t manage to do.
  • Similarly, I don’t cross off things I have done, either. If you value a sense of accomplishment the way I do, highlighting tasks when you complete them feels really good. No, YOU wrote something down just to highlight it. That wasn’t me. Ever. Much.
  • When you do something special, note it in another color at the bottom. In my former bullet journal, I would sometimes even draw pictures; I’m not that invested any more, but I love seeing the milestone moments stand out in pink. I’ll come back to another way this helps me later when I talk about my “end products.”
  • On a day toward the end of one month, make a task to plan the next month. I’m always writing in appointments and specific events as I go,
    but the “regular stuff” – vacuuming most weekends, cleaning the bathrooms, long-term freelance projects that get done on specific days each week, sending invoices to other clients, etc. – those, I add a month at a time, as I need them.
Unschool Rules guide to an unschooling planner system: A detailed look at the weekly log. Finished tasks are highlighted; appointments with fixed times are written in teal.

A detailed look at the weekly log. Finished tasks are highlighted; appointments with fixed times are written in teal.

The year in pixels and other bonus features

One of the coolest things in my older, more traditional bullet journal was my “year in pixels” spread. This is a place where you can keep track of your mood or the kind of day you’re having. As someone who lives with bipolar disorder, this has long been something I’ve found helpful to keep an eye on my moods and make sure they’re not going somewhere I don’t want to go.

The Orange Circle Studios planners have a “Rate Your Year” page where this is already set up for you with a five-point scale! Just pick your colors (mine range from blue for great days to brown for horrible days) and color a square each day. I don’t remember to do this every night, but I try to do it every 2 or 3 nights.

You might see that my scale is always “so-so” and up. This is sort of a weird fluke of my personality; I also grade almost all books I read on Goodreads at three, four or five stars. Of the 417 books rated there, I have given three reviews less than 3 stars. Similarly, I have no days so far in my year in pixels that are bad or horrible. Call it an optimistic personality; call it reserving bad ratings for things that really deserve them; call it creating a three-point scale. I don’t know. Anyway. Now you know a new thing about me, right?

(And to be clear – there are things that could happen that would render a day bad or horrible – immense tragedy or illness related to someone I love, for instance – but thankfully these aren’t regular occurrences.)

Unschool Rules guide to an unschooling planner system: The "Rate Your Year" page takes the Year in Pixels bullet journal concept and makes it easier for me to actually do it.

The “Rate Your Year” page takes the Year in Pixels bullet journal concept and makes it easier for me to actually do it.

Extra features in the Flexi Planner

  • Rate Your Year page for keeping track of moods/quality of days.
  • To-Do List and Not-To-Do List pages, great for tracking long-term goals. (I plan to use these for my New Year’s goals, which I have in another notebook for 2017 but will transition into here in 2018.)
  • Budget Tracker. This is really cool, but we have a digital budget that Kaitlyn and I share, so I don’t need it written out. Plus, we track different stuff – focusing mostly on debt payoffs. But if you’re just starting with budgeting, the plan in here is a good one.
  • Bucket list, another one I’ll start using when I do my start-of-2018 planning.
  • Empty graph paper pages – I think these are there for other “modified bullet journalers.” If you do a bullet journal collection for something like books read or trips taken or steps toward a specific goal, this would be the place to do it.
  • Event stickers for birthdays, holidays, vacations, parties, lunch dates, “don’t forgets” and more – there’s a whole page of these in the back. I’m not a huge sticker person. Though I have little owls and aliens on a variety of my pages, I don’t really use them to denote anything special, but if you do, they’re cool!
  • Lovely back pocket is probably one of my most-used features. That’s where I store bills to be paid, my work to-do lists (when I’m working from home, I have to carry them with me), papers to fill out for the doctor, whatever.
Unschool Rules guide to using an unschooling planning system: The pocket in the back of the Orange Circle Studio Extra-Large Flexi Planner holds papers that need to travel with me.

The pocket in the back of the Orange Circle Studio Extra-Large Flexi Planner holds papers that need to travel with me.

End products: Monthly blog posts, our homeschool portfolio and our family scrapbooks

So this is what I consider the most important part of our unschooling planner system: It’s not the tracking or planning itself. Those are just means to an end – and in my case, the most important end is what I do with the data from the planner.

Monthly blog posts: I mentioned earlier that these are the biggest reason why I keep track of our unschooling adventures – so I can share them and encourage other families on a similar path. You can see an archive of our lives here, month-by-month, all the way back to July 2014!

As I sit down to write these posts each month, since I follow a standard template, I start with last month’s post and then go through, section by section, and scan my calendar for things that relate. And, as I share them in the roundup, I highlight them – so I know what I’ve covered and what I haven’t yet. Then I add photos – which come from my external hard drive, which is sorted by year and month, so super-easy to get the ones I need – and boom, roundup post! (OK, it’s not quite “boom,” it takes a while and usually comes way later in the month than I intended, but whatever. It’s way better than what you’d get if I was just trying to remember things.)

Our homeschool portfolio and transcript: We are very lucky to have an unschooling-friendly evaluator. We send her a short summary of topics we’ve covered at the end of the year, along with some photos, and Ashar answers some questions for her. It’s incredibly low-stress, and the only thing that takes any time at all is summing up what we do. But guess what makes it easier? The notes and the roundup posts! I can easily get a feel for our “big themes,” and use those to frame out subject descriptions for the portfolio and credit topics for Ashar’s transcript.

You can see more about how we organize our topics into credits for a transcript here. And, if you’re an Unschool Rules email subscriber, you can get a full editable transcript copy plus samples of our portfolio submissions; sign up here to get access!

Our family scrapbooks: I’ve been a dedicated scrapbooker for the past decade, and every year, I make a family album with photos from the year, ephemera and souvenirs, notes about cool things we did and more. A key part of that is a short monthly calendar that includes our highlights, which helps reflect the things we do that don’t have photos. Guess what? The things in pink in the daily log in my planner… those are what goes on those calendars! It’s a super-simple way to manage that at the beginning of the following year when I sit down to scrapbook.

Unschool Rules guide to an unschooling planner system: When I work on my scrapbook for a particular year, I look back through my planner for special events (usually written in pink) to add to calendars like these.

When I work on my scrapbook for a particular year, I look back through my planner for special events (usually written in pink) to add to calendars like these.

Final thoughts

Like I said when I started out, my goal isn’t that anyone would say, “OH. This is perfect! I’ll just do exactly this thing that Joan does!” That would be weird.

My hope is that by seeing how I think about planning – what I keep track of, what I don’t worry about, and most importantly, what I do with the info I track. No one needs to document for the sake of documenting; make sure you have a use for what you’re tracking.

Do you have any other planner questions, unschooling or otherwise? Feel free to ask them in the comments and I’ll be glad to help if I can!

17Sep
4

Unschooling: Our August 2017 adventures

Do you know what August means? It means I got to start my new planner! Yes, I’m a planner junkie, and new planner time is like the best part of the year for me. Along with that came some tweaks to how I keep track of the things our family does. So not only do I have a detailed roundup of unschooling in August to show you today, but in another few days, I’ll have a post on our planning and record-keeping system for those of you who are wondering how we “document” our family learning times.

(And as always, if you want a more frequent peek at what we do, you can always find me on Instagram and Facebook. I’m specifically trying to share more on Facebook, both from our lives and from other homeschooling blogs I’m reading, so make sure you’re following along there!)

Unschooling in Central Pennsylvania on Unschool Rules: A month in the life of radical unschoolers.

If you’re new to seeing our days recapped in this format, check out our archive of previous wrapups here for some more info on why we take this approach and some other highlights of our adventures. And if you haven’t checked out our unschooling “curriculum plan” for Ashar’s 12th-grade year, I definitely encourage you to take a look at that too!

Unschooling in August 2017 on Unschool Rules; Doesn't everyone balance penguins upon themselves while sitting on the couch?

Doesn’t everyone balance penguins upon themselves while sitting on the couch?

All things theater and Shakespeare

Last month, I talked about Ashar performing in a production of The Tempest through our local Shakespeare company, Orangemite Studios and their Dover Youth Shakespeare Academy.

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!

This month, we kept up the Shakespeare vibe.

August included two theater auditions for Ashar – one for Antony and Cleopatra through our local Shakespeare company, Orangemite Studios, and the other for Frankenstein at The Belmont, another local theater, which she auditioned for with Kaitlyn. While neither of them got a part in Frankenstein, Ashar was excited to be cast with her friend Nash as Cleopatra’s attendants in Antony and Cleopatra.

Spoiler alert for September’s update, when I post it: Since August ended, she also has auditioned for and received one of the lead parts in “Macbeth of the Dead,” a Macbeth retelling with zombies. Macbeth. Zombies. Nothing could be more in Ashar’s wheelhouse. This one is through Weary Arts Group, one of the coolest groups Ashar has worked with so far.

So rehearsals for Antony and Cleopatra are well under way, and we also dug into a bunch of other cool Shakespeare stuff, such as:

  • Romeo + Juliet – This is one of our favorite Shakespeare adaptations – modern staging with original text, in a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Interestingly, Ashar memorized a new monologue (Romeo’s part from the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet) for her Antony and Cleopatra audition, and this was a huge help to her in learning it. Chris also found for us a song by Dire Straits called Romeo and Juliet, which we all thought was pretty cool. The Indigo Girls and The Killers have covered it too.
  • Julius Caesar – Since Julius Caesar is in some ways a “prequel” to Antony and Cleopatra, we watched Orangemite’s DVD production of it before Ashar’s Antony and Cleopatra audition.
  • Shakespeare Unlimited – This is a podcast series from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and Ashar and I have started listening to it as we drive to her guitar lessons each week. In August we checked out an episode called Myths about Shakespeare that was really cool!
Unschooling in August 2017 on Unschool Rules: I got a new haircut to go with my new glasses!

I got a new haircut to go with my new glasses!

4-H things

August started out with Ashar spending three days in State College, PA, home of Penn State University’s main campus, as part of 4-H State Achievement Days. She got to room with one of her best friends, learned about microbes that affect plants, and had a blast at the dance (always her favorite part).

On the day we got home, she had a 4-H Wildlife Club meeting where, to prepare for the 4-H Fair/county roundup later in the month, the group gave oral presentations on some of their projects. Ashar presented on her alpaca genetics project, which was amazing and which won a gold ribbon at Fair. She did a TON of work on this project and is hoping to continue it in even more detail next year.

There was also alpaca practice each weekend, with the club’s show taking place Aug. 19. The show at the York Fair is coming up this weekend, but Ashar will just be spectating for that one because of some allergy problems that make it not ideal for her to sit around all day in hay and fiber!

SPEAKING of animal hair, we also had practices for 4-H Clover Canines, our dog club, culminating in a show at the 4-H Fair on Sept. 13, in which Ashar took first place in the advanced/teen category. She can’t show our dog, who is too old to even get into and out of the car any more, so she shows my best friend Nina’s husky, Thor, who is awesome!

For the year ahead, we’re going to have to figure out what’s going to take precedence – 4-H or acting. This year, Ashar was president of two of her three clubs, and we just can’t manage that again for the year ahead, but it’s also nearing the end of her 4-H eligibility, so we don’t want to miss out, either. Stay tuned for updates on that!

Unschooling in August 2017 on Unschool Rules: Ashar REALLY loved reading James Patterson's Humans, Bow Down, ably assisted by stuffed monsteroo Whip.

Ashar REALLY loved reading James Patterson’s Humans, Bow Down, ably assisted by stuffed monsteroo Whip.

Books

Ashar has really gotten into reading again lately. We’ve been working on our family learning journals together, and in fact we’re all making progress on our book lists and otherwise pursuing the topics we’re interested in. If you haven’t yet read about that project, definitely check it out here!

  • The Trial by James Patterson – Ashar and I are reading this novella together after finishing another Patterson novella. She’s become a huge fan of his!
  • Humans, Bow Down by James Patterson – SO much Patterson! Ashar picked up this sci-fi novel of his at the library and started reading it on her own. She just finished it in September and loved it the whole time.
  • The Book of Useless Information by Noel Botham – This is a great family “browsing book” – you know, one you can pick up, read a selection from, put back down, and not need to worry about continuity. Ashar read a bunch of excerpts to me while I was laying on her bed one afternoon and it was great! It tied right into the history topic from our learning journals, too.
  • Alchemy and Mysticism by Alexander Roob and Alchemy, the Great Secret by Andrea Aromatico – Alchemy is one of the topics on both Ashar’s learning journal list and mine, and we are actually in the process of scoping out a place to get matching tattoos of the ouroboros, which is Ashar’s personal symbol and also the official name of our homeschool (Ouroboros Academy)! So we spent one day looking through her alchemy books and reading as much as we could about the various components of the things often pictured with it.
  • Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 – Ashar’s latest comic book reads. She’s almost always got comic books going!
Unschooling in August 2017 on Unschool Rules: Kaitlyn took me to see one of my longtime favorite bands, Live, who come from my town, in concert in Bethlehem, PA.

Kaitlyn took me to see one of my longtime favorite bands, Live, who come from my town, in concert in Bethlehem, PA.

Movies, TV and more podcasts

  • Wonder Woman – Ashar got to have a theater double-feature day; first, she and Chris went to see Wonder Woman, which she liked…
  • Spider Man: Homecoming – … and then Chris, Ashar, Kaitlyn and I went to see the new Spider Man. We all enjoyed it, and I ended up liking it a LOT more than I thought I would. Also, I cried. (I cry at everything.)
  • Game Show Network – Doesn’t every family binge-watch Family Feud with Steve Harvey? No? Just us?
  • Liar, Liar – We’ve all seen this before, but we needed a nice, relaxing laughfest one night, so we put it on again. I really have a soft spot for Jim Carrey. (Also, did you know he is an amazing artist? You should check out the video of his work below.)
  • Trolls and Sing – Are we dorks who like music and animated movies? Yes, yes we are.
  • Invincible – Chris and Ashar were channel-surfing and caught large parts of this one.
  • Forrest Gump – This has long been one of Ashar’s favorite movies. This time around, I managed to catch about 15 minutes of it, and cry for about 14.5 of them. #alwayscrying
  • Les Misérables – SPEAKING of musicals (and classics), this is another one we all like but hadn’t seen for a while. (Ashar and I actually like this so much we wrote a whole blog post about it back in 2014.)
  • Stuff You Missed in History Class – This is another podcast series we all like to listen to. This month, Ashar and I listened to one on the Count of St. Germain and another on Charles VI of France, the Mad King.
  • The Strange and Unusual Podcast – This month, we listened to The Tell-Tale Heart and Murder in Salem, and we’re looking forward to future episodes in this series.

This month in rabbit trails

I keep saying that our rabbit trails are one of the best parts of unschooling. I want to make sure I’m intentional about focusing on some of the best ones each month, because I think these are really what shows what our unschooling life is like.

While driving to an event, we pulled over to make way for a state trooper with lights and sirens on. That got us talking about the appropriate thing to do when you’re driving (HINT: PULL OVER, PEOPLE – this is a serious pet peeve of mine!) as well as, among other things, how police jurisdictions work, what is covered by the state police, who investigates the police themselves, and a bunch more cool stuff.

Another day, my sister, her husband and their dog, Katie were visiting, and we ended up babysitting Katie, who is having some anxiety issues. We started talking about one possible option, a pheromone collar, and that got Ashar and I into looking up more about how pheromones work in general and what the vomeronasal organ is.

But my favorite by far this month was the day we were sitting at lunch on the porch of a local restaurant, watching the ducks in a little creek, and talking about Hurricane Harvey and its impact on people we know. This led to a huge discussion about socialism and how it relates to disaster response, Norway (which has a much more socialized care system), Nigeria (which doesn’t even have government-provided emergency services), the bank crash preceding the Great Depression (including how FDIC insurance works), what happens when a state of emergency is declared, how disasters often hurt people of color and people of lower economic status more than upper-middle-class white people, why people can’t just move out of disaster-prone areas, why someone might not want to evacuate and a bunch more. All of these are topics that NO ONE, adults included, has a full grasp of, but Ashar did an admirable job of asking good questions and putting forth smart ideas.

Unschooling in August 2017 on Unschool Rules: Shipping stuffed penguins by the dozens requires something of an assembly line. Here, I'm handling shipping labels and updating our online map; Mom is putting their little gift tags around their fat little necks with ribbon. Kaitlyn assembled the boxes and was taping them shut.

Shipping stuffed penguins by the dozens requires something of an assembly line. Here, I’m handling shipping labels and updating our online map; Mom is putting their little gift tags around their fat little necks with ribbon. Kaitlyn assembled the boxes and was taping them shut.

Those stuffed penguins

I’ve talked before about Pengins for Everyone, our family’s mildly crazy project to give away stuffed penguins – or, as we say, pengins – to anyone who requests one.

This month’s pengin update is that we had a bunch of amazing professional photos taken by CM&M Photography, which we’ll be using in a bunch of publicity materials. We also started the process of filing to incorporate as an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which we hope will make a big difference in our fundraising ability. Oh, and we shipped about 50 of the little dudes (and dudettes) to new homes.

If you want to learn more about this project, follow the Pengins for Everyone Facebook page. We share photos and videos of our crew hard at work trying to fulfill some of the 21,000 total requests on hand.

Unschooling in August 2017 on Unschool Rules: Isn't it great to think about getting a nice stuffed penguin in the mail? That's what Pengins for Everyone is all about. (Photo by CM&M Photography)

Isn’t it great to think about getting a nice stuffed penguin in the mail? That’s what Pengins for Everyone is all about. (Photo by CM&M Photography)

Games

Even though she already beat it, Ashar spent some time this month playing Uncharted 4 on PS4.

She also plays a bunch of FIFA 17, and she and Kaitlyn spent some time gaming together this month on his computer, playing a couple of new-to-us games like Pyre and Kerbal Space Program.

She’s also been playing more basketball outside lately, including a couple of rounds with Kaitlyn as well as one day when she and I went out and shot around in the rain, then came up to sit on our new porch rockers once it started storming in earnest. That was pretty awesome!

Unschooling in August 2017 on Unschool Rules: My best friend got married in August, and Ashar got to see some friends in my friend's family, which is basically like our extended family.

My best friend got married in August, and Ashar got to see some friends in my friend’s family, which is basically like our extended family.

Unschooling places, projects and odds and ends

Guitar lessons: Ashar continues to take weekly guitar lessons from the amazing Rod Goelz, also at Weary Arts. He’s amazing!

My best friend’s wedding: No, not the movie; my best friend got married to her high school sweetheart during a beautiful wedding on his dad’s farm earlier in August. Ashar is friends with lots of the teens in her family, so she got to hang out with some cool people, including one situation that involved three people sharing a set of suspenders. As you do.

Daddy-daughter days: As a newspaper sports editor, Chris has a really terrible work schedule starting in August. He gets, like, Wednesdays and Thursdays off (sometimes, if he’s lucky), and he works 14+ hour days most other days to cover all the high school stuff plus college and pro sports. So when he does have a free day, he often dedicates it to “Daddy-Daughter Day.” Like one day in August, the day he and Ashar double-featured movies at the theater, he also took her to the York Emporium, our favorite used book store, to the Timeline Arcade in downtown York, out to lunch at the White Rose (a super-cool downtown restaurant) and to the comic store.

Celtic Thunder: Celtic Thunder is cool – a band that Ashar, me and my mom all love. We spent one day just listening to a bunch of their songs at home, and in exciting news, we got our tickets for their show in Hershey, PA, just before my birthday in November. This will be our fourth year of all three of us attending, and my mom and I went one or two years before that too!

Homeschooling Outside the Box: I was invited to speak as part of a panel on a local seminar about non-boxed-curriculum homeschooling. If you’re into more relaxed, nontraditional homeschooling (as I assume you might be, since you’re reading this), you should check out our Homeschooling Outside the Box Facebook group. Make sure you mention you heard about it on Unschool Rules in the membership questions; we are trying to be pretty judicious about approving people! Anyway, one of the coolest parts of speaking at the seminar was that Kaitlyn and Ashar both attended, and afterward, Ashar spent some time talking to a few families – kids and parents alike – about our unschooling experiences and what she finds valuable about them. It was pretty sweet! Then, Ashar helped me come up with our 12th-grade curriculum un-plan post, so we got a lot of chances this month to kind of “learn about learning” by talking about unschooling and how our lives might be different from some other people’s.

The Walking Dead fandom: So, one of Ashar’s biggest interests is The Walking Dead, especially Norman Reedus and his character Daryl. She has an Instagram fan account full of amazing photo edits (usually with accompanying song lyrics). She would love your follows if you like TWD! Photo editing is a big pastime of hers, using a huge variety of apps. She even saved up $700 and bought a VIP ticket to Walker-Stalker Con New Jersey so that she could meet Norman… except then he canceled. Cancelled. After she spent $700. Heartbroken doesn’t even begin to describe it. We’re still going (Kaitlyn, Chris and I have low-end day passes, too), but we’re trying to figure out what’s next in the “Meet Norman” plan. If anyone has any ideas, we’re all for them. I couldn’t believe it!

Places we went: September heralds the opening of Ashar’s favorite store ever, Spirit Halloween, so of course we went there. We finally visited the mini golf place a half-mile from our house, and Mom, Kaitlyn, Ashar and I had a fun round of golf that included Mom getting a hole in one with a bounce off Ashar’s shoe. Ashar went grocery-shopping with Kaitlyn and me, which led to her saying “I think we should try a new fruit,” which resulted in our tasting a papaya for the first time. She and I got new haircuts. And, because why not, we went “back-to-school clothes shopping” and Ashar got some new jeans, sneakers and shirts.

Unschooling in August 2017 on Unschool Rules: Family portrait. With pengins. (Photo by CM&M Photography)

Family portrait. With pengins. (Photo by CM&M Photography)

Updates from around the family

Since our “curriculum plan” for this year featured not just Ashar but the other house adults, I figure I should start giving monthly updates on our progress too. So here’s a look at what’s new with the rest of us!

Me, Joan: I took and passed my second-degree black belt test at Dover Dragons Tae Kwon Do on Aug. 19! What’s below is a video from my test, a five-board breaking combo. That was most of my focus in my free time in August, though I also finished reading 10 books, including two about prison issues (Incarceration Nations by Baz Dreisinger and Hard Time by Shaun Attwood, which is free on Prime Reading this month if you have Amazon Prime), plus some focused on my idea of understanding other cultures. Oh, I also vended at an art market (see my art here) and Kaitlyn and I traded in one of our two Honda Civics for a Subaru Forester SUV.

Kaitlyn: Kaitlyn contributed his update as follows: “I got a little sidetracked in my reading and went off on a ‘Greek gods are real and computers are actual magic’ tangent, but I also managed to get through my Python book. Well, actually, my other Python book because the first one was a little too didactic for me. But I’m well on my way to barely understanding what I screw up, which is a lot better than where I was, which was completely not understanding where I screwed up. Always progress!” He has since used his Python programming knowledge to run some simple scripts that helped us sort music for our car’s flash drive and sort photos for a work project, so I can confirm he knows what he’s doing at least somewhat.

Chris: Chris says: “In August I finished Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation, by Garbology author Edward Humes. And I also finished My Favorite Thing is Monsters, a graphic novel that represents the first book ever published by 55-year-old Chicago native Emil Ferris, who spent years working on the book while recovering from paralysis caused by West Nile Virus. I have also been listening to many podcasts, including Stuff You Missed in History Class, Imaginary Worlds, Retronauts, Stuff You Should Know, Lore and 70s Trek.” (I told you we all liked Stuff You Missed in History!)

My mom, also Joan, aka Mommom: As I talked about in our roundup, Mom is really active in her church. That makes her the only one of us… the rest of us fall somewhere on the spectrum of Unitarian Universalist to agnostic to lazy lapsed Methodist, and we are fully secular in our homeschooling. That said, it’s really important to Mom, and we are proud to support her! In August, her next group of Stephen Ministers – a program she co-leads – graduated, and she joined a new Bible study group. Outside of church, she worked on her charcoal sketching, including a really cool one of a man’s face. She’s already made me some great drawings of Ashar, which I’ll post some other time if she OKs it!

Unschooling in August 2017 on Unschool Rules: Hoogerheide!!! (Photo by CM&M Photography)

Hoogerheide!!! (Photo by CM&M Photography)

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”o

04Sep
7

The unschooled version of an 12th-grade-ish curriculum plan for 2017-18

We’ve spent the past couple of weeks inundated with back-to-school photos from friends across the country on Facebook, but for a “living is learning” family like us, there’s nothing special about this time of year… except that, for the sixth year in a row, I get to join the iHomeschool Network’s Not Back to School Blog Hop for “curriculum week!” This time, we’re looking at what unschooling 12th grade-style might look like, for our last year of mandatory reporting under Pennsylvania law.

Each year, I’ve heard from people literally around the world who loved seeing how an “un-plan” comes together. If you haven’t already, I invite you to check out our previous ideas:

Unschooling 12th grade: An unschoolish curriculum plan from 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!

So with that, here is…

The Conciliottoman family’s unschooling 12th grade plan

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 history.

We like alpacas.

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

We like giving away stuffed penguins.

We like Shakespeare.

We like family sports days.

We love going with the flow.

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

Read on to find out!

Important starter notes

We have been keeping a transcript of Ashar’s credits earned throughout high school. If you’d like to see how that’s shaping up so far, and get some advice on how to fit your own eclectic, relaxed or unschooling activities into a transcript, check out unschoolrules.com/transcript.

Meanwhile, under Pennsylvania law, Ashar has actually completed everything required for graduation except for one language arts credit. So, if he wanted to, he could start the process of getting a diploma once he has 120 hours of English study, and whether he applies to graduate early or not, if he does nothing else this year, he’s still fine. If you’d like to know more about what Pennsylvania requires for graduation among its homeschoolers, check out unschoolrules.com/pennsylvania.

That said, there are a lot more cool things that Ashar wants to explore this year. Meanwhile, as life learners, the rest of the family has goals and plans too. So starting this year, I’m going to also include some of what the rest of us are learning and pursuing.

I see this as a good springboard to future years, when we no longer have to report anything for Ashar, but during which time we’ll still be enjoying the living and learning together experience – all of us! So expect to see “learning plans” from us even after high school is technically over!

Unschool Rules: Our family's Thinking Tree journals

Our big plan for the year: Family Learning Journals

About a month ago, I started noticing a bunch of fellow homeschool bloggers talking about the Learning Journals from Thinking Tree Books. These are huge books (380+ pages) full of prompts and ideas, all themed around a list of topics you pick to explore.

There are dozens and dozens of these books, with different themes and geared toward different age levels. One note: Some are religious, some are secular – we actually returned the original one we got because we were looking for a secular version, and hadn’t realized the one we chose wasn’t.

They aren’t cheap, but they’re designed to be the centerpiece to a “curriculum plan” for at least 60 days, so if you were otherwise spending money on some curriculum-in-a-box, this is way more customizable and reasonable.

What we ended up with was this one – the Do-It-Yourself Homeschool Journal and Eclectic Learning Handbook, Vol. 4 – for Ashar to try. We spent a Sunday going through and coming up with topics he was interested in, and sorting our books, and coming up with other ways we might learn about those topics, and it was a ton of fun.

So, of course, the adults couldn’t be left out. Chris was so into the idea that he ordered the same journal for himself, me, and Kaitlyn, and now all four of us have one!

I should add that there are “parent-specific” journals available from Thinking Tree (and its creator, Sarah Janisse Brown), but we figured why not all have the same experience?

Since then, we’ve all picked our topics and gone through our vast book collections to get our “starter lists” organized, and we’ve all done some pages beyond that. Our goal isn’t for any of us to sit down and do these at a rigorous and well-defined pace, but rather to have something cool to work on together that helps give us some ideas about ways to learn about the topics we’re into.

If you’re interested in exploring more, a few links you might like:

Other than linking to these journals using Amazon affiliate links above, I just want to make it clear that we’re not affiliated with these in any way – we just think they’re cool, and it seemed like a fun, different thing to do as Ashar decides where he wants to go from here!

Unschool Rules: 17-year-old Ashar's interest list from her Thinking Tree Journal.

Ashar’s starter topic and book list

Here’s the fun part: getting to see our lists of topics! Ashar’s first nine topics to explore are:

  • Shakespeare
  • Hamilton (Mostly the musical, to some extent the person.)
  • U.S. history
  • Evil history (This includes serial killers, dictators, famous criminal cases, all that good stuff.)
  • Philosophy (Mostly ancient stuff, like Plato and Socrates and Aristotle.)
  • Alchemy (This was an interest of Ashar’s several years ago that he really wants to revisit.)
  • Guitar
  • Writing fiction
  • Rose-haired tarantulas (He wants one as a pet – I am not a fan – we’ll see.)

He had WAY more than nine books on these topics, so her starter list is already on the “overflow” pages of the journal, which we helpfully marked with a Post-It flag. The books he’s starting with:

Unschool Rules: Joan's list of learning topics from her Thinking Tree journal

My starter topic and book list

I should be clear: Books like this journal were basically made for me. I am the child who asked for workbooks for fun. I love filling in blanks on pages. I love organized learning experiences. I’m in freaking graduate school and LOOKING TO DO EXTRA LEARNING WORK, for crying out loud. So you can guess I’m particularly excited about these.

My topics:

  • Ethics in public health and homeland security (This is also known as the topic of HLS 803, one of my two grad classes this semester.)
  • Homeland security threats (If you guessed this is the topic of HLS 805, you would be right!)
  • Viruses (While related to grad school and my degree in public health preparedness, nope, this is not school-based, it’s just for fun.)
  • Geographic oddities (I learned something from Chris’ list here – what I meant is actually a real thing, called psychogeography – the idea that place impacts how people think and feel and behave; this will make more sense when you see my book list!)
  • Howard Garis (This is thee author of the Uncle Wiggily book series I loved as a kid.)
  • Prison conditions and reform
  • Tae kwon do
  • SCSS and minified Javascript
  • Alchemy (This one, Ashar and I can explore together!)

My book list:

Unschool Rules: Chris' learning topics from his Thinking Tree journal

Chris’ starter topic list

Chris has A LOT OF BOOKS he wants to read. He used his list as a way to prioritize his to-read pile. His topics:

  • Folklore (Chris is a longtime folklore enthusiast, and serves as the unofficial biographer of a noted folklore author, Ruth Manning-Sanders.)
  • World history
  • Psychogeography (See, I told you I learned this from Chris – we got to learn even before we got past the first page!)
  • Other religions and cultures (Yes, I stole this one too.)
  • Science-fiction fandom
  • Pennsylvania
  • Hauntings
  • Archaeology
  • England

His book list:

Unschool Rules: Kaitlyn's learning topics and book list from his Thinking Tree journal

Kaitlyn’s starter topic and book list

I should point out that Kaitlyn is very much a digital reader and learner, so this journal thing is probably the most outside his wheelhouse, of any of us. But he is also by far the most artistic and visual, so his book looks amazing! You can see he actually drew his books’ covers, rather than our “We’ll just write them down in colored pens and call it good” style.

His topics:

  • Python (The programming language, not the thing I like as little as I like the rose-haired tarantula.)
  • Economics
  • History
  • Functional programming (I don’t even know what this is, let me be honest.)
  • Sociology
  • Science
  • The 1980s pop culture (Kaitlyn says this was just an excuse to put Ready Player One by Ernest Cline on the list.)
  • Javascript
  • Coding (I want to point out that there is some major overlap here with his other topics, but, as Ashar pointed out on his first day, “It is my journal, so I can do what I want with it,” and the same holds for Kaitlyn.)

Kaitlyn’s book list:

Unschool Rules: Our family's Thinking Tree journals

What Mommom is working on

While my mom, Ashar’s Mommom, doesn’t have a journal, she has her own projects she’s working on. One of her interests is drawing in charcoals – especially portraits, of which she’s already made me some AMAZING ones of Ashar. She’s just started getting into it again and likes to spend her time that way.

Mom is also very involved in work at her church, most notably the Stephen Ministry group, which she leads, and that takes a lot of her time.

She also has some sewing projects -including some repair and patching of the “blankie” I’ve had since I was 6 years old – that she works on as well.

Potential “credits” for this year

Given Ashar’s huge list (and the likelihood that he’ll explore other people’s interests with them as well), I thought it might be nice to see what we are guessing at the outset will be “credits” for Ashar’s transcript this year, especially in the areas whose resources go well beyond the kinds of things that fit into our journals.

  • Shakespeare: This is an easy one, and will almost certainly make for that last required language arts credit for Ashar. In addition to reading, he’s also:
    • Rehearsing now for Antony and Cleopatra, which will perform at the end of September and early October.
    • Getting ready to audition for Macbeth of the Dead, another local production with auditions in early September and performances in late October.
    • Watching a bunch of Shakespeare adaptation movies and plays. We’re trying to have our own Shakespeare Film Fest, even.
  • Theater: Well, see above. I’m not sure yet where I’ll allocate credit hours for Ashar, but I’m guessing he’ll have at least a full credit of Shakespeare plus another half-credit, if not more, of theater practice and performance.
  • Music: Ashar takes weekly guitar lessons with Rod Goelz from Music at Metropolis, plus has practice time at home between lessons. We also try to attend a bunch of different musical performances – mostly free or low-cost – around town, and I expect this will add up to at least another credit.
  • Alchemy/history of chemistry: This will be COOL. When Ashar was interested in alchemy in seventh grade, we weren’t doing transcript credit yet. Now he’s interested at a more advanced level, so we’re looking forward to seeing how we can expand on what he already knows.
  • Philosophy: This is a topic Ashar has already earned several credits in, and I’m expecting he may have at least another half-credit this year.
  • Genetics: This is a really cool one. Last year, for 4-H, Ashar did a huge project on how alpaca fiber-color is determined genetically. For the year ahead, he plans to expand it to talk more about other traits, like fleece grade, eye color, conformation and gait, and I fully expect this will make up most, if not all, of a credit.

Other awesome stuff

  • Life skills: 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: Our biggest source of exercise continues to actually be part of our science “curriculum” – walking alpacas, maneuvering them through obstacles and otherwise putting in the hard work required on a farm! We also regularly play household games of baseball, basketball and soccer, hike as much as we can, go biking together, and generally try to stay active.
  • Travel: This is last, but definitely not least; it’s really one of the biggest parts of our learning each year. This year, Kaitlyn, Ashar and I are tentatively planning to drive to Arizona right after Christmas to visit Kaitlyn’s parents and some friends, and we’ll try to sight-see along the way and while there.
  • Pen-pal fun: Ashar has a super-awesome pen pal in Taiwan named Christina, who he writes back and forth to and exchanges gifts and letters with, both by mail and email. As they’ve both gotten older and busier, their letters have decreased in frequency, but each time they do find time to write they get SO excited. I love it.

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

A lot of people want to know what unschooling days are like. I’ll give you a short version here, but good news: In a few weeks, I’ll have an updated day in the life of radical unschoolers post with more details!

I’ve mentioned before that the one thing we can count on almost every day is our family time before bed.

How to homeschool at nightFor night owls like us, this time might start anywhere from 8 to 11 p.m. and go for a few hours!

This 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 together.

We watch movies and TV shows on Netflix.

We play board games and try new foods and talk and laugh and pet cats.

It’s funny, because our days are often filled with work (for our house adults) and gaming (for Ashar). 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.

What comes next?

As I mentioned, our living-learning lifestyle is probably going to continue pretty similarly for the next couple of years.

Ashar is still deciding “what comes next,” and we’re in no hurry. He is looking at getting a job during the year ahead, and that may open some other possibilities; he isn’t going to be driving for a while yet, so there are some family considerations in how to make that work, but whatever he decides, we’ll figure it out.

He’s also tossed around the idea of taking a college class or two locally – he’s not interested in starting a degree program at this time, but he likes the idea of getting to talk about her favorite topics, like history and philosophy, with other people who love them!

So what comes next? Guess you’ll just have to keep reading throughout this year and beyond to find out!

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!

Unschool Rules: Part of the 2017 iHomeschool Network Not Back to School Blog Hop 2017 Want to see what my fellow iHomeschool Network bloggers are learning this year?

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06Aug
4

Unschooling: Our July 2017 adventures

In Pennsylvania, we can start counting our “days” of learning toward our 180-day-per-year requirement effective July 1. Doing that, we’re usually “done” for the year by early to mid-April, and then nothing we do for the rest of April, May and June has to be documented in any way. Of course, I blog about those months here, because in unschooling, our learning and living doesn’t really change just because it’s not official, but somehow, things always do seem to kick into high gear around July.

So I have a HUGE list of things to share with you this month, including some fun during a family staycation, lots of books and movies, a surprise baseball game and more. (And as always, if you want a more frequent peek at what we do, you can always find me on Instagram and Facebook. I’m specifically trying to share more on Facebook, both from our lives and from other homeschooling blogs I’m reading, so make sure you’re following along there!)

Unschooling in Central Pennsylvania on Unschool Rules: A month in the life of radical unschoolers.

If you’re new to seeing our days recapped in this format, check out our archive of previous wrapups here for some more info on why we take this approach and some other highlights of our adventures.

Unschooling in July 2017 on Unschool Rules: Chris, Ashar, Plaid Pengin, Kaitlyn and I having a fun day at the Lehigh Valley IronPigs vs. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders AAA baseball game!

Chris, Ashar, Plaid Pengin, Kaitlyn and I having a fun day at the Lehigh Valley IronPigs vs. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders AAA baseball game!

All things theater

Last month, I talked about Ashar performing in a production of The Tempest through our local Shakespeare company, Orangemite Studios and their Dover Youth Shakespeare Academy.

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!
This month, we kept up the Shakespeare vibe.

One of the coolest things was the afternoon that Ashar and my mom, her Mommom, sat down and watched a DVD of Orangemite’s performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor. We also had a nice night out (despite a freak rainstorm) seeing Orangemite’s team perform Sophocles’ Antigone.

Then, at the end of the month, one of the other theater groups Ashar is involved with, DreamWrights, staged The Taming of the Shrew, featuring several of Ashar’s friends, and we got to go see that as well.

Next up, Ashar is preparing to audition with her friend Nash for Orangemite’s next production, Antony and Cleopatra. She’s also planning to audition, along with Kaitlyn, for Frankenstein at The Belmont, another local theater.

And, as summer winds down (did I really just write that?!) we’re planning to have a Shakespeare Film Festival at home, watching some various movies and recorded stage adaptations.

Unschooling in July 2017 on Unschool Rules: During Reptile Week at one of our county parks, we got to visit the pond and see a bunch of great frogs (left) and turtles (right).

During Reptile Week at one of our county parks, we got to visit the pond and see a bunch of great frogs (left) and turtles (right).

Books and hikes

I mentioned this last month, too. Our library system has this really cool program called Get Outdoors York that is an add-on to the summer reading club. You get a booklet with 30 hikes listed, and at the end of each hike you find a plate with a rubbing on it. (Very similar to letterboxing or geocaching.) We’re up to, I think, 15 of the 30, and hope to get at least a couple more before the program ends Aug. 20!

July’s hikes were neat, and included one at a former canal lock, which gave us a chance to talk about how canals used to work and how they work now. (Fun note: One of Ashar’s grandmas traveled the Panama Canal in a cruise ship!) There’s also a cool dam near there with huge scary danger signs, and we got to see what we later realized was a BIG OL’ MILLIPEDE.

Unschooling in July 2017 on Unschool Rules: That's a dam scary sign. (See what I did there?) This was taken with Pascal the elephant and Sammiches the pig as well as Kaitlyn, Ashar and I during a hike at the Lock 12 Recreation Area near Holtwood Dam outside Airville, PA.

That’s a dam scary sign. (See what I did there?) This was taken with Pascal the elephant and Sammiches the pig as well as Kaitlyn, Ashar and I during a hike at the Lock 12 Recreation Area near Holtwood Dam outside Airville, PA.

Kaitlyn, Ashar and I also did a cool hike at one of our biggest county parks during Reptile Week, which included a chance to view a bunch of frogs and turtles in their pond as well as a live reptile show by Forgotten Friend Reptile Sanctuary. And Chris, Ashar and I did a nice sunset hike at my favorite state park, Gifford Pinchot.

Unschooling in July 2017 on Unschool Rules: Chris, Ashar and I took a sunset hike at Pinchot Park in early July. (Awesome silhouette photo by Chris)

Chris, Ashar and I took a sunset hike at Pinchot Park in early July. (Awesome silhouette photo by Chris)

In addition, we did get to do some reading. Actually, this month, we did a LOT of reading.

  • Cross Kill by James Patterson – Ashar had been reading this novella to me, and we finished it in July. It left us with a huge cliffhanger that won’t be resolved until Patterson’s next novel releases in late fall, argh. As we read this, we ended up going down some HUGE rabbit trails. One night, we talked for a couple hours about the bones of the hand, traumatic brain injury, scoliosis, brain surgery, comas, foreshadowing and context clues, all based on a two-page chapter. Another night, we had a serious conversation about whether crime excuses crime – in other words, if you think someone is threatening to hurt you or has already hurt someone else, do you have the “right” to hurt them? That got really complicated real fast, but it was cool to talk about together.
  • The Trial by James Patterson – At the end of Cross Kill was a preview for this novella. Ashar read the preview and decided she wanted to read more, so we checked this out of the library and are already several chapters in.
  • A Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn and a 1903 textbook called Barnes’s School History of the United States – I mentioned last month that these were Ashar’s Father’s Day presents to Chris. This month, she and I read some excerpts from there based on the time period in another book we were reading…
  • Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder – I think I mentioned last month that Ashar caught the first episode of the Little House on the Prairie TV show at a friend’s house and it led to a bunch of conversations. Well, shortly after that, we went to a bookstore and she ended up wanting to buy the books to see how they compare. We’re actually reading those together as well – we REALLY love reading aloud as a family and it gives us so many rabbit-trail chances.
  • Twisted History by Howard Watson – We had picked this up on a clearance rack a year or so ago, and Ashar dug it out thanks to her recent interest in Shakespeare – because it included the story of Julius Caesar, which she is digging into as sort of the prequel to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, which she’s auditioning for this month!
  • Romeo and Juliet – This has long been one of Ashar’s favorite works, and this month, she, Kaitlyn and I took turns re-enacting the famous balcony scene. Helpfully, we have sort of a balcony overlooking our two-story living room, so I got to sit up there and be Juliet.
  • Pirates: From Blackbeard to Walking the Plank by David Pickering – This was another clearance-rack find that makes a great browsing book – one you can pick up and read little bits of here and there. We’re big on browsing books in our family! Ashar read me a bunch of pirate facts one evening.
  • Old Man Logan: The Last Ronin – Ashar’s most recently finished comic-book selection. She and Chris make almost-weekly comic store trips and he and the library keep her well-supplied!

More outdoor sports

Also this month, Kaitlyn and I got bikes (Ashar already had one), and we started going for bike rides together, including a nice longish one on the local Rail Trail.

And, in big news, I also got to try my friend Kara’s canoe on July 4th weekend and… then Kaitlyn found me a good canoe cheap and we ordered one!! So now I’m the proud owner of a ridiculously bright boat named Orange Crush, which I took out for the first time at the end of July, again with Kara’s help. (As of this exact moment, I don’t have a way to TRANSPORT said kayak, which was ordered online, so I call Kara and her dual-kayak-rack-Jeep my kayak-Uber.)

Unschooling in July 2017 on Unschool Rules: Thanks to my friend Kara (right), who kindly let me try her kayak, I ALSO have become a kayaker. Here we are on the first voyage of my kayak, Orange Crush, which looks exactly like Kara's blue kayak, except... it's orange.

Thanks to my friend Kara (right), who kindly let me try her kayak, I ALSO have become a kayaker. Here we are on the first voyage of my kayak, Orange Crush, which looks exactly like Kara’s blue kayak, except… it’s orange.

In addition to participating in sports, we also got to watch some. Chris got tickets for him, Ashar, Kaitlyn and me to go see the Lehigh Valley IronPigs (AAA affiliate of the Phillies) and the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders (AAA affiliate of the New York Yankees) in Scranton. It was a great game, and the IronPigs won 5-2. (Since Chris is a VERY LARGE PHILLIES PHAN, that was good.)

Then, at the end of the month, a friend from 4-H happened to offer free tickets to our local Atlantic League team, the York Revolution. We arrived in time for the third inning, sat in the front row (which I’d never done before), and went on to watch the Revs beat the Bridgeport Bluefish, 9-1. One of the Revs players gave Ashar a foul ball, and at the end, he and another player signed it!

That game was a great reminder to me not to book our lives too full. It worked because we didn’t have many solid plans for the evening and were able to say, “Hey, we can absolutely go do that!” So many times, I’m guilty of having a mile-long to-do list and no margin for fun spur-of-the-moment stuff. I keep working on that, though, because I see what cool things happen when that’s not the case.

Unschooling in July 2017 on Unschool Rules: Kaitlyn, Ashar and I got free front-row seats to a local Atlantic League baseball game, thanks to a friend from 4-H. Philip the phpDiversity elephant also enjoyed the game.

Kaitlyn, Ashar and I got free front-row seats to a local Atlantic League baseball game, thanks to a friend from 4-H. Philip the phpDiversity elephant also enjoyed the game.

Movies, TV and videos

We had a bit more movie-watching this month, plus we picked up some fun from YouTube as well.

  • Kiki’s Delivery Service – This Miyazaki film is one of our favorites, and we went to see it on the big screen as part of Studio Ghibli Fest. If you haven’t seen any of Miyazaki’s beautiful anime films (or, hey, if you have and want to REALLY enjoy the artistry), you should check out that Ghibli Fest website. Theaters all over the country are showing his movies through October. We’re hoping to catch more!
  • Sherlock Series 4 – This was where Ashar had left off with Sherlock on Netflix, and she picked him back up in July and watched the fourth season.
  • The Mummy – Chris took Ashar to see this because I was afraid it would be too scary. Yes, I am that easily scared. It turns out it was also funny and she really liked it, but I’m still kinda glad I didn’t go. Seeing Tom Cruise always makes Ashar happy.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – This one, we went to see because I really wanted to. It was awesome. I love Johnny Depp. Also, I REALLY like the music in the Pirates movies.
  • City Slickers – I got in my head that Ashar would absolutely love this movie, and I don’t actually know why. She did love it, but I’m not sure why I decided it was a must-see. But it was, and we did, and we were all happy. Also, now we want a pet cow. And I’m definitely not ashamed to say that I’m gunning for City Slickers 2 to be on next month’s movie list.
  • Clearwater Marine Aquarium’s YouTube channel – Ashar has been into Clearwater since seeing the movie Dolphin Tale a few years ago, about Clearwater’s rescue of Winter the dolphin. I get their emails and occasionally they’ll promote a cool video. This month, we watched a few from their YouTube channel, including one about a very nice pelican named Ricky who got a new habitat.

Stuffed penguin explosion

I’ve talked before about Pengins for Everyone, our family’s mildly crazy project to give away stuffed penguins – or, as we say, pengins – to anyone who requests one.

It was kind of a ridiculous idea when we had about 100 pending requests, but then, in the last week of June, it got shared on a bird-lovers’ group on Facebook with 70,000 members, and got picked up by a bunch of freebie sites. By the end of June, we had reached 21,000 requests. We also raised more than $1,900 in donations, which allowed us to order 30 dozen pengins and accompanying shipping boxes.

30. Dozen. Stuffed. Penguins.

They live in my basement now, until we get the money to ship them. Thankfully, we’ve already sent almost 3 dozen (of, again, 30 dozen total) and are trying to get more out at the rate of a couple dozen a week.

If you think this is a hilarious/worthwhile/mildly insane project, I definitely would love to have you follow the Pengins for Everyone Facebook page. We share ridiculous photos and videos of our crew hard at work managing 30 dozen stuffed penguins.

Did I say 30 dozen stuffed penguins yet?

Unschooling in July 2017 on Unschool Rules: That's 30 dozen stuffed penguins, getting ready to be given away as part of the Pengins for Everyone project. 30. Dozen. Stuffed. Penguins.

That’s 30 dozen stuffed penguins, getting ready to be given away as part of the Pengins for Everyone project. 30. Dozen. Stuffed. Penguins.

Games

Ashar had been saving for a long time to buy a PlayStation 4, and this month, she had enough to buy the Uncharted 4 bundle on sale at Kohl’s! (Also, Kohl’s Cash is ridiculous. We went clothes-shopping for Chris and earned a bunch, used it toward the PS4, earned MORE, used that toward shorts for me…)

Anyway, in July, Ashar set that up and started – and later beat – Uncharted 4. The Uncharted games are cool – they follow an explorer named Nathan Drake and they work in a surprising amount of cool facts.

To wit: I’m watching Ashar play one evening, and a younger Nathan (early teens) and his older brother are exploring the house of an older couple who had explored the world and had a bunch of neat artifacts. Nathan puts on a helmet with horns and ends up telling his brother that it is in fact not a Viking helmet, because “You know Viking helmets don’t have horns… it’s Persian!” This is why learning from video games is so cool to us – because that led us to looking up Viking helmets, and sure enough… nope, they didn’t have horns; that’s a legend spread by how they’re costumed in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Which then led us to talking about opera. That’s unschooling when it’s the coolest.

Unschooling places, projects and odds and ends

Dave and Buster’s: After our AAA Phillies/Yankees game, we headed to Dave & Buster’s in Plymouth Meeting, PA, and had a great time eating and playing. D&B is one of our favorite spots, and we’re excited that they’re building one only a half-hour away in the next year or so!

Knoebel’s: Knoebel’s is a big amusement park a couple hours away from home, and amazingly, none of us had ever been there. So, as part of our staycation, we took a day trip and got soaked on the Skloosh and the Giant Flume and rode the haunted house ride and the airplanes ride and the funnel cake ride and the waffles and ice cream ride and the bacon on a stick ride… oh, wait. Those there at the end were MY amusements…

Speaking of food: Also as part of our staycation, we drove about 45 minutes away to hit up a Bonefish Grill, mostly as a treat for my mom, who loves seafood, and Chris, who is a vegetarian. It was great! We also enjoyed not one but two Universal Yums boxes this month, Mexico (which was spicy and not as much to our liking as some) and South Korea (which, surprisingly, was a HUGE win full of stuff we almost all liked! As always, those boxes ended up being a great chance to talk about some fun facts about the snacks’ countries of origin. Since Kaitlyn’s brother is adopted from South Korea, that made that box especially cool.

4-H: August is 4-H Fair (Roundup), so July is always full of lots of stuff to get ready for that. Ashar’s dog project group, the Clover Canines, was meeting just about once a week to practice, and she had a bunch of work to do to finish her alpaca genetics project (which, August spoiler alert, got done MORE THAN A WEEK BEFORE ROUNDUP, which for us is like a Christmas miracle). Our next update will showcase the finished work there.

Art flea market: Ashar and my mom and I all love to paint acrylic ink abstracts. In the past month or so, I’ve really ramped up my art as a side business, both selling it through my online gallery and starting to attend local events. In July I took part in an art flea market, which did not net me a ton of money but which was a great experience (and at which my sales at least partially offset the money I would have spent anyway as an attendee buying local art!) I did another art market early in August, and after that comes time to enter our art in the county fair.

The new house: As we enter Month 3 at our new house, we did a bunch of landscaping work – clearing out an area behind our shed and fence that had been overrun with weeds, and putting down weed guard and some river rock. I say “some” river rock because our delivery of ALL the river rock did not show up, so we’re filling it in a few bags at a time as our Honda Civic can handle it. Thankfully (another August spoiler alert) we just bought an SUV, so we should be able to finish it up more easily! Ashar also got to send a postcard to her Taiwanese pen pal, Christina, giving her our new address so that the two of them can stay in touch.

Unschooling in July 2017 on Unschool Rules: Chris and Ashar had a thrilling time killing zombies in the Walking Dead game at Dave and Buster's.

Chris and Ashar had a thrilling time killing zombies in the Walking Dead game at Dave and Buster’s.

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”

25Jul
0

Filling in the gaps with online math that adapts

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know that my daughter, Ashar, is no huge fan of organized math. We’re HUGELY into real-world applications, like math in gaming, but even the concept of online math “educational games” usually gets Ashar’s anti-math radar up.

Disclosure: In exchange for the honest review of our experience which appears in this post, our family received a free subscription to Knowre. We were compensated for our time completing the review, but all fun had was ours!

That said, she’s also been tossing around the idea of taking a few dual-enrollment classes at our local community college later this year, and while did already pass the basic math placement test, she knows she could take some more interesting science courses (one of her passions) if she can test even higher, so she’s got some motivation to up her game.

So when we heard about Knowre, a gamified adaptive math program designed to identify and give focused help in “gap” areas, I thought “Hmm, I wonder if she’d go for that!”

When Ashar found out we could try it out, not only was she on board, but when I explained how an “adaptive” app works, she said, “Hey, that’s kind of cool!”

An adaptive online math program for pre-algebra, algebra 1, geometry and algebra 2 helps teens fill in the gaps. Check out one family's experiences in this review of the Knowre system on Unschool Rules.

Adaptive math practice for algebra and geometry

Since we don’t follow a specific curriculum plan, we figured we’d try out all the Knowre modules – starting with Pre-Algebra and Algebra 1, then dipping into geometry. That way, she could see what she needed, without missing any foundational skills.

As Ashar predicted, Knowre’s adaptive system really is cool. She didn’t have to watch or read a lot of explanation on concepts she understood, and there was plenty of support – video and text-based walkthroughs alike – for the areas she needed to review.

I also liked their comic-style intros – learning via graphic novels has long been a love of mine, so that style is always a win for me. These intros, and the program as a whole, focus on applications of the concepts being discussed – also a super-huge win.

Since I was so into the comics, I was happy to see that Knowre also offers a Math Comic Digest – an email subscription giving both comics based on the topic of your choice and ideas on how to implement and teach the topics contained in them. Those are probably more closely targeted toward classroom teachers – who could ALSO really benefit from Knowre – but I’m getting a kick out of them too.

We’ve also found the Knowre iPad app really convenient. The coolest part? Handwriting recognition – you can use your finger or a stylus and write out the answers, and they automatically get translated. (Bonus: Motivation to write legibly!)

An adaptive online math program for pre-algebra, algebra 1, geometry and algebra 2 helps teens fill in the gaps. Check out one family's experiences in this review of the Knowre system on Unschool Rules. Handwriting recognition in the iPad app is a big benefit of this tool!

A new approach to online math

All that said, probably the best part of the Knowre system, for us, is the Walk Me Through approach. I have always been great at math (majored in it in undergrad, even) but terrible at step-by-step work-showing and explaining (hence why I didn’t become a math teacher with that degree). So when Ashar would get confused partway through a math problem back when she was in public school, I just had no idea how to jump in partway through and pick up where she was.

That’s a key to the “adaptive” concept – not only does it adjust if she isn’t following what’s being presented, but it figures out where the issue is so she can move on successfully.

It’s actually helped me “learn how to teach” a lot better, just using it along with Sarah. While I rarely sit down and give anyone – Ashar included – formal math lessons, now I know how to help better when she or anyone else does have a question!

Win a subscription to Knowre

I’m lucky enough to be able to be part of a Knowre giveaway. 10 lucky readers will get a one-year Knowre subscription, including all four programs – Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2.

Knowre math subscriptions

Also, if you subscribe before Aug. 31, 2017, Knowre is offering a special discount – $29 per user per year. Your license starts right away, and will automatically expire a year later. Not only do you get access to all four programs (Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Geometry and Algebra 2), you can use Knowre both online and through an iPad app.

I hope you’ll find this new way of filling in the math gaps as helpful as we have!

13Jul
0

Unschooling: Our June 2017 adventures

Our unschooling in June 2017 had one huge focus – Shakespeare. But amid a hectic rehearsal schedule and several sold-out performances of The Tempest, we found time to explore some of our local parks, read some cool books and celebrate Father’s Day. (And as always, if you want a more frequent peek at what we do, you can always find me on Instagram and Facebook.)

Unschooling in Central Pennsylvania on Unschool Rules: A month in the life of radical unschoolers.

If you’re new to seeing our days recapped in this format, check out our archive of previous wrapups here for some more info on why we take this approach and some other highlights of our adventures.

Unschool Rules - June 2017 - Ashar played Trinculo the jester in The Tempest, and her two awesome friends were Stephano the drunken butler and Caliban the octopus-monster. They all did amazing and worked so well together!

Ashar played Trinculo the jester in The Tempest, and her two awesome friends were Stephano the drunken butler and Caliban the octopus-monster. They all did amazing and worked so well together!

All things Shakespeare

Ashar had the chance to take part in a production of The Tempest through our local Shakespeare company, Orangemite Studios and their Dover Youth Shakespeare Academy. These kids – generally ranging in age from about 9 to 15 – had two weeks to learn a slightly abridged version the play, audition for parts, rehearse, create their own props, learn blocking and stage three performances, two of which were sold out! Oh, and the performances were in a converted barn with no air-conditioning, and it was over 90 degrees and humid.

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!
They worked SO HARD. And the shows – which we got to see two of – were excellent! We told Ashar that she now has more Shakespeare experience than her hero, Norman Reedus of The Walking Dead, which she got a kick out of.

She came home the first night after having done a read-through of The Tempest and said she wanted to audition for the role of Trinculo, the jester. That night, she started memorizing his introductory speech, which includes a ton of hilarious antics based on whether a sleeping creature is a man or a fish. “Smells like a fish! A very ancient and fish-like smell!” She also got to say a line about horse-pee. If you know Ashar, you know this role was made for her.

I don’t want to make it sound like it was all a walk in the park, though. She worked REALLY hard – at camp from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and practicing most of the evening at home to learn her lines and blocking. She really struggled with emoting, especially when she was tired, and at one point, she said, “I just can’t do this.” We all worked together to help her figure out how to get past the things she was struggling with, but I admit that when I sat down for the opening show, I was mostly thinking, “PLEASE let this go OK!”

It didn’t go OK. It was PHENOMENAL. She AND the rest of the cast knocked it out of the park. And, in the category of “everyday miracles,” I thought it was absolutely perfect when, just as Ashar got to a line about an islander being hit by a thunderbolt, it thundered like crazy outside – and she paused, looked up, and said her next line with perfect comedic timing – “Alas, the storm is come again!” It was THE BEST.

She’s already talking about auditioning for Orangemite’s next production, Antony and Cleopatra, and we’re going to see their performance of Sophocles’ Antigone later this week (that was rehearsing during the camp).

Oh, and Ashar also wants to audition for a musical version of Beauty and the Beast at DreamWrights with some of her friends, and we’re going to watch more of her friends in DreamWrights’ summer Shakespeare performance of The Taming of the Shrew.

I’m pretty sure our literature and theater needs will be plenty well met! (Fun note: Ashar reached our library summer reading program’s 800-minute goal just in time spent reading over The Tempest.)

Unschool Rules - June 2017 - Ashar as Trinculo, the jester, in Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

Ashar as Trinculo, the jester, in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”

Books and hikes

What, you don’t think reading and hiking go together? Our library system has this really cool program called Get Outdoors York that is an add-on to the summer reading club. You get a booklet with 30 hikes listed, and at the end of each hike you find a plate with a rubbing on it. (Very similar to letterboxing or geocaching.) So far, we’ve found 11 of the 30, and even cooler, we’ve found some amazing places around our county to explore!

The best was a new-to-us swimming hole at a small park in eastern York County, complete with a rope swing so you can Tarzan your way into the creek, as well as a ton of great spots for wading! We also went to our favorite state park, Gifford Pinchot, and met a super-nice family catching fish who offered to have Ashar come fish with them.

Unschool Rules - June 2017 - Ashar and Fwoops check out a (fake) rock at Pinchot Park, one of the state parks in our county, following one of our hikes to find a letterbox.

Ashar and Fwoops check out a (fake) rock at Pinchot Park, one of the state parks in our county, following one of our hikes to find a letterbox.

In addition, we did get to do some reading. Besides All The Shakespeare, Ashar got and devoured a copy of Plato’s Republic (which she’d been looking for for quite a while), we read more of Cross Kill by James Patterson, and, most interestingly, we found a Father’s Day gift for Chris that was book-themed.

See, Ashar and Chris like to read together, especially history-type things. And Chris LOVES old books, especially old schoolbooks; in fact, one of the coolest projects he and Ashar ever did together was when they went through an old geography book and wrote a blog post about it. It’s a neat way to have conversations about what the facts were as they were known at the time vs. what has changed.

So, for Father’s Day, Ashar got Chris a two-book combo for their joint perusal – A Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, and a 1903 textbook called Barnes’s School History of the United States. They dug right in, exploring

They also have been reading together from Max Brooks’ World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide, and Ashar finished Vol. 5, Vol. 6 and Vol. 7 of her Walking Dead comic book series. Pretty good for not having a lot of free time!

Unschool Rules - June 2017 - Chris shows Ashar and Mr. Angelino some of his tacky postcards (part of his Father's Day gift).

Chris shows Ashar and Mr. Angelino some of his tacky postcards (part of his Father’s Day gift).

Movies and TV

A special note for our newer readers: I’d love for you to check out our post on learning from movies and TV shows. It really explains a lot about why we are such fans!

We didn’t have a ton of time for movie-watching this month, but we did relax a bit with some of our favorite game shows on GSN and finally got to see Moana, which was really good. And made me cry. Because all movies make me cry.

Unschool Rules - June 2017 - Chris took this awesome photo of Ashar on the climbing ropes at Cousler Park, a great spot near our house.

Chris took this awesome photo of Ashar on the climbing ropes at Cousler Park, a great spot near our house.

Games

This was another thing that had to take a backseat this month. Other than some Uno Attack and Minecraft, and Kaitlyn’s new Wii U system with Mario Kart, we didn’t have much time for any kind of gaming! That said, we did get something cool from Kaitlyn’s parents – a Diabolo, one of those cool OUTSIDE-ONLY yoyo-type things on a large string, at which we are terrible but trying hard to improve.

Unschool Rules - June 2017 - We had been planning to go to a family pool party out of state, but weren't able to make it, so Kaitlyn and I tried to make it up to Ashar by taking her to our local splash park, this super-awesome free place where you can get drenched!

We had been planning to go to a family pool party out of state, but weren’t able to make it, so Kaitlyn and I tried to make it up to Ashar by taking her to our local splash park, this super-awesome free place where you can get drenched!

Unschooling places, projects and odds and ends

Camp counselor-ing: Our 4-H program has an awesome science-themed day camp for 8- to 12-year-olds called Survivor Camp, and this year, Ashar got to be a counselor. She had to be there at 7 a.m. – a crazy-early time for our family! – but she loved it.

Made in America Days: Made in America Days is a project of our county visitors’ bureau, because we are supposedly the “Factory Tour Capital of the World.” I don’t know about that as a claim to fame, but we do have some cool tours. This year, the alpaca farm Ashar works at for 4-H and its accompanying store were part of the tours, and Ashar went over to help show people cool things about alpacas!

Unschool Rules - June 2017 - One of Sarah's 4-H clubs made bonsai juniper trees as a project - here she is with "Pricky," as she aptly named him.

One of Ashar’s 4-H clubs made bonsai juniper trees as a project – here she is with “Pricky,” as she aptly named him.

Work permit: Ashar officially has a work permit, and hopefully will be applying for some jobs soon. Her availability was pretty limited by the aforementioned Shakespeare, and because she cannot drive, we have to figure out a place that’s a good fit that is either walkable or that we can get her to around everyone else’s schedules. But the paperwork step is done!

Pengin explosion: I’ve talked before about Pengins for Everyone, our family’s mildly crazy project to give away stuffed penguins – or, as we say, pengins – to anyone who requests one. It was kind of a ridiculous idea when we had about 100 pending requests, but then, in the last week of June, it got shared on a bird-lovers’ group on Facebook with 70,000 members, and got picked up by a bunch of freebie sites. Now we have something like 21,000 requests, received $1,600 in donations, are officially filing as a nonprofit, and are working on a magazine article feature. So, you know, no big deal. Except the part where we are TOTALLY FREAKING OUT.

Unschool Rules - June 2017 - Kohl's is selling these fantastic suit jackets. Don't you want one? Ashar does!

Kohl’s is selling these fantastic suit jackets. Don’t you want one? Ashar does!

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”

19Jun
2

Unschooling: Our May 2017 adventures

Is your family ready for summer yet? While we don’t really have “summer break” because unschooling means our lives flow year-round, we love this season anyway as it seems to give us more ways to spend time living and learning together.

That’s what I blame for the lateness of May’s wrapup post – we’ve been busy exploring lots of cool stuff in our town, so I didn’t make time to sit down and write this summary until now. (As always, if you want a more frequent peek at what we do, you can always find me on Instagram and Facebook.)

Unschooling in Central Pennsylvania on Unschool Rules: A month in the life of radical unschoolers.

If you’re new to seeing our days recapped in this format, check out our archive of previous wrapups here for some more info on why we take this approach and some other highlights of our adventures.

Ashar, left, and her friends from the crew at DreamWrights. I can’t say enough good things about these people. Side rant: I can’t stand it when people complain about teenagers. MANY teenagers are awesome. These are some of them.

Moving Update

We have a new house! We have a new house!

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - new house exterior

This is our new house!

We officially moved in to “Essex Manor” (because we live on a street with Essex in the name) on May 12, did some whirlwind unpacking and decorating, and celebrated with a three-day open house on Memorial Day weekend.

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’re pretty much done unpacking and decorating, with just a few small projects left to go. That took up a LOT of our May, though we had a lot of help from family and friends, including Kaitlyn’s mom, JoAnne, who came to stay for two weeks and helped us a ton.

I mentioned this last month, but it bears repeating: On the unschooling front, a lot of the conversations around mortgages, escrow, commissions and more went into Ashar’s economics credit on the transcript for the year that just ended. It was a HUGE piece of learning for all of us.

I’m hoping to do a photo post showing off the new place sometime in the next month or two. I have 16 pieces of my art at a gallery show right now, so there are some big spaces that will later have art in them, and I want to wait until that’s done.

My oldest sister Linda, me, Ashar and Mom on Mother’s Day.

Books

I know I’m missing things here, but a few highlights:

  • Serial Killers and Psycopaths – OK, not the most cheerful, I admit. We were browsing through this at the bookstore and Ashar was really interested, so we bought it. She’s been into true crime since becoming interested in forensics a few years ago, and recognized many of the stories involved. One of the coolest “rabbit trails” came when we were reading some of this together and went into a two-hour tangent about, among other things, the death penalty, victim-blaming, racism and forensics. It was pretty much the quintessential unschooling rabbit trail experience.
  • Cross Kill by James Patterson – Ashar doesn’t read a lot of fiction outside of comics and classics, and this was something new we decided to try – the short “BookShots” novellas that can be read in a few sittings. We didn’t finish this one but that was more due to the busyness of moving.

I told them “Look awesome.” They said, “We’re always awesome!”

Music and theater

Ashar kept going with her Rock Band classes with Rod Goelz of Music at Metropolis, who I mentioned before is unschooling-minded guy who really clicks with Sarah. They work on the fundamentals of rhythm, harmony, vocal and instrumental performance and playing by ear together.

May was also big in the theater world, because we had the performances of the show Ashar was on crew for, Peter Pan and Mary, a locally-written play premiered at DreamWrights, our local family theater.

After putting in four or five hours a night, sometimes five nights a week, for more than a month, it was amazing to see it all come together in the shows. She had an amazing time and made some great friends, which was really cool.

Expect to hear more theater things in next month’s roundup; starting today, Ashar is spending all day every day at a two-week Shakespeare immersion camp at OrangeMite, our local Shakespearean company. They’ll put on a production of The Tempest, which I think is super-cool, and of which you can be assured pictures will follow!

Kaitlyn, Chris, Ashar, me, my mom and Plaid Pengin at one of the Peter Pan and Mary shows at DreamWrights.

Movies and TV

A special note for our newer readers: I’d love for you to check out our post on learning from movies and TV shows. It really explains a lot about why we are such fans!

We didn’t have a ton of time for movie-watching, but Ashar and Chris started watching Darkplace, a show of the “so bad it’s almost good” variety.

We also found time to go to the movies and catch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and also saw Sing, which was super-cute.

Kaitlyn and his mom, JoAnne, play cribbage on the guest bed in the rec room. Note Dudley (white dog) and Einstein (large bear) looking on.

Games

As always, we like to spend at least one night a week gaming, though with the move that’s gotten a little less frequent than we would like.

One of the coolest things about Kaitlyn’s mom visiting is that his family is big into cribbage, and on this visit, she and Kaitlyn taught Ashar to play.

We also got to do the mutating killer virus episode of Escape Room: The Game – from which we did escape!

Ashar also had fun playing a new tabletop beanbag game (think cornhole, but little) with a young friend who came to the open house, and we were excited that we got her basketball hoop set up at the new place. We weren’t sure how that would work out, because our driveway isn’t level, but we found a way to do it facing the road on our non-through-street.

More of Ashar and her DreamWrights crew.

Universal Yums

This month in our family’s Universal Yums subscription, we got to try snacks from Japan.

I particularly loved the beef-flavored cheese-puff-type things, which I fully admit is weird. Kaitlyn loved these little cookies shaped like hamburgers. Overall, though, Japanese snacks were less to our liking than some of the other countries. Next up is Mexico, so we’re hoping for a lot of chocolate and spicy snacking.

What’s really cool is that we try to make an evening out of our taste-testing. We all try a little bit of each snack, we rate them, we look up facts about the country and we have a good time.

I’m not an affiliate of Universal Yums, but I can definitely HIGHLY recommend it. You can definitely look forward to hearing more about this in our roundups as long as our subscription continues!

Ashar, Kaitlyn and Plaid unwinding at one of our nearby parks.

Unschooling places, projects and odds and ends

New computer monitor: At our old house, we had a nice but slightly older entertainment center that had a specific-sized cutout for the TV, so we were capped at about a 34″ one. We did have a bigger one, a 42″ (I know, to most people that’s not a “big” TV, but to us it’s huge!) and at the new house, we were able to mount that one above the fireplace. So we had the smaller one left, and at the new house, we were able to hook that up as Ashar’s monitor with her computer, so she has a pretty great gaming experience.

Walking: Our old neighborhood had a nice loop for walking, and our new neighborhood is even more walkable, with no through-streets and only one road entering/exiting the development. We also have a walking path from the development to a nearby elementary school, so we can walk over and play on the swings and stuff!

Playing in the rain: Right before we moved away from our old house, we had a huge downpour, and Ashar had fun going out and playing in the storm. She’s big into water lately, loving to get soaked, so it was a ton of fun and a nice way to say goodbye to the old place.

Playing in the rain on one of our last days at the old house.

Mother’s Day: What’s that? We moved on Mother’s Day weekend? Well, of course that meant we had to go out to dinner. The five of us, plus one of my sisters and her husband, all went out to hibachi, which was perfect.

So I’m making a stupid face here because I realized my Mother’s Day present said I’m graceful. This is not particularly true. As evidenced by, you know, this photo.

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”

26May
4

Learning music theory the unschooling way

Ashar, like many 17-year-olds, lives and breathes music. She loves nothing more than popping on her Beats headphones and discovering new favorites or enjoying old ones, singing along, watching music videos… but, until about three months ago, she’d never played music herself outside of a disastrous two-week flirtation with the flute in fourth grade (and we’re SO not counting that), and she had no idea about any music theory concepts.

That all changed when we found a great local music teacher, who’s been instrumental (see what I did there?) in helping Ashar build a foundation of understanding to go along with her listening. She’s gotten better at singing and even started learning to play, picking up the basics of piano and drums and working on some deeper skills on her favorite instrument so far, the guitar.

One of the keys to why this is working out so well? Her teacher uses what I call the unschooling approach to music theory – focused predominantly on playing by ear and playing “real songs” right away.

Music Theory the Unschooling Way with Garage Band Theory - an Unschool Rules review of a system that teaches playing by ear

Except, one problem. I could help her read music. I could encourage her to practice. I could take her to lessons. But, despite more than 15 years of music lessons, I am horrendous at playing by ear.

So you can guess I was pretty stoked when, after about two months of introductory lessons, we heard about something called Garage Band Theory – described as “Tools the Pros Use to Play By Ear!”

I was like, “Sarah! Maybe this can help!” Her response was, essentially, a much politer way of saying “Anything would be better than your awful attempts to help me pick out ‘Lean on Me’ on the piano, Mom.”

Music Theory the Unschooling Way with Garage Band Theory - Unschool Rules

Music theory: The traditional approach

The traditional approach to music theory and music performance in our area is pretty simple: Kids start off learning to play some familiar songs on the recorder in third grade, pick a specialty instrument a year later, and practice playing from written lesson books daily for the rest of their school careers.

Disclosure: In exchange for the honest review of our experience which appears in this post, our family received a copy Garage Band Theory for free. We were compensated for our time completing the review, but all musical fun had was ours! This post also contains some affiliate links, which will make me a little bit of money to keep funding guitar lessons for my kid if you choose to purchase any of the products I’ve mentioned.

If you’re lucky, like me, you might have taken private music lessons before this, giving you a head start. I took piano from the time I was 5 until I finished high school, and while I got to be pretty technically proficient, I knew nothing about improvising until late in high school, and I don’t think I ever played by ear once I got beyond “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” It was as if my elementary music teachers got together and said, “OK, that’s cute for basic songs, but now we’re going to show you the real way to play – by reading music.”

There are definitely some great alternative approaches, like the Suzuki method, and I had some AWESOME music teachers who made me really love performing, but all in all, it wasn’t until I started to get beyond the technical motions into the soul of the music – and began playing stuff other than the lesson-book drills that I hated – that I really started having the most fun.

That’s the experience that I wanted to give Ashar when she wanted to study music, and why the “unschooling approach to music” is working so well for us.

Music theory: The garageband approach

In the intro to Garage Band Theory, author Duke Sharp says something that really resonates with me. He mentions that he actually doesn’t like the phrase “playing by ear.” He says it’s misleading – and goes on to say that it “actually discourages people from developing a skill they already use unconsciously and naturally every single day.”

He gives some great examples: You don’t have to wait for the DJ to tell you who’s singing when you hear your favorite song on the radio. When one of your family members walks down the hall, you can probably tell who it is. You can tell if it’s your dog or the neighbor’s barking. Heck, you can probably belt out a passable “Happy Birthday To You” in a crowd even if you’re generally a terible singer.

And that, he says, is exactly what it takes to play by ear – the ability to listen well, comprehend, and, when called for, turn that information into making a sound in response. And all of that is natural.

That was hugely eye-opening for me. Music “theory” and “performance” that stem from a natural exploration of sounds that you enjoy? Whoa, this “garageband” thing sounds like an unschooling approach to learning music!

In both her weekly lessons and our time exploring Garage Band Theory, Ashar has been able to just have fun. Most of her musical learning starts with listening, starting with the music of the Beatles – which is both where her music teacher starts, and what Duke Sharp recommends in Garage Band Theory! She doesn’t have to practice the same song over and over; instead, she’s learned to pick out chords on the guitar and piano and put them together into songs she loves, like “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” by the Beatles.

We’ve just gotten started with Garage Band Theory, which is a SUPER-deep resource. The book works back and forth between reading, playing exercises and answering some brief questions in a workbook-style format.

The basic idea? When you can really understand something – what it’s called, what it does and how it works – that’s when you can use it as a tool to create.

So while Garage Band Theory starts with the names of the notes and the types of chords, it skips the basic drills of playing Middle C in 50 different ways and moves into practice identifying them as they appear in popular songs and using that to help you build recognition. When you hear the three NBC bells, you’ll say “Hey, that’s just an inversion of a C chord!” Fifteen years of music lessons and that never occurred to me until Garage Band Theory.

Ashar’s focus right now through her music lessons is simply familiarity – picking out songs, getting comfortable with the guitar, starting to play things she recognizes. While she’s probably not ready to devote the time to really working through the Garage Band Theory system, we’re excited to have it as a resource to help her get more familiar with some theory basics as she continues her musical explorations through lessons! (The author, Duke Sharp, notes that taking professional lessons is highly recommended – the system works best as an enhancement to that kind of teaching, not as a replacement.)

Music Theory the Unschooling Way with Garage Band Theory - Unschool Rules

Ashar had never seen tablature shorthand for guitar before – only full pictures of the first few frets. When we worked on how to read it using Garage Band Theory, her mind was blown!

04May
2

Unschooling: Our March and April 2017 adventures

Our family has been BUSY for the past few months, in many good ways and a few sad ones. This wrapup of March and April will get us caught up on unschooling news through the end of what would be Ashar’s 11th-grade year in public school, but I can’t promise it’s as complete as it might be! (As always, if you want a more frequent peek at what we do, you can always find me on Instagram and Facebook.)

Unschooling in Central Pennsylvania on Unschool Rules: A month in the life of radical unschoolers.

If you’re new to seeing our days recapped in this format, check out our archive of previous wrapups here for some more info on why we take this approach and some other highlights of our adventures.

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - carnival selfie

All the Conciliottomans at the spring carnival!

Moving

Well, let’s get the biggest news out of the way first: We’re moving! We get into our new house, which is only about five miles from our current house, starting May 10. We don’t sell our current home until May 22, so we have a little time to get things all set up at both places.

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - old house

This has been our home since October 2005. It had its ups and downs (I’m looking at you, new roof-heat pump-water heater) but it has been the location of many awesome family memories, and we’ll miss it.

This was a whirlwind. You might ask, “Joan, did you have ANY intention of moving this year?” If you did, I might reply, “Heck to the no!” We had JUST started having some family conversations about the value of a place that needed a little less work and that might have a first-floor master for my mother, who is having some trouble with steps, but we had no firm plans other than to start seeing what was out there and maybe get some quotes on what it would cost to do some renovations at our current place to create a more workable space.

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!
Then, while waiting for a meeting to start at work on Wednesday, March 22, I saw a property that had just been listed 15 minutes earlier. It was perfect. I contacted the Realtor and set up an appointment for us all to see it on Friday, March 24; we were all off because it was Ashar’s 17th birthday. We loved it at first sight. After talking things over, we did a VERY quick mortgage approval process and ended up spending Ashar’s birthday dinner at our local sushi restaurant on the phone with the Realtor, making an offer, which was officially accepted on Saturday, March 25, which happens to be my mom’s birthday.

So, if anyone asks what they got for their birthday this year, we can legitimately answer “a house.”

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - new house exterior

This is our new house!

Then came the process of getting our home listed to sell, so we did an awful lot of work on cosmetic things and also packed up about half of our stuff and put it in our garage, plus having a big ol’ yard sale with my best friend.

We also had to juggle showings of the house with Mom, who has the aforementioned trouble with her knees and thus can’t always just pack up and wander around aimlessly on short notice, and, even more importantly, our aging dog, Coby, who is 14 and not in very good health, and who has very limited mobility. Thankfully we only had to have four showings over three days, and then we had an offer finalized a week after we went on the market!

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - goldendoodle in park

This poor old dog is 14 and not in great health, and having to leave the house we were selling for showings was REALLY hard on him. But we took him to the park and Kaitlyn laid down with him and tried to keep him comfortable.

After that, we completed the rest of the mortgage paperwork, and now we’re just finishing the packing. Thankfully (again), we are able to hire movers to actually cart the stuff from Point A to Point B. We just have to get it ready for them.

So we are all incredibly excited and, you know, incredibly tired. Thankfully (again – you’re going to hear me say this a LOT about this moving process, which has gone much more smoothly than we deserve so far), Kaitlyn’s mom will be coming out for two weeks after we move to help with the transition, in addition to what our family of five can do.

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - new house interior

Here’s a sneak peek from just inside the front door of our new house. The door to the right goes into what was a dining room, but which we plan to use as an art and project space. I’m so excited!

I just can’t wait until we’re in and unpacked. I’m the kind of person who will be totally unpacked in two weeks; that’s just how I roll. But it’ll be a long two weeks!

On the unschooling front, a lot of the conversations around mortgages, escrow, commissions and more went into Ashar’s economics credit on this year’s transcript. It was a HUGE piece of learning for all of us.

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - walking dead cupcakes

So, I’m not the cake-decorating type. But Ashar requested Walking Dead-themed cupcakes for her birthday, so I made some amateur crossbows and angel wings out of fondant dough and sugar sheets. I didn’t think they came out too badly!

Books

I know I’m missing things here, but a few highlights:

  • Batman Eternal: Volume 1 – Ashar has wanted this for a long time, and our library finally had it available to read!
  • The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks – Our current occasional family read-aloud. We jump around, so we’ve read about World War I, Alexander the Great, Elizabethan England and a bunch more.
  • The Walking Dead: Volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 – Also a library find. After being obsessed with the TV series, Ashar has finally decided to dig into the comics.
  • Serial Killers and Psycopaths – OK, not the most cheerful, I admit. We were browsing through this at the bookstore and Ashar was really interested, so we bought it. She’s been into true crime since becoming interested in forensics a few years ago, and recognized many of the stories involved.
  • DK’s The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History – This one is special. I have worked with DK in the past and received an email that they were looking for photos of Vietnam veterans to share. Kaitlyn’s dad, Paul, served in Vietnam and we worked through Kaitlyn’s mom to get a photo and submit it – and it was included in the inside cover of the book, which we received a copy of but then sent on to Paul as a birthday gift. I am looking forward to getting a copy to keep… as soon as we won’t have to move it.

Rock Band

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - rock band guitar class

Ashar is having a great time learning to play guitar at Rock band glasses.

A big way Ashar has been spending her time lately is in music classes with an amazing instructor, Rod Goelz of Music at Metropolis. Rod’s an unschooling-minded guy who really clicks with Sarah. They work on the fundamentals of rhythm, harmony, vocal and instrumental performance and playing by ear together as part of a series of classes called “Rock Band.”

The playing by ear part is the most amazing to me, because though I am a pretty decent pianist and saxophonist (15 years of lessons on the piano; I should be), I have never been able to play by ear. Ashar’s work with Rod is helping me a ton, and excitingly, we’ve been asked to review a program called Garage Band Theory that focuses on the same thing. More to come on that soon!

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - cousins at breakfast

How did we spend Easter morning? Driving to first pick up a van, then meet my cousin and her three daughters (also homeschoolers) at the Philadelphia Airport, where they flew from Alaska. They are hoping to come to Pennsylvania and stay for quite a while soon, and we are SUPER excited!

Movies and TV

A special note for our newer readers: I’d love for you to check out our post on learning from movies and TV shows. It really explains a lot about why we are such fans!

I also want to give a special discussion in this wrapup to Thirteen Reasons Why, a topic of HUGE debate in the parenting community, for reasons that range from it potentially glorifying suicide to being inaccurate about mental health resources to being too graphic in its depictions of rape and suicide.

Ashar and I have watched it together and really are glad we did. Do I think you should park your 10-year-old in front of it by themselves? Absolutely not. But if you don’t think that show depicts real life, unfortunately, I think you’re mistaken. Our immediate family and friends have dealt with a lot of mental health issues in the past few years, and so much of it was all too real.

Here’s a look at some more of what we watched in the past couple of months:

  • Shawshank Redemption – Part of Ashar’s interest in Stephen King’s work.
  • 30 Rock – Ashar and Mom finished this series and, surprisingly, haven’t started a new one yet!
  • Trolls – I hate to admit it, but it was pretty adorable. And the music is catchy.
  • Logan – I cried like a baby at a superhero movie.
  • The Walking Dead – Now we’re on a season break, so instead of watching, Ashar is preparing for how to fund a trip to Walker-Stalker Con in New Jersey in December to meet Norman Reedus.
  • Legion – Chris and Ashar’s new series.
  • Ride with Norman Reedus – So she really likes Norman Reedus. She bought the full season of this herself and binge-watched it in one relaxing day. I loved it because it was a real travelogue of cool places we might want to go or already have been, so that was cool!
  • Blank Check – Ashar loves the idea of having a million dollars to spend, but we talked about how this doesn’t hold up to inflation.
  • Flubber – Just plain fun.
  • The Money Pit – I could have passed on screening this during a house move, but Ashar thinks it’s funny.

We also watched a terrifying video of a tarantula molting, which I refuse to link to but which you can Google if you and your kids are so inclined. Ashar loved it. (Ashar loves tarantulas.) I do not love tarantulas.

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - escape room game

We escaped the “prison break” edition of our Escape Room: The Game set! (The cats were actually no help at all.)

Video, board and card games

As always, we like to spend at least one night a week gaming, though with the move that’s gotten a little less frequent than we would like.

Some of the highlights of the past couple of months have included the Simon’s Cat card game; Gloom, a new favorite; Munchkin, always a hit; and Family Feud, which never fails to make me ask “Who are the people they’re asking these questions to and are they for real?”

We also, since we like doing in-person escape rooms so much, bought Escape Room: The Game and did the “Prison Break” episode. That was a ton of fun for the five of us!

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - carnival ride

Amid the chaos of packing, we had time to visit the spring carnival in town. Here, Ashar, Marzipan the elephant and I are riding the Himalaya, to varying degrees of excitement. You should know that I. Do. Not. Ride. Rides. They don’t make me sick, and I’m not scared of them. I just totally dislike them. But Ashar decided I should ride this with her, Kaitlyn should ride the Sizzler and Chris should go through the haunted house, which I cannot do because I scream like a 5-year-old.

Universal Yums

One of the coolest new things of the year has been a family subscription to Universal Yums, a subscription box that sends snacks from a different country each month. So far we’ve gone to Germany, the Ukraine and Italy, and more recently, our snacks came from Israel and Austria.

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - universal yums austria

The pizza-flavored treats from Austria that were part of our April Universal Yums box blew Kaitlyn’s mind.

Israel wasn’t so hot for me, because it contained a lot of sesame, to which I am very strongly allergic. But Austria included a lot of chocolate, and since it’s the home country of one of Ashar’s favorite people, Arnold Schwarzenegger, she was excited! They had pizza-flavored corn snacks, labeled “American style,” which were my favorite.

What’s really cool is that we try to make an evening out of our taste-testing. All five of us try a little bit of each snack, we rate them, we look up facts about the country and we have a good time.

I’m not an affiliate of Universal Yums, but I can definitely HIGHLY recommend it. You can definitely look forward to hearing more about this in our roundups as long as our subscription continues!

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - carnival swings

Ashar had the best time riding the swings. She was so relaxed and loose, like she could have gone around for hours.

Theater

Theater is something that has always kind of been a part of Ashar’s life, but in an… adjacent kind of way? What I mean is, most of her local friends are active in various theater groups, and we go see their shows, and we’ve gone to see a bunch of other shows both in the area and nationally, and we listen to musicals like they’re pop music… but she’d never really been part of any major production.

That all changed in late March, when, as we were, you know, talking about buying a new house, she decided to audition for Peter Pan and Mary, a locally-written play being premiered in May at DreamWrights, our local family theater.

Her preference was not acting – DreamWrights chooses its crew from auditionees, and she got something she wanted very much, a chance to be part of the props team. There were some weird glitches, though – so on callbacks night, she didn’t get a call, and it wasn’t until I got an email a week later that said “Hey, props team!” that we found out she’d be a part of the production. Then, on the first night, somehow Ashar didn’t connect with the props mistress and helped the set construction crew all evening. She was hooked!

She has ended up putting in four or five hours a night, sometimes five nights a week, for the past month or more, and is splitting her time helping the two crews. Her cast’s show debuts Saturday, and we’re all going to see it Sunday. I cannot wait. She’s doing an amazing job, and one of the adult leaders even pulled me aside to tell me what a huge asset she is. I’m thrilled.

Ashar isn’t auditioning for the next play, but I think the one after that, she’ll be back. The break is largely because she’s also taking part in a two-week Shakespeare immersion camp in late June at OrangeMite, our local Shakespearean company. They’ll put on a production of The Tempest, which I think is super-cool, and of which you can be assured pictures will follow in future wrapups!

Ashar, her dad and her granddad at dinner following her grandma’s memorial service. Since “Pappy John” lives in Florida, we don’t get to see him very often and this was a welcome visit, despite the sad circumstances.

Unschooling places, projects and odds and ends

Other family news: In a sad update, Chris’s mom (Ashar’s Grandma Mary) passed away unexpectedly March 2. We have spent much of the last two months managing the things that came after that, including Chris needing to work with his sister to sell his mother’s home. “I have so many houses right now,” he says. I felt truly terrible when I broached the subject of moving, but… we’re making it work.

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - cemetery sheep

One of the neat things about the graveside service for Ashar’s grandmother was a chance to see these sheep, who serve as groundskeepers for the older portion of the church cemetery.

Capitol Days: For the second year, Ashar participated in this 4-H immersion experience to state legislature, including a full mock bill session and brunch with her lawmakers. She loves it.

From ginger to gingerbread: Based on, I think, a display of fresh ginger in the grocery store, we got into an evening-long conversation on how ginger becomes gingerbread.

Art news: I sold my first commissioned piece of art, as well as several other paintings, and I got brave and tried something new – a cold wax painting class. This is where you mix cold wax in with oil paints to change the texture, and you can create some really great stuff with it! I’m looking forward to trying more.

Unschool Rules unschooling wrapup - cold wax oil painting class

One of my accomplishments in the last couple of months was attending my first class in a new art style – cold wax oil painting. The two women standing on either side of me (I’m in the Hogwarts shirt toward the right) and the one in the front in the purple shirt are good friends of mine and part of an art group we call the Dream Team. We liked it so much we signed up to do it again in June!

Exercise: Ashar wanted to start using my old Fitbit when I upgraded mine, so now she’s got a step goal and is walking around our neighborhood most days trying to hit it. She’s doing some biking, too, though that’s on hiatus for a little because she had a minor bike crash that left one of her hands pretty thrashed.

The official end of 11th grade: Ashar’s portfolio went to our evaluator and was approved; the documentation was sent to our soon-to-be-former school district; and our records were transferred to our new school district. Ashar is officially done 11th grade! One last year of compulsory reporting to go, though you know in our world, that won’t change much of how we live our lives together. We also included this year’s credits in something that took a LOT of time in the past month, our Ultimate Guide to Creating an Unschooling High School Transcript. Ashar was a huge help in pulling that together!

So what’s new with your family this month? Drop me a comment! I love hearing from all my “blog friends!”