Unschool Rules

Unschooling: How we learn history

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you wonder how our learning happens “beyond the curriculum,” read on. Today, we’re tackling the ways things traditionally known as social studies happen in our lives – unschooling history, geography and world cultures.

Unschooling and history

History is probably the most “co-curricular” thing we do.

That is, we really study history as the history “of” other things. Rather than a period-by-period approach, we are much more focused on topic-by-topic studies.

Urn depicting Herakles (Hercules) defeating the Nemean Lion at the Reading Public Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania When we visit a place, we learn about the history associated with it. When we see a movie about a particular period, we’re often motivated to dig deeper into that time. When someone famous catches Ashar’s eye, we learn more about their place in the past (or present)! Even video games – especially video games – provide a gateway into different times.

And particularly with science and math, “history” really becomes the gateway to a ton of discussions about how things were discovered, and when, and why.

Let me start today by giving you a sampling of the ways we’ve engaged with history for you to check out. Don’t forget to come back here afterward, though, because I hope I can explain how we tie these various threads together!

So how do we come up with a coherent picture of the world’s past through these various explorations?

Well, a couple ways. First of all, let me start by saying that we have gaps. It’s only this year that Ashar became at all aware of what the Holocaust was, and there was a really embarrassing moment last fall when Ashar told a history-major friend of mine that the Confederates won the American Revolution. So… it’s a work in progress.

For our part, though, we have been trying to give “a sense of it all” by adding some of these things we study to our giant timeline. We’re not 100% at this by far, but having this hanging in our kitchen, and adding to it here and there, has really helped tie things together.

We’re also just conscious about talking about when things happen. For instance, when we visited Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2012, it was good to be able to explain that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, because Lincoln had lived and died almost 100 years earlier and his monument was already built!

That sounds obvious, maybe, but it was a way to put a proportion of space and time between those two events in a way that was very real to Ashar.

For us, history is a vast area to explore. We could provide an overview, and we certainly do try to strew experiences and conversations and books and movies that might help fill in the gaps, but at the same time, it’s been a huge benefit for us to dive deep into the times that most catch Ashar’s attention, and to fill in with breadth as we can.

My own experience was the opposite – years and years of “surveys” with no depth – and unfortunately it’s been a lot harder for me to fill that in as an adult!

Unschooling and geography

This is probably as much of an interest of Ashar’s as history. He is fascinated by where things are in the world, and by various places!

Our humongous map of the world is really our biggest tool here. Almost any place we hear about, we find on the bedside map.

At one point, Ashar actually wanted to go into cartography as a career, and he still mentions that at times. Maps have always fascinated him, and we can sit for hours looking at ours and talking about things that happened in various places.

One of the most fun things we’ve done in homeschooling was when he and Chris discovered an old geography textbook and shared their thoughts about how perceptions have changed since 1920!

Unschooling and world cultures

Related to both geography and world cultures is one project that originally Chris started – family participation in the PostCrossing postcard-exchange project. You can read more about his experiences with it on his blog, Papergreat.

Originally, he started sending and receiving postcards worldwide, but he later created an account for Ashar and now he is participating too! It’s been a great way to receive notes from people around the world and find out what their daily life is like – AND it turns into a neat geography study!

We also find that fine arts play a big part of how we explore world cultures – music, dance, movies, language, etc. I’m going to talk more about this in the final installment of this subject-by-subject series; I hope you’ll check back for it!

The rest of the series

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

You can read all the posts here!

More five-day fun

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

You can see how some of my fellow bloggers are spending their five days here.

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

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

Finally, this post is part of the How to Teach Without a Curriculum linkup through the iHomeschool Network. I hope you’ll check it out to read more posts on teaching without formal curriculum!

More great history resources

This post is part of the iHomeschool Network Massive Guide to Homeschooling History.

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

Unschooling science

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

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

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

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

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

If you wonder how our learning happens “beyond the curriculum,” read on. Today, we’re tackling the ways all sorts of learning happens in our daily lives through unschooling science.

Unschooling and chemistry

Wait, does this topic sound at all familiar?

I shared our favorite resources for studying chemistry and the periodic table in a huge post earlier this month.

In it, I talk about a lot of the books, movies, online courses, apps trips and more that we’ve used to help Ashar pursue her passion for this area.

I also share some thoughts on how we’ve used more “traditionally school-like” resources in an unschooling way.

This is important, because I don’t want anyone to think that being unschoolers means we CAN’T learn using things like official courses or textbooks; our mindset about them is simply much different. I hope you’ll check out our chemistry studies here!

Unschooling and biology

At the beginning of this “school year,” I shared our unschooled version of an eighth-grade-ish curriculum plan.

In it, much like I’m doing in this week’s series, I broke down some of the things we’d hoped to explore in a subject-by-subject manner. But what I said then, and want to reiterate now, is that most of the learning we do would be what, in education-speak, is known as cross-curricular. That means it’s kind of the opposite of subject-by-subject, and everything gets all mixed together! (Just like in real life!)

Well, our “biology” studying is no different. In fact, most of what we’ve learned about biology comes from a sort-of math book, Life of Fred Pre-Algebra 1 with Biology. Ashar has been into Fred’s adventures for a while now, and when she decided she wanted to get back into his story this year, she chose this book not for its pre-algebra, which is probably a little behind where she is mathematically, but for the biology component.

We’re reading Fred sporadically, but it’s been great for things like the night where we were talking about the Latin names of plants and animals and viruses, and Ashar wanted to know HOW those names were chosen and why. Guess what – Fred to the rescue! I should add, while this is described as a Christian series, we are a secular homeschooling family and haven’t had any problems using the fairly few spiritual references we’ve found as talking points about what different people believe, which we like to do anyway.

The question came up after we looked up the garden toad we saw on our front sidewalk and found out that his name was Bufo bufo. From there, we started looking up facts about the alpaca, aka Vicugna pacos.

And why alpacas? Well, because Ashar’s work with the York County 4-H Alpaca Club is probably the top source of science education overall, and biology/zoology info specifically, that we could ask for!

Ashar loves animals, and always has. We might not always call it biology, or zoology, but really a week doesn’t go by in which Ashar isn’t reading or watching or trying out an app or playing a game that teaches her something new about living things and how they work. She’s even “auditing” my own study of microbiology, and while she told me flat-out that the details of it “are ridiculous,” she’s picked up everything from how viruses replicate to the value of good bacteria.

So how do we facilitate biology learning, in general?

The short answer is by spending as much time outdoors and away from home as possible. You’re certainly more likely to encounter living things (plants, animals, even humans) NOT in your dining room! And, of course, because this happens to be a key area of interest for Ashar AND for Chris and me, reading and asking questions and sharing the answers with each other is a big key.

Unschooling and physics

So, unschooling physics.

I could make this section REALLY short and just give you one word: Mythbusters!

Really, seeing physics in motion (see what I did there?) is one of the coolest things for me about homeschooling. Even though I was a math major, I hated physics in high school and college. I just could not wrap my head around how the math part (which I understood) overlaid with the real-world applications.

So, really, Mythbusters has been amazing, because I can finally bridge the gap for myself between theory and application. But it’s also been a springboard into great questions from Ashar, all of which I can finally understand enough to help her find the answers – like when she asked me, “Why doesn’t the car stop right away when you hit the brakes?”

Much like with biology, the key is to be receptive to the questions and to help Ashar pursue the answers. Being involved in the world means there are LOTS of things to do with physics, energy and motion that will happen every day. Don’t overlook them – talk about them, and when you observe something, don’t be afraid to experiment and extrapolate!

Unschooling and astronomy

This is an area Ashar was interested in last year, and which we pursued in detail, in large part through the study of the history of space travel!

You can check out our full resource guide for space and solar system study here.

In it, I talk about some trips we took, movies we watched, books we read and more. There’s even a list of some of our favorite space-themed songs!

I wish more public and private schools focused on space study. That’s why I’m so glad we were able to spend some time digging into it when Ashar was interested! In this way, she’s far ahead of her public-school peers, and while I normally don’t think too much about that, it’s a good reminder that there are great benefits to being able to pick the areas of focus that work for us!

The rest of the series

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

You can read all the posts here!

More five-day fun

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

You can see how some of my fellow bloggers are spending their five days here.

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

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

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