The Unschooling Handbook

A Great Book For Any Homeschooling Parent

            I have just started reading the book The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffith. I want to learn about the unschooling philosophy and methods. I feel it can really help me to understand how I can be the best teacher mom I can be and also allow the world and children to be the teacher.

Basically unschooling is a way to allow the child who is an individual the opportunity to learn what they love when they feel like learning it. Typically unschooling requires no special curriculum, testing and schedules. You simply live your life spend time with your children learn together, play together and just enjoying your life and family the education is a bonus.

The fact is you learn the best when you are into the subject you are learning and you can spend as much of your free time doing it as you like. A 10 year old unschooled child may love to learn about model air planes and he may love it so much that he spends many hours a day on the subject. He will build model air planes, read books about how they fly or how to build them from scratch. This will eventually lead to using math to measure wing spans, calculate speeds, etc..

A 13 year old unschooled girl may love baking and cooking so much that she reads about it, watches television programming about it, she may even cook and bake for the whole family most day of the week. This would also lead to math skills and much more who knows the child will lead their own mind. Education is not a problem because the child learns about the real world and all skills necessary to be a productive adult and then some!

I do like this concept and feel it is a key factor missing in education today, I would like to explore these ideas more and see how they can fit into my families home school experience.


The Unschooling Handbook

Have A New Kid By Friday

I am reading a great book called Have a New Kid by Friday: How to Change Your Child's Attitude, Behavior & Character in 5 Days by Kevin Leman.

I always thought that I would never have a kid that thinks he runs the show.
I always new that I did not want to parent my kids the way my parents did.

Growing up we always ran the show and we did pretty much whatever we wanted, we still had rules and such but mostly got our way. As a result of that which I have come to know as permissive parenting my younger sister and I resorted to rebellion and lack of respect for our parents or little of it.

Now I have two boys and WOW! It is not as easy as I thought, the good thing is I am not as permissive as my parents were. Reading the book however I now know that I am a permissive/authoritarian parent which is not good either and the reason why I need to read this book in the first place lol!

Here are some of the things I am learning in this book so far and you will learn too.

I learning in this book that it is not OK to ask kids questions this leads to defensive behavior instead only ask open-ended statements.

And always say "tell me more about that" instead of "why would you like/do that", "that song is stupid" or "that is silly". Instead be interested in what your kids like and join in and have a relationship with your kids.

If you don't like something your kid does say something like "I don't think it is for me personally but I would like you to tell me more about it, it sounds interesting", and actually have a conversation with the your kids.

Something I need to work on is, it is OK to disagree but not OK to be critical, argumentative, confrontational and I think that is key.

He says you want to be a authoritative parent not authoritarian parent or permissive. Both permissive and authoritarian parents are only setting kids up for rebellion.

He explains all that in the book and how to know what type of parent you are.

Anyway just what I am learning in the book Have a New Kid by Friday and it applies to us all and is just good info on how to get along with others.

This is a great book so far I started it on Sunday, I have read three chapters and look forward to tomorrow to read another.

I will do another post about this book later thanks for reading.

To Your Families Success!

Joanne

Scott Hahn's Hail Holy Queen

Recommended reading

I just got done reading Hail, Holy Queen by Dr Scott Hahn for the second time, I loved it!

This book was easy to read and understand and Scott Hahn explains just how the Blessed Mary fits in with Christianity it is so beautiful and extraordinary. In this book Scott Hahn addresses Marian doctrines and explains them in a loving and easy to understand way.

A great book! I recommend to anyone seeking to know more about Marian doctrine, scripture and Christianity.

Go to your local library and see if they have this book or anything by Scott Hahn for that matter. Scott Hahn is a Professor of Theology and scripture, I am a big fan.

Click the picture for more about the author of this book.