amitymamaThe Attachment Parenting Community

Mrsmissy · 03-08-2004, 09:02 AM

I admit. I'm a planner. I tend to plan and plan and plan, but things sometimes don't get done.

I feel the same way about figuring out things to do with the kids. I have a couple of unit studies here that they are interested in. But, how to "plan" it? I don't want to do things like

9:00am, reading
9:30am, math
10:00am, history
etc.

I would like to have a list of things to do daily, though. And perhaps, it after awhile of doing them, it will become a habit (like my housecleaning did!). But, how do start???

I realize that a lot of you unschool. And I realize that I'm a bit anal about planning, too. I work best if there's a plan though.

Thanks!

mamabear · 03-08-2004, 11:29 AM

My advice: start small. Be messy.

I was reading & reading and finally just jumped in, stuck together a circle time, and did it, learning the verses and fingerplays along with my kids. It was messy but at least we got started, yk?

It went great and now we have the momentum to do it again tomorrow.

I *just* started taking this whole unschooling thing uber-seriously today. Last night I stayed up until 2 am to catch up on housework so the house would be clean. I pretended it was a week of "real school" and I was the teacher.

My goal this week was simple: set up a circle time, do a couple of crafts. I decided right after breakfast would be a good time for circle time. So today, my only goal was to have breakfast in a timely way when everyone got up, and then do circle time.

It worked.

So in coming weeks I'll add in a little more rhythm -- I'll think of when I want the free/creative playtime after circle time to come to a close, and how to transition to a project. We'll work on that first. Then after a week of having that in our rhythm, we'll add the weekly rhythm of one day baking day, another nature walk, etc.

I guess what I am saying in my rambly way is that rather than just waking up one day and having the whole list to cross off, how about adding one piece at a time, each week or every few days adding another piece? Before you know it you will have "built" all the things you'd like to do into your day.

And, yes, I definitely lean toward unschooling, but have a curriculum and am trying to get a "rhythm" happening each day and each week.

Even if you don't want to set exact times that you do each thing, it might help to have an order. And to break up each "unit" with free play, perhaps? Depending on the ages of your kids.

tara · 03-08-2004, 06:05 PM

Well, we are unschoolers but I feel that we have a rhythm. I know that Sam likes to do bigger-activity things in the morning and more homebody or calmer things in the afternoon. We have certain things we do throughout the day are fairly routine times that connect us to each other and give us little pauses in between activities.

In terms of goals, we don't really have them...beyond me asking him what he is enjoying learning about, and how I can help him learn more about that...or what new thing(s) he wants to learn about. Recently he wanted to learn more about Egypt, so we made a plan to look for Egypt books when we went to the library. (We go to the library once a week on the same day.) Or, one night, he told me that wanted to learn more about a certain Greek person, so I told him that I would look on the computer and show him about it the next day, which is what happened. It's a pretty ad hoc approach to education at this time.

I do have some longer-term goals for his education, but we don't really discuss it. I usually see that he is on his way to achieving those goals without more than the occasional gentle nudge from me. Sometimes I introduce something new to him as a way of getting him into something that I feel he should learn.

Okay, rereading this, I'm not sure I've made any sense or touched on what you were looking for!

Tara

TeresaLock · 03-09-2004, 02:17 PM

I'm the same way (LOL) I feel that for the last year i have been thinking, planning and researching but yet feel like there are becoming more and more choices and i can't make decisions. A lady recently told me to just make it a goal to do 1 handwriting page a day, one reading lesson and a picture book and go from there. I have the handwriting and reading books but just haven't made up my mind on anything else. I'd love to be an unschooler but i'm not. I'm leaning towards a package but i don't know what. I just feel there is too much info out there and i just get deaper and deaper in a hole when i look at it (LOL)