Designed To Learn...

I really started to struggle with Corazon not wanting to "do" much. She is my one who will draw into herself and "escape" reality by doing only what is comfortable to her. She has been sleeping lately. A lot. She will often sleep till noon or later. Then shortly after getting up, she will zone out in front of the computer until bedtime. If we go anywhere, the ipod and ear buds immediately come out. It has been irritating me, I won't lie. She has such a beautiful soul and so much to offer, but I feel like she is just biding her time, hoping she can go to school next year. Not making any effort to be part of her own life.

Tough.

So last night I reached out to my online (awesome) group of Christian radical unschoolers. I laid it all out there. My fears and my thoughts. Not easy to admit, but I knew I needed help with MY attitude. The gals there were helping me work through things, asking questions and talking. And then one posted this....

I just think how difficult it would be to assimilate all that she has to.  Displaced at three, years of neglect, then displaced again, but this time to a place with different smells, different sounds, different tastes, with different faces, and different voices.  Then add that she has not had the exposure to many things we take for granted for typical learning.  It would be hard for an adult to adjust.  She must feel like she is drowning or something at times. 

Even if she spent the next 5 years sitting in front of the tv most of the time, she would be pulling in sights and sounds and words and ideas and building upon other sights and sounds and words and ideas.  She would be learning.  But you know, she has other people around her who have interests and conversations and activities that she will be pulling information from as well.  Over time she will see and and hear things that will pique her interest and she will probably want to say something, do something, go some place and that will add to all the other stuff she has been building upon. 

We are designed to learn, and learn we will.  How we go about doing so will look a bit different than some, and hugely different than others.  It is all good.  Different is good.  She is just a tiny baby in her new home.  Soon she will be a toddler, and then an adolescent and soon she will be a young adult, and then continue to mature in her adulthood.  The age and stage may not match up to what might have been if she had been born into your family, or if she had joined you at age 3.  She will grow, she will mature, she will learn, she will stretch and become stronger, and braver, and more involved.

Wow.

Just wow. 

THAT was exactly what I needed to hear. EXACTLY.

I love this girl so very, very much.

And as a PS-after I got off FB and went back to just BE with my daughter, she pulled up Minecraft on the Kindle. Apparently she has been silently watching her brothers play. And she played. And played. And played. Then she asked me if she could help me bake for a party tonight. 

Touche. 

Thank-you God for helping us find a way that builds a safety net for my kids, even when I doubt. 

Especially when I doubt.

AHA!!!

I had a bit of an "aha" moment the other day.

I have a kid's place app downloaded on my Kindle, where the kids can easily play games without overloading my Kindle. I have many, many educational games on the site, as well as a few such as Minecraft, Temple Run, Minions, etc.

However...

No matter which kid had the Kindle, the educational games were completely ignored. Every. Single. Time.

Enter my "aha" moment. :)

Why on earth WOULD they choose to play the educational games?!? I wouldn't! They scream of "being taught" and are all about mastering things that are needed for SCHOOL.

AHA!!!!!! (And duh)

So, I went into my kindle and started unloading things. All those educational apps?? Gone. Good-bye. See ya.

In their place? I loaded Chess, a Sound Effects app (lol!), a White Board, a couple of Board Games, a Stopwatch, an app about the lunar cycles, a real time map, a weather app, etc. I mean really, how fun!!!!! I also added in some apps I had on my cloud. An Old Time Radio app, a Word Search, a couple of channels, and we're good to go!

Now THAT ought to be FUN!!!!

We are one week in to my unschooling experiment. BeastyBoy and MissesHerMama continue to attack life full-force, soaking up things as rapidly as they can. I also see them beginning to find their own limits. RockyGirl was raised much like this, and she is radically in tune with herself for being only 17.

Corazon however, is struggling. She has been told who to be and what to do for so long (at her orphanage) that it has killed the spark in her. She is one angry and sullen kiddo. She feels like she "not being taught". I can see that for her, unschooling has been too big of a change. My goal for today is talk over with her HOW she would like to learn. I will honor it no matter what she chooses. I am hoping that by helping her guide her own learning, she will gradually see that she definitely can learn herself. So for her, for now, we go with a delight-directed style of learning.

Honoring my kiddos. That's what this is all about. Teaching them that they are valuable people with desires and God-given talents.

What a beautiful way to live. :)

(Chance of snow today...can I just have the glorious days of summer back? :))

Unschooling Day 1....

Yesterday was our first day of officially unschooling. After much thought and prayer, I am giving this a trial run until Christmas. This wasn't an easy decision for me and I'm not sure I'm totally on board yet. :)

I was a kid who LOVED school. Loved it! I loved learning all sorts of new things. So I tend to glamorize school in my head. I tend to block out the fact that I hated the social pressure, I didn't understand math, science was incredibly hard and confusing for me, etc. What I did love, was history, and art, and English, and drama. Those classes came easily for me.

Something occurred to me last night as I was turning this whole unschooling thing over and over in my brain. It wasn't so much the classes that I loved, it was the other. The reading, the writing about what I read, going home and finding more and more books on subjects that interested me. Drawing in my room. Creating.

Hm.....

So in reality, my biggest so called "school loves" were the things I did ON MY OWN.

Eye-opener.

Seriously wow.

And I thought about all those things I didn't like in school. I realized that those things never interested me, but that in my adult life, I've used some of them.  I used them after I learned about them on my own! I took Chemistry in High School and only passed because two guys helped me through. When I became a nurse, I had to take Chemistry again. Strange thing, but this time round I completely got it. I needed it for the point I was at in my life, and what was previously useless became currently useful.  I am still learning every day. My passions cycle in and out.

What it boils down to is, I. Love. Learning. I truly do. I love to fill my head up with  knowledge of things I have taught myself.

So.....

Why am I asking my kids to do anything different than what I do every single day?

What if I just let them and let them find topics that are interesting to them?

Am I ok with that????

I don't know. It's hard for me. But I definitely see the wisdom and value in it. It's pretty much a leap of faith.

Beasty Boy will love it. MissesHerMama, maybe will be confuesed a little. Corazon will be completely lost. At first. But I do think they can all take ownership of their learning.

It's ME that needs to revamp my thinking and get out of their way. ;)

(On that note, isn't this an interesting map?? My latest desire is to learn about Native American medicinal healing. When I was a little girl, the Native American culture was something more than fascinating to me. I absorbed anything I could get my hands on. Now that desire has come back full force. Unschooling?)