Looking at and pondering what many educational philosophies have in common with each other, I recently achieved a level of clarity and understanding, where everything fell into place for me.  I think I may have come up with a Grand Unified Theory of Homeschooling.  Actually, you could call it a Grand Unified Theory of Education, because I think this idea could be implemented in public schools as well… But, since I am a homeschooler, and this is a homeschooling blog, and to actually implement this in public schools would require far more change than most would probably be willing to do… let’s just stick with the “Homeschooling” side of it for now.

The fundamental basis of this Grand Unified Theory, upon which everything else rests, is this:

The most important stage of learning for any child is not until after they have started adolescence — usually around 14 years old.  There are essential changes that happen to the human brain when it goes through puberty.  Children around this age are capable of complex and abstract thought processes, and are able to analyze facts and ideas with great depth and insight.  This is almost entirely a function of physical development, and is not based on prior learning.

This is fairly well recognized as true, even if you haven’t specifically noticed it before.  This is the age of “high school” in the public schools, which is a very different environment than elementary and middle schools.  Classical education calls this stage “Rhetoric,” where students apply advanced logic and analysis to discuss, defend, and persuade myriad ideas.  The Waldorf tradition speaks of the “14-year change”, the beginning of the third 7-year-cycle of development.  In Waldorf terms, the first stage (up to age 7) is “hands” – primarily active and physical development and learning; the second stage (age 7-14) is “heart,” an age of deep feeling; and 14-21 is “head,” as they move into their intellect.

However you explain it, around age 14 is when our children become truly capable of deep learning.  And so my argument now, is that everything learned before age 14 is merely preparatory.  Not that it is unimportant, but that it is only skeletal.  A framework upon which the real learning that takes place in adolescence can be built.  Much as how knowing the letters of the alphabet is preparatory to reading (but is not, in itself, reading), education in the first 13 years of life is merely the setting up of the basic skills that will be needed for in-depth learning later.

So here is the second part of the Grand Unified Theory of Homeschooling.  Rather than worrying about “what my 5yo should know” or “what does a 3rd grader need to learn,” all we really need to concern ourselves with is “what should my child be able to do by the time he is 14 years old?”

Once you look at it this way, you find an awful lot of freedom.  You will quickly see that there are many ways to arrive at this goal.  And you will also, hopefully, realize that what any child knows at age 6 or 8 or 10 is, by and large, quite irrelevant.  (Not that the knowledge is irrelevant; just the age at which they learned it is irrelevant.)  Whether they start to read at 3 or 11, as long as they can read comfortably by the time they’re 14, that’s all that matters.  Whether they learn long division when they’re 8 or when they’re 13, as long as they’re okay with it by the time they’re 14, they’ll be fine.  Instead of worrying about lists and requirements for each and every year along the way, and whether we’re ahead or behind or what have you… why don’t we take a more long-term view of things?

And so the next piece of the puzzle, therefore, is what are those skills that are needed for the in-depth learning stage of adolescents?

This is my suggested list.  A child 14 years old should, by and large, know or know how to:

• read
• elementary arithmetic, fractions, patterns, decimals.
• cook a simple meal
• write a coherent paragraph
• look up something they don’t know (online or in books)
• do the laundry
• basic concept of historical eras in a broad sense
• basic concept of the earth, continents, and different cultures
• speak a few phrases in another language
• keep their belongings and their personal timetable organized
• basic understanding of money, budgeting
• draw, paint, sculpt
• tell time, understand seasonal cycles (not necessarily the mechanics of why there are cycles, just the fact that there are)
• brush their teeth, wash their hair, shower
• basic understanding of physical sciences (hot air goes up, gravity goes down, birds are alive and rocks are not)
• ride a bike
• swim
• cross the street safely
• talk to other people respectfully
• type
• choose nutritious food
• take public transportation
• light a match, build a campfire
• first aid
• sew on a button
• read music, play a musical instrument, or sing, at a basic level

You will notice that not all of this list is academic subjects.  In fact, most of it is not.  Yet all of these topics are, or should be, essential aspects of any child’s education.  They are all important skills needed for living life; and life is about much, much more than academic knowledge.

You will also notice that the academic parts of the list are rather short on details.  And that’s precisely the point.  The details are merely that — details.  All the fine-tuning, all the depth, all the details are easily learned in the adolescent or “high school” years.  One child might know a lot about, say, human biology by the time they’re 10, and that’s fine if that’s what interests them.  But it’s not necessary.  All that is truly necessary in the elementary years in terms of science, is that they keep a love of discovery and an interest in the natural world.

The same is true in pretty much every academic area.  Really all that is necessary is a basic framework.  The details and the depth come in high school.

So here is the final part of the Grand Unified Theory of Homeschooling.  Having recognized this list of skills as the goal for the first 13 years of life, it’s quite easy to recognize that it does not take 7-8 years of intense daily work and study to achieve those skills.  Some are best practiced from an early age, so as to develop good habits.  Others can be quite easily learned within a month or two by a 12 or 13-year-old child, even if it was completely ignored before.  Most homeschooling families will recognize that they will have mastered most (if not all) of these skills, at least the academic ones, long before 14 years old.

And so the point is, whatever style of homeschooling you find works best for your child and your family… in the end, the details don’t matter.  You can save yourself a lot of time, and a whole lot of stress, by not worrying about yearly timetables and schedules and curriculum requirements.  You can choose to follow a curriculum if you prefer to have that structure, but you don’t have to stress if your child seems “behind” when they’re 8 years old.  And even if they’re “ahead”, it’s still only just “details” — the real ‘deep’ learning still is not going to happen until they reach adolescence.  Until that time, everything else is just placeholding.  It is introductions.  It is frameworks.  It is exposure.  But that’s all it is.

Within this Grand Unified Theory of Homeschooling, there is an awful lot of freedom.  There is room for every individual circumstance.  Even the age of 14 is somewhat arbitrary… for some children, that stage of brain development comes a year or 2 earlier.  For others, it may be a year or 2 later.  But as a general goal to keep in mind, 14 is pretty consistent.

The main point I want to get across is this.  Grade levels and standard curricula are completely arbitrary, often based on child development science but not always, and are more often about being able to say you “did something” than about that ‘something’ being actually necessary to know at that age or stage.   Year-to-year curricula are useful for organization and planning, for learning habits and routines, but should not be taken as ‘rules’ or absolute guidelines for what a child should know at any particular age.  Far better, less stressful, less time-consuming, whatever homeschooling methodology or philosophy resonates best with you, is to take a long-range view.  Don’t fret about what they retain and what they forget when they’re still young, it’s all merely “details,” the real learning happens later.  Focus less on the year-to-year, and instead focus on the day-to-day art of living.

So what are your thoughts?  Is there something missing from this basic list of skills?  What are your experiences with the adolescent “change,” and how relevant – or not – were your children’s (or your own) learning experiences when younger?

In our case, it’s how I overdid early academics with my son, forcing him to do lots of workbooks (and yes, I do mean *forcing*) when he was far too young because I thought he showed signs of giftedness and wanted to jump on it, having been gifted myself (and never gotten the FULL chance to excel from a young age), as well as a desire to ‘prove’ how superior homeschooling could be.  It created a lot of damage and took us years to heal.

I learned my lesson well and learned a TON about homeschooling methodologies, freedom, child development, etc etc.  I resolved when my daughter Pomme was born years later that she would be unschooled.  At *least* until she was 7.  Around age 7, we might start some gentle academics if she seemed so inclined.  We’d use Montessori “lessons” through toddlerhood (not academic but practical skills) and let her be creative and independent and all that wonderful stuff I didn’t do with my son.  And there would be NO WORKBOOKS!  And I was so happy and pleased with myself, and so looking forward to this ‘better way’.

Well, then my daughter, barely age 2, started begging for workbooks.

Oh, not every day, but when the mood struck her, she could sit at her little desk and work for a solid hour, focussed and uninterrupted.

She’s now going to be turning 5 this December.  Along the way, everything else has indeed gone as planned… the Montessori practical skills, the independent self-reliance, the creative free range imaginative play.  But… she also LOVES to do sit-down academic work.

It’s like they do this on purpose, you know?  Just to drive us mad?  Just to keep us on our toes?  Just to always challenge our drift into complacency?

If she were going to school, she’d be starting kindergarten this year, although with her December birthday I think we’d have the option of delaying a year if we wanted to.  Except when I look at the kindergarten curriculum here… well, she’s finished all that.  It’s been quite awhile since I’ve blogged here, but as a quick catch-up: she’s now reading, loves doing lapbooks and learning about science, is CONSTANTLY asking questions and telling us “I learned something!”, and we’re almost finished Right Start Math level A.

What I really wanted to share right now is the story of what happened yesterday.

This time of year is, of course, back-to-school.  When I was young, this was my favourite time of year.  Yeah, I was a weird kid.  I love school supplies.  New pencils, crisp fresh new books, the latest nifty binders, colourful scissors, sparkly pens… Love it, love it, love it.  I’m almost 40 and I still love it.

I do not love shopping for school supplies this time of year, though.  The store is crowded, full to the rafters with parents dragging their kids around, supply lists in hand, desperately trying to get the 8 binders and the made-in-Canada-only pencils and the right colour pens and the white bristleboard that every store seems to have run out of.  It’s not a fun place, it’s a place of stress.

But, we needed poster mounting tabs for her new world map.  So off we went.

She, of course, was in heaven.  She wanted everything. But the thing that caught her attention most of all, more than the pretty pencils, more than the stickers, more than the bright highlighters… The thing that made her stop and beg… was the “curriculum helpers” workbooks.  Which every other kid in the store was very specifically and deliberately not noticing.

You know the ones I mean.  Every bookstore and stationery store has the little display of these grade-level subject practice books.  Usually there’s one for math, one for reading, and one for writing, as well as a big fat combined one for each grade.

My daughter picked up a grade 2 math book and exclaimed, “mommy!!!  This is math!!!  Can we get this??  Please!??!??”

I’m not making this up.

Now she is advanced in math, but not that advanced.  I took a look through the book, and well yes, she could do some of it, but really it was too much.  So I told her we’d need to look for one that had a “K” or maybe a “1″ on it instead of a “2″.  She eagerly helped me look.  We found “K” math — which a quick glance through proved to be waaaay too easy.  We found “1″ writing… but since we’re doing cursive first, any standard writing book would be useless, besides she’s not interested in writing too much yet anyway.  Unless it’s numbers, or her name.

We eventually did find a “1″ math book, and it was indeed “just right”.

She carried it proudly through the store, beaming.

When we got to the car, she couldn’t wait to start it.  We used her new pencils (I caved there too).  She’d read the instructions out loud, and spell for me any words too difficult for her (‘mom, what’s n-u-m-e-r-a-t-i-o-n?’)  She would squeal with glee when she finished a page.  She would whine with disappointment when she came across an activity that needed coloured pencils (since we had none with us).

When we went to the grocery store next on our errands, she sat in the cart and worked in her new book.

One lady stocking shelves noticed, and commented “oh, are you getting ready for school?”

Pomme grinned and giggled shyly.  I knew she was going to explain that we actually homeschool — she has been very keen on this fact lately.  And indeed, she did.  Almost.

She said “Actually, I do homework!”

“Oh,” said the stock lady, “this is homework, is it?”

I should add that school has not yet started in our district, though I know it has in many other areas.  So it probably seemed a little odd to her that this little girl had homework already.

I whispered to my daughter, “you mean homeSCHOOL, sweetie.”

She laughed and said out loud, “I mean, actually we do home SCHOOL!”

The stock lady said “oh, I see, you do homeschooling?  That must be very nice.”

“Yes,” said Pomme, “It’s way more better than regular school!”

Although it seems we need to work a little on grammar.  Heh.

So this is just the latest installment in the ongoing saga of “figuring out the best way of organizing Flipper’s schoolwork so that he actually does it.”  We’ve tried every iteration, from completely unschooling let-him-choose-his-own-path, to rigourous school-at-home complete with a bell and a separate desk “just for school” — I should say, that particular one didn’t last long, but it was worth a try, right?  Some kids thrive on more structure, rather than less.  Flipper does seem to be like that, but this was TOO much structure.

Lately I’ve been intrigued by the whole Workbox craze.  There are things about it that I didn’t like, just because it wouldn’t fit with some of our philosophies or would be cumbersome or whatever.  I wanted to keep using what was already working for us — don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.  But I liked the visual aspect of the workbox system, and the velcro chart used to visually track what you’ve done.

We don’t have the space for a big rack of boxes, and several months ago I’d started using a system with index cards for each subject that he seemed to like.  I decided to take the elements about workboxes that I liked, and apply it to our index cards system.

This is the index card itself:

You’ll see what the sticker is for in a minute.

Basically, each subject gets a card.  On the upper right I write what days of the week I hope to do this subject.  This is a guideline more than a rule, but it helps keep me on track.  “Core” subjects like math get done every day, history might be two times a week, art two different days each week, etc.  Then I write the date and the assignment on one line.  Once it’s done, I cross it out.  This helps me keep track of where we are in each subject — and if something didn’t get finished, I know next time, and if it’s been awhile since we’ve done this subject, I can see it right away.  This way I don’t lose track.  I can think of many times when I’ve realized “holy moly, we haven’t done French in at least 3 months!”  Not anymore!

Spelling is “core”, to be done every day — it’s a very quick lesson, too.  You’ll notice that we didn’t do all that much in July.  It’s summer, after all, and he was at Camp and visiting friends and playing outside… But now I’m not left wondering, “gee, how long has it been since we’ve done spelling?”  It’s right there for me.

Once I’ve settled on which assignments are to be done, I make up a schedule which includes breaks, snacks, outside time, lunch, etc.  There are 16 blocks for the schedule — or just 12 if it’s a busy day (if we’ll be out for several hours, for instance).  I assign a sticker to each activity — the Spelling lesson above has a bird sticker — and paperclip it to the index card and place it in the pocket at the front of our schedule book.  Or if it’s a non-carded activity like lunch, I paperclip it to the pocket itself.  This can be seen in the picture at the top of this post.  (Ignore where it says “heavy”, that’s left over from a previous use for this notebook lol…)

A key feature of this system for us, is that several activities will have the same sticker.  This gives us a little more flexibility than the ‘pure’ workbox system does.  If it’s time to do a “smiley face” card and there are three “smiley face” cards, he can choose which one to do.  This gives him some degree of control and choice, and keeps him engaged.  I also have full control, because I decide which activities are grouped together and where they will go in the schedule.

So, for instance, if there’s an activity that has been neglected or unfinished and I want to be sure it’s done today, I’ll give it its own sticker and schedule it relatively early.  Then I might group “work with mom” activities with the same sticker type, so I’ll know where in the schedule he’ll be needing me, though he still chooses which one happens when.  Often I’ll group more difficult, time-intensive activities together, and light, easy, or fun activities together.  This way, I can alternate light activities with harder ones, yet he still chooses from among each group.

There is an index card for “chores”, and one for “morning routine”.  I recently read a blog that called it “family service” instead of chores… I might steal that…

Once the schedule is planned and the stickers are paperclipped, I make a little chart in the notebook, with tiny sketched sticker-shape cues.  Things without index cards are described in the box.  As he completes each activity, he puts that sticker in the chart.  Once the chart is filled in, he has free time for the rest of the day.

Here’s the chart ready for tomorrow.  Er, I guess that’s today already, isn’t it?  Silly midnight blogging.  He has gym training all morning, and since it’s Tuesday, we’ll do Tuesday Teatime.

He should be finished all this by suppertime.  Considering he’s out all morning for gym, I think that’s an acceptable time for “school” — especially since this also includes “non-school” things like chores, playing outside, and snacks.

Here’s his finished chart from today (er, yesterday):

It was just a 12-box day, since in addition to gym all morning we also went to the local pool for a couple hours this afternoon.  He still finished everything by suppertime.

I’d like to say this has been a resounding success with Flipper.  So I’ll say it: this has been a resounding success with Flipper.  We’ve been doing this for just a week so far.  There have been a couple days that he didn’t finish everything, but he didn’t freak out that he didn’t have “free time”, he just accepted it calmly.  Whoa!

And the days that he did finish, he was focused and on-task nearly all day.  He has never whined or complained about the amount of work — rather, he’ll say things like “whoa, I just realized I’m half-finished my work already!  Woohoo!”

In fact, he has said to me “I really like this new sticker thing mom.  Thanks!”

That just says it all right there, doesn’t it?

If we stick with this long-term, I may try to come up with a more permanent kind of chart, maybe with the velcro number things like with workboxes, rather than having to write this all up from scratch every night.  But we’ll probably still tweak it a bit here and there so I don’t want to do anything permanent just yet.

Oh, I’ll also mention that while he was away at Camp in July, I re-organized his bedroom, including finally finding a way to keep his schoolbook wall shelf tidy.  (Bookends didn’t keep everything from falling over, but a series of magazine racks does the trick!)  Since getting that done, and implementing this system, he has actually been putting his books away when done with them. Every time.  Honestly, I wonder where “my” Flipper is these days…

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of unschooling and I’m actually really excited by the way he’s self-teaching himself some very interesting things on the guitar and how passionate he is about it.  And his favourite video game right now is Harvest Moon, which has many great attributes about it.  But it’s about balance, and about responsibility, and about self-regulation.  I have learned (through repeated attempts at giving him more control) that my son has none of these qualities innately, like this is a kind of “learning disability” for him.  With no structure, he simply flounders about and then becomes selfish, developing a false but powerful sense of entitlement.

He has become accustomed to a lack of stucture this past month and has been very resistant to its reintroduction.  This has actually been quite surprising to me, because he had really been thriving on the Charlotte Mason schedule, cooperative and even enjoying it.  But today he was having a no good, very very bad day – or should I say, yet another one – and was refusing to cooperate with anything. It really was quite as bad as he’s ever been.  I really don’t feel like describing in great detail how things transpired, let’s just say they didn’t transpire at all well.

This is only the latest in a series of very bad days, and so we’re in the midst of a crackdown period right now, where he needs to learn that I do, in fact, have some authority, and that he does, in fact, have some responsibility.  I’m so in love with the ideas of consensual family living, no punishments, etc, but I also have to realize that with this particular child, those ideas just do not work.

And I also recognize the flaws in a behaviourist approach to discipline… rewards and punishments may motivate behaviour changes but they do not address the underlying cause of the problems (which is most often a lack of a healthy attachment), and so any changes are impermanent and superficial.

However, there does come a point where the behaviour is so out of control and out of alignment that it has to be radically dealt with before any healthy development can happen with the attachment.  When the behaviour is so self-destructive that it is next to impossible to make any kind of headway into finding (and fixing) the causes.  When you just need the crutch of some kind of control so that you can start rebuilding whatever is broken.

Heaven help me, I’ve even played the school card.  If he’s not interested in homeschooling anymore, then fine, he can go to school.  Of course, he wants to continue staying at home, just not the schooling part of it.  I have gone out of my way and broken my back to find the right balance of schooley-stuff for him, keeping it interesting and relevant and appropriate for his development and personality, finding the philosophies that work for him.  It’s not like I’m insisting on a rigid, sit-down, school-at-home, textbook-heavy massive curriculum.  His schedule is actually very, very, very, very light.

I sometimes just feel so fed up with his contrary attitude that I think, fine, let the school system deal with him for awhile.  Maybe the ridicule of his peers, a few poor grades, a few trips to the principal’s office, and some direct experience with how much busywork kids have to do in public schools (both at school and then for homework) will turn him around and make him realize just how easy he has it at home.

Or, on the other hand, maybe it would scar him so desperately and permanently that I’d never be able to heal him.

But that’s where I’m at.

One thing that really frustrates me to no end, is that after all the fighting and arguing and then the eventual cooperation (usually after I’ve confiscated something important to him), he ends up saying “Oh, that wasn’t so bad.  That was actually kind of fun.  Huh.  I’m sorry I argued with you, mom.”

This happens Every.  Single.  Time.

When, oh when will he just remember that he actually enjoys the work we do, BEFORE getting all upset about it???  Oh that will be a happy, happy day indeed.

According to her, the one on the bottom is a cat, the one at the very top is a pig, and the rest are whales.  The spots are eyes.  She has labelled her drawings before (usually as whales lol), and she has drawn circles, spots, and lines before.  The new thing this week was deliberately making spots to represent eyes, using different drawing techniques to represent different parts of a whole.

She has also started to be able to trace shapes within a stencil.  I’d love to get the set of Montessori metal insets for this purpose, but can’t really afford them right now.  For now, I picked up a $1.50 wooden craft frame with an oval shape (which you can see in the picture), and we also use Flipper’s drawing tools triangles.

She loves to use Flipper’s dry erase board, and that’s fine by me.  It’s easy to clean the dry erase marker if she ‘misses’ the board, and she can erase and do it all over again, getting lots of drawing practice without leaving mountains of scribbled paper.

One Montessori item we did invest in was a set of wooden place value number cards.  I had initially put them out of her reach, because she’s not really ready for those kinds of math concepts yet.  But she found them and took them down and has been happily playing with them for weeks.  She sorts them by size and colour, identifies what digits she recognizes (for instance, she’ll say “one zero zero zero” for the one thousand tile), and practices putting them away:

We haven’t “instructed” her on anything with these, she has created all her own activities with them.

In fact, just after this picture was taken of her putting them away, I turned my back to her to focus on the stove and dinner.  When I turned back again a few minutes later, I assumed that I’d see them all put away, or perhaps taken out again to repeat putting them away.  What I saw instead, was this:

How cool is that?

Anyway, as I said, she likes to identify what digits she knows so far.  She has a wooden number puzzle which has pictures under the digits.  For instance, there are four dogs under “4″, seven hippos under “7″, etc.  At first, she would solve the puzzle just by fitting the shapes, but soon made the association with the animals.  She would pick up the puzzle number “7″ and say “hippos!!”  One exciting day (exciting for me as a proud mama), she saw a number 7 in a completely different context, just a regular printed digit 7, and very enthusiastically said “hippos!!”

Ah, the first step… the recognition that this particular shape, or symbol, represents something.  It didn’t really matter that she hadn’t yet made the connection with the symbol and the concept of quantity.  What mattered was the concept of symbol itself, of one thing standing for something else.  And what’s more, this 7 did not look exactly like the one in her puzzle, which is slightly cartoonish.  So she was recognizing that it was not the size, or the colour, or style, or the wooden-ness, or the texture of it that mattered… it was the basic shape itself.  Very, very cool indeed.

We haven’t done anything to “correct” her animal associations.  All we do is add to it… when she says “hippos!” for 7, we say “yes, seven hippos.”  Over time, she is picking up on this concept and has now substituted the real number name for most of the digits.  She identifies 0, 1, 5, and 7 consistently, 4 most of the time, sometimes mixes up 8 and 9, or 6 and 9, but she’s got the idea.

We have another set of smaller place value cards, that I made myself for Flipper before deciding to buy the wooden set.  She loves to pull them out of the baggie they’re stored in and sort them, and label the digits she knows.  As you can see in this video, she still uses the animal association for some numbers:

So that’s it! A week in the life of an unschooling, self-determining, Montessori-inspired 26-month old.

I was very impressed in the first week, when they quoted from Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn-Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less.  Not only quoted from, but actually interviewed with the author.

This week they’ve drawn from the classic book The Hurried Child
by David Elkind.  I confess I haven’t read this one, I’m going to add it to my reading list though.

I also will confess that I haven’t listened with 100% rapt attention to the entire broadcast.  I’m finding it’s mostly information that I am already aware of — thanks to having already read these books, or from my research into unschooling, and my forays into the ‘free range kids’ internet subculture.  This isn’t news to me.  In fact, it still makes me a bit annoyed and angry to think that a program like this has to be made, that it is still news to a great many parents out there.  It’s just so much… common sense.

But I try to be understanding, because I was there once, myself.  Just as I once fed my first child cereals and purées for his first foods, and how I kept him in diapers until he was 3, and yet baby-led finger-food solids and going diaper-free are just so obvious and common sense to me now.  Oh, and how about the fact that I thought slings were “too hippie” when my first was an infant?  We all have to start from where we are in our society’s paradigm and our own biases, and go from there.

So I am BEYOND ecstatic that this scathing rebuke of our educational myths is being played on mainstream radio.  And in such a rational, calm, non-sensationalist, investigative and factual manner.  I can only hope that it begins to clear the rubble in the minds of a few listeners, starting them down this path to “academic enlightenment” for their children.

If you missed it, don’t panic — you can listen online at the CBC website.

My reply garnered an “excellent post” response… so I thought I’d clean it up a bit and offer it here as well.

Here’s a worst case scenario.

You were unschooled and never learned division.  Now you’re 25 years old and you find that there’s something you can’t do because you need to divide some numbers.

You’re probably already recognizing that this is a pretty unlikely scenario, to make it to 25 years old and to have never encountered a situation where you’d have to figure out how to divide something.  But this is, as I said, a worst case scenario.

So, just for the sake of argument, you’re 25 years old and you realize that you have to divide something. You’ve never done it before.  Now think about this… Do you really think you’re not going to be able to figure it out, to learn how to do it now?

Or do you think that you’ll just open up an elementary math textbook, or ask someone who knows, and learn how to divide in like 10 minutes?

Yeah, I thought so.  Voila, problem solved.

One of the biases we all have to overcome as homeschooling parents, because most of us were traditionally schooled ourselves, is the notion that children must be carefully fed bite-sized bits of information, little by little, in carefully graduated and incremented portions, and this must be done at certain ages and in a certain prescribed sequence. Or else…

Or else what?  “Or else they never will learn it” is the unspoken conclusion.  But that’s just illogical.  The real answer is “Or else they learn it later.”  And learn it faster, and all in one go rather than spread out in tiny bits over years, because their brains are now more mature and because they have the self-motivation to want to learn it now.

There’s a great difference between “learning” something because it’s being fed to you in a classroom, and regurgitating on a test, for the purpose of attaining a passing grade… and learning something because you want to know more about it, because you have an interest in it, or because you need a particular skill to accomplish a particular task.

When you stop and think about it, how much of what you “learned” in elementary school has actually stuck with you?  I know I can remember about a half-dozen things from grade one:

• “Ça va très bien merci et toi?”
• French for crutch is “béquille”
• “Le bon roi Dagobert a mit sa culotte a l’envers”
• Our gym teacher could make a hula hoop roll backwards.
• French for ladybug is “coccinelle” and they drink dew off the rose petals and we made puppet masks and took turns playing the different parts in this cute little play about it.
• Véri-tech puzzles are awesome, they make cool patterns.
• I loved Rémi et Aline books.

And…. that’s about it.  My memories from grade two at least include a few “academic” things but they are just as scanty:

• I learned about < and > and they were graphically demonstrated on the wall as the mouths of alligators.
• We played a dictionary game where we’d have to look up a word and race to the blackboard to write down the page number.
• We learned about multiplication and I was humiliated that I couldn’t figure it out for the longest time.
• I loved Dinomir books.
• French for “factory” is “usine”, I learned that from a 2-part puzzle card.
• I listed very definitely which boys in the class I would marry and which were just yucky.
• I played Santa Claus in the class Christmas play and got my picture in the paper and had to bring in ice skates to use as prop presents.
• Our music teacher was awesome, he’d turn around and play the piano with his butt during “Trois petits chats” which would get me laughing so hard I couldn’t finish the song.
• I actually probably remember more just from music class — all the french folk songs, etc — than from the rest of the years’ “subjects” combined.

You’d be hard-pressed to say that those were all essential skills and knowledge that, if neglected or delayed, would have imperiled my eventual success.  I did have some fun times, but I did not learn anything that I could not have learned equally well — or better — later.

There’s a famous case, where formal math was not taught to an experimental group of students until grade 6.  Instead, they read, wrote, and talked, and any math was incidental and in context.  When they started formal math in grade 6, they were completely caught up to the “control group” kids within 4 months.  And all of that time which the “normal” kids had spent working on math lessons, assignments, homework, and problems for six years, the “experimental” kids had spent reading, writing, and thinking.

So there’s my first major point.  Delaying the teaching of a particular concept until a child is developmentally able to understand it more easily, will not irreversibly handicap them forever. Even if they do not end up learning this particular fact or skill until adulthood, they will still be able to learn it.  Did you stop being able to learn new things when you left school?  So why do we fuss and fret and worry that our children will be utterly helpless if they don’t learn everything when they are still very young??

Here’s another major point. Yeah, an unschooled kid might end up with “holes” in their education. But find me just ONE public schooled child who does NOT. All kids have some holes, they’re just in different places. If a child has a love of learning and self-motivation and has learned HOW to learn, then as they uncover their holes they will fill them. A child who has only been passively ‘spoonfed’ factoids and test-fodder might not.

After saying all this, of course I must say that unschooling isn’t the best fit for all families. We ourselves are hardly radical unschoolers.

But I will say this — I know of more cases of families who started off doing strict “school at home” curriculums, who gradually over time, as they gained the wisdom of experience, became more eclectic, relaxed, child-led and “unschooley”… than those who start off as radical unschoolers and added more and more curriculum. Of course the latter does happen, especially as kids get older and more mature and start wanting to enrich their knowledge in a more structured way — but just from my own anecdotal observations, it’s far less common.

I would venture to say that the majority of homeschoolers (again just my anecdotal observations) are eclectic, with lots of unschooley-child-led stuff (I’ve recently heard this called “rabbit trails”), but with a few curriculum-based subjects for whatever areas they personally felt were too important to leave to “chance” or did not believe their children would take to on their own, etc.

And that’s what we’re like, in fact. I do a certain amount of planning and guiding for “core” subject work, even more carefully planned lately as we’ve shifted into some Charlotte Mason-inspired ideas.  I have learned that my son lacks inner motivation and drive, he does need a minimum amount of structure. But it’s just ‘minimum’… beyond the few things that I structure, the rest of the time is his own, and he learns just as much that way too.

I’m trying to ensure he has a good, broad foundation to build upon… but I’m not stressing about the “holes.”  We all have holes.  I still have holes.  He already knows more about dolphins and whales than I ever did.  As we’re gearing up for a couple sessions on Ancient Egypt and Greece, I’m learning just as much as he is… I certainly never learned that stuff when I was a kid.  Even as an adult my knowledge is limited to a few Discovery Channel specials and “Stargate SG-1″.

Final moral:  Don’t sweat the small stuff.  And elementary curriculum?  It’s all small stuff.

I’ve put the words “work” and “toys” in quotes in the title of this article, because for young children, the ideas of “work” and “play” are synonymous.  They have not yet made a judgment decision that “play” is all for fun and “work” is necessary but unpleasant.  To the young child, everything is exploration and discovery, and this is inherently fun to them — and so they will work very hard at it.

When adults are first exposed to the traditional Montessori materials and teaching style, the initial reaction is often: “well yes, I can see how that activity would be very useful and educational… but do the children actually enjoy doing it?  And when do they play?”

The answer is, yes, they do enjoy it.  And as far as they’re concerned, they ARE playing.

Child’s Play is Serious Work

A child does not have to be running around, giggling, or even using their imagination to be playing.  Those are all different kinds of play, but they are not required for the definition.  A child can appear deeply focused, intent, quiet, even serious, when at the thoroughly entrancing “work” of constructing a brand new person from the inside out.

As jaded adults, we might look on this seriousness and say “oh dear, that doesn’t look like fun, it must be draining, they need a break to go play and refresh themselves.”  But in fact, as Dr. Montessori herself, and generations of Montessori teachers and parents after her have observed, after a period of intense focus and “work” such as this, the young child will frequently finish the activity on their own (generally after having repeated it many times), and seem rejuvenated, refreshed, and content.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and I have now seen with my own eyes how young children will not only enthusiastically ‘work’ with Montessori and Montessori-inspired materials and activities… but they will be drawn to them.  The urge to create themselves through exploration of their environment will naturally zero in on activities providing the greatest benefit to whatever developmental stage they happen to be in – Dr Montessori’s “sensitive periods”.  Indeed, they crave activities suited to their task.

Montessori “Toys” in Action

This past week, I acquired a few new Montessori “toys”.   Opening the parcel, I first unwrapped a geometric shape puzzle, and set it down in front of Pomme to play with while I unwrapped the rest.  I thought this particular puzzle might be a bit too challenging for her as yet, but she immediately set to it and was deeply involved in it.

Another item I unwrapped was a set of mini knobbed cylinders.  A central staple of the Montessori equipment, I have been coveting the knobbed cylinders since I first learned about them.  But they are so expensive!  I finally found an acceptable compromise in the mini cylinders, only 5 cylinders per block instead of 10 and they are smaller in size, for less than 1/3 the price.

I set the blocks on the counter and went to Pomme’s bedroom to put something else away.  I had not, at this point, even shown her the blocks.  When I returned less than a minute later, she had discovered the blocks, taken one down, and completely on her own initiative, having never seen this item before, had set about removing and replacing the cylinders.  Having mastered this set, she then proceeded to take down the rest of the blocks, lined them up, and got to work:

This was a toddler on a mission!  And there was no cajoling, no bribing, no window-dressing, no inviting, no presenting.  She had simply recognized an excellent tool for exploring her world and herself, and had seized upon it.

Further proof happened a couple of days later.  My brother and his family were over for New Year’s Eve.  They also homeschool, and mostly unschool.  I was excited to share my new “toys” with my sister-in-law.  My 4-year-old nephew, who was right there while we were talking, has had little to no exposure to ‘formal’ academic work, he has lived a fairly free-spirited life thus far.  So he came into this “experiment” with no pre-existing bias one way or the other.

I brought out two blocks to show them, took out a few cylinders, and asked my nephew if he wanted to try to put them back in.  He did, and of course it was easy for him.  He almost seemed… not too impressed, really.

So we adults got talking about other things.  Within a few minutes, I noticed that my nephew had, on his own, returned to the blocks, and this time was trying to work with both sets at once.  So, I brought out the other two blocks to give him the full set, and he worked at them quite diligently for several minutes!

Truth be told, he didn’t actually finish the activity.  It was a busy and noisy house at the time, and he was too quickly distracted by all the commotion around him.  In Montessori terms, we didn’t “respect his concentration”.  Quite forgivable, given the holiday, I think!

Still, there it was.  He had taken to this activity with seriousness, concentration, and on his own initiative.  Would he have done so if it was not, in some way to him, “fun”?

I was recently tidying up and went through one of our rather large piles of Flipper’s old workbooks. These are generally the “homework helpers” type, that you can pick up in any bookstore, rather than any specific curriculum. I was going through them to sort into those worth keeping as “records” or for sentimental reasons, those worth saving for Pomme to use because they’re still mostly unused, and those that should just be recycled.

In this particular pile, there were about 5 to save for Pomme, 3 to keep for posterity, and 16 to recycle.

Looking more closely, I realized that this particular pile of books was all for the preschool to kindergarten level. And this was only one pile, there are more elsewhere in the house. That’s when I became embarrassed.

I have learned so much, my attitudes have changed so much over the years. I now understand that learning is about so much more than worksheets. I am a staunch and vocal advocate of letting preschoolers PLAY to learn, that there is no rush for academics, that forcing early academics on children not yet ready for them causes much more harm than good.

Staring down this evidence of my own horrific history was humbling, to say the least. Here before me was the record of my misguided attempts to “encourage” Flipper’s giftedness, to develop my own little star, my young and brilliant intellectual to prove to the world what a great homeschooler I was.

I recall with shame the yelling, the forcing, the manipulating… I yelled at him when he didn’t do something correctly, I forced him to do worksheets when he didn’t want to, and I manipulated him into doing them by threats and ultimatums. With very few exceptions, he hated these books, and I made him do them anyway, and I told him how disappointed I was when he didn’t live up to my expectations.

And now, we both are living with the results. He grew to detest work of any kind. He came to resist any attempt at formal learning. He became lazy and unmotivated. His spark of curiosity dwindled. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen with homeschooling!

Over the years, of course, I learned, I understood. We relaxed. I gave him more freedom and we discovered that learning can be accomplished through so many other ways than worksheets. We went through many periods of complete unschooling, setting formal studies aside altogether. And so things are much better now, we have reached a level of cooperation, we have reached a point where he is willing to do the worksheets and books where necessary, in a nice balance between academics and relaxed life-learning.

But it has been a long and difficult road. I recognize how a great many of his struggles and antagonism toward learning — especially anything involving writing — are utterly and ultimately my fault, for failing to allow him to develop according to his own natural drive in the early years. The level of guilt I feel brings tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. I look at young Pomme, so fresh and pure and full of keen curiosity and a desire to learn, and hope to God that I have learned my lessons and do not make the same mistakes with her.

And yet, there is also a message of hope in this. The mistakes I made — and which many parents make, I’m sure — are not irrevocably indelible. Recovery is difficult, but possible. We still struggle with Flipper’s lack of self-motivation, but I have every confidence that we are now on the right path and in the long run, he will be fine. He will be excellent, in fact. Just as a child who is “damaged” by years of not fitting into a public school system can be “healed” when they are pulled out, a child who has been “damaged” by a poor beginning in homeschooling can also still find healing.

And so I write this as an apology to my son. I am sorry for the mistakes I made when you were very young, I am sorry for forcing work on you that you were not ready for and did not need. I am sorry for the mistakes I continue to make, and I promise to you that I am learning from every single one of them. I hope that you are able to recognize that I am only trying my best, and I hope that you will be able to forgive me, and that you will grow into an independent and strong young man, curious and eager and ready to take on the world and learn everything you can about it.

This isn’t something I have done much with my son through our homeschooling journey. I have purchased curriculum and allowed him to have a say in the decision-making processes, which to buy and when and how often to use them. I have tried to help him organize his space. And I have sometimes bought ‘extra’ things and given them to him outright, which he has consequently ignored, and which I have then left around in his bookcase or on his shelves, in hopes that someday he’ll notice it by chance and say “oh hey, this looks interesting, I wonder where this came from” or even “oh yeah, I remember this… hm, looks interesting now.” That’s about as close as I’ve gotten to “strewing” for him.

With my daughter having entered the “teachable” ages, where I must decide how much to simply leave her to develop “naturally” and how much to, um, “assist” that natural development, I’ve done quite a lot of reading on Montessori principles and the prepared environment. We’ve implemented quite a few things already which I’ll talk about in another post sometime soon.

Seeing how well she is responding to her prepared environment has made me stop and consider what I could be doing differently for my older son. Sometimes I feel we’re straddling a no-man’s-land between rigid curriculum expectations and a free-floating laziness with no motivation or goals… we rock back and forth from strict daily schedules with checklists, to days of complete sloth and boredom. Where, I ask myself, is the homeschooled child I was promised by all the advertising? The one who is keen and curious and grabs things off his shelf to read or to do just because it’s there and looks interesting? The one who isn’t whining that there’s nothing to do when he has shelves FULL of things he hasn’t yet done… and that I know he would like if he just tried them?

Kakuro to the rescue.

For those unfamiliar with Kakuro, or “Cross Sums”, it’s another fantastic Japanese logic puzzle along the lines of Sudoku, with one big difference — it uses math! Sudoku of course uses numbers, but no actual math. It’s pure logic, and can just as easily be done with letters or with shapes. Kakuro, on the other hand, is like a crossword puzzle, but you have to find the numbers that add up to the sum for each “word” across or down, and no digit can be used twice in the same sum. For instance, to get the sum of 7 with three digits, the solution can ONLY be 1, 2, and 4… your task is then to figure out which order they go in, as determined by the other sums that are running crosswise to it.

I’ve been through my Japanese puzzle addiction and survived. I have broken the back of Sudoku and grew bored with it. I fooled around with kakuro as well as nonograms, hitori, links, and bridges. I gave up on my addiction when I was no longer able to find any puzzle books with the more obscure puzzles and my favourite website shut down.

About a year or so ago, I think, maybe more, I found a puzzle book called Kakuro For Kids: Ninja Editionsince the progressive levels of difficulty were labelled “White Belt”, “Yellow Belt”, etc. This was perfect! Flipper is a martial artist, the belts will be the perfect “hook” to get him into logic puzzle games!
I gave him the book for his birthday, or Christmas, or something. And so it ended up on his shelf, unused, unloved.

Until a few days ago. I was out for the evening, and when I got home he was so very excited about something and he just had to show me.

It was the Kakurobook, and he had already done the first half-dozen “White Belt” puzzles.

One of the few things I’ve managed to accomplish so far in re-designing a “prepared environment” for him, is that I organized his bookshelves… books he’s already read on one shelf, books yet to be read on another shelf, “school” books here, and “activity” books over there… that’s things like colouring books, puzzle books, instructions on magic tricks, that sort of thing. I had explained this new system to him a couple weeks ago, and it had been untouched until now.

He had looked at his shelf of activity books, saw something and said “oh hey, that looks interesting”.

And all proud of himself, he said, “and it’s doing MATH too, isn’t it mom? I have to add and subtract to solve these! And it’s FUN! I’m already halfway through the White Belt! It’s called the Ninja Edition!”

And so every night in bed, and every day on car trips, he has been puzzling away at his Kakuro book. He’s into the Orange Belt now, the logic is getting a wee bit trickier… And he’s still loving it.

And tonight, when I went to tuck him in to bed, I caught him dismantling the Activity Book shelf, books everywhere. He said he was looking for something else to do. What about Kakuro? Oh, he said, “I can’t find a pencil”. I don’t know what activities he was hoping to find that didn’t require some sort of writing implement… but the fact remains that he was doing what I sometimes thought would never happen… he was delving into his environment, seeking out new discoveries that lay therein. He was dealing with his own boredom, he was eagerly and independently searching out things to do.

Now if only there were some way to ‘strew’ lessons in respectful behaviour, self-discipline, selflessness, and empathy, we’d be all set!