Homeschooling Chickens and Eggs

As I've mentioned elsewhere on my blog, none of my children have ever attended school. But starting out homeschooling with my oldest, I DID go through a phase where I tried to duplicate school at home. Thankfully that approach has been thrown out by degrees. Which is to say that I still sometimes teach, AND I draw lessons from what I think kids do learn in school. But we aren't aiming to duplicate anything. We are aiming to learn. And it is a lot of fun.

So I've becoming more of an unschooler as the years go by. My trust in my children to learn from life and take initiative in the process has grown.

A day or so ago I noted what my second, my daughter was up to. When I got up she was already crafting a Valentines box for herself. Later, she added to her personal book of hymns, a project she started which I didn't know about until she brought it to me when she'd finished about four "hymns". For a few days she has been happily engaged crafting valentines and now has a small collection I need to help her spell the names for to finish them off. She also re-purposed some mismatched socks as barbie mermaid tails, built a watery "back drop" from blue construction paper, and put on a barbie show - giving me the idea that the barbies could present the story of Saint Valentine to our Biography Club. (What the barbies are performing below.)

Unlike my oldest son, this daughter has never experienced "school at home." She has always been free to do what she wants. Learning for her has always been fun, about what she is interested in. And I note that, more than my son, she is never at a loss for engaging "learning" activities she is initiating herself and directing for her life.

I don't know the cause of this. Is it her personality? Is it the result of never having things structured for her, so she has learned to go with her own structure? I also don't know what would happen if I began to declare obnoxious things like, "let's review math facts," or "let's do spelling list of all the words you've misspelled on your valentines." But as I see her progress, even grasping things like spelling from the context of all that is around her, I'm not about to step in to "educate her." Whatever is the chicken, whichever is the egg, I love sitting back and marveling at my daughter. And I sense she loves it too.