Saturday, February 4, 2012

A sample of our (homeschooling) days

My kids (Abhi 8 1/2 and Aparna almost 6) don't go to school. I don't follow any curriculum either to "educate" them. I let the kids' interest lead the way; I help them a little every once in a while in ways that I can. This approach is called "unschooling". Some of you have had questions for me about what we do at home all day. Here is a recap of what we did all day today (from 8 AM to 8 PM):

Breakfast (cornmeal, milk, nuts, raisins).
The kids chopped the nuts. We enjoyed the breakfast together. It was past 9 when we were done with eating and talking.

Music (Piano and Tabla).
Aparna plays the piano for about 20 min. She tirelessly plays her song over and over again till she is completely satisfied with her own performance. She changes the tempo, transposes the song and explores the music on her own. Abhi was playing the tabla (Indian percussion instrument). He didn't seem to mind sharing the same room as Aparna where she was playing the piano. They seem to be enjoying their music oblivious of the other one's presence. It was almost 10 when they got tired of the music they were making. Then Abhi wanted to play Monopoly. While they were happily setting up the game, which took some time, I used the opportunity to play the piano myself and joined them only when they were ready.

Monopoly.
We were playing the usual game. There was a lot of mental arithmetic work, permutations and combinations that were being exercised ("Hey Aparna! Try to give me $60 using the $20, $10 and $5 bills"). All this plus a lot of silliness made each player's turn much longer than usual -- I became a kid and enjoyed all that was happening. We had all the time on earth to enjoy the beauty of the moment. All of a sudden, Abhi got this (crazy) idea to take a loan from the bank. I briefly told him that we typically take a loan only when we don't have enough money for a particular thing. He didn't seem to care; he insisted on borrowing money and so I let him. He wanted to borrow $1000 and wanted to pay an interest of 10%. Not willing live in a world with 10% interest rate, I negotiated it down to 1%. So Abhi calculated how much interest he owed. Then he asked me when we pay interest on our house loan. He moved on to figure out when he should pay his interest in this game; he thought and settled on "we pay interest everytime we cross the GO square (square 1)". He was so fascinated with the ideas behind loans, interest and paying back that our Monopoly game turned into some kind of banking game. Only at night (while narrating this to Dev) did I realize that my recent trips to the bank had sowed the seeds for the banking game that we played this morning. The game went on till 1 PM. Since it was a day we had picked to bake our whole wheat bread, the game was frequently interrupted by me as I made trips to the kitchen to take care of the baking.

Vocal Music.
Aparna was humming a tune. Abhi tried to correct her and said that he could teach her that Raga. It
went well for a while, but Abhi being bossy sometimes it didn't last long. This resulted in a fight and tears. They were upset with each other, but they managed to resolve the conflict all by themselves. They were back on track teaching and singing.

Lunch. After this I took my afternoon (15 min) nap.

We went to the park between 3 and 3:45; I did my exercise and they had great fun at the monkey bars.

Music (Piano again).
Abhi played some of his songs on the piano. I heard him transpose "the lion sleeps tonight", which was entirely spontaneous (the teacher hadn't ask for anything like that).

Cooking.
Aparna loves kneading the dough for roti. She started with water and whole wheat flour and transformed it into a beautiful ball in 10-15 min. It is almost meditative to just watch her do that.

"Science".
Abhi found a used microscope at a thrift store yesterday for a few dollars. Having spent all of yesterday with the microscope and the only slide it came with, he wanted to look through more slides. But we didn't have any more. While I was cooking our dinner, he took some sticky tape and cut come of his hair and made a slide! He just loved his invention and made more slides -- one with sugar and another with salt. He spent the next 40 min. at this.

Karate.
Both of them absolutely love karate, thanks to our teacher, Sensei Tony. Abhi took his microscope and his slides to show off to his friends at Karate. I meditated while they were at Karate. It was 7 PM when they got back.

Dinner, bed-time reading (Aparna) and more microscope time (Abhi) concluded the fun-filled day.

Every day has its own flavor. No two days are ever the same. I have always been able to cook, bake, play music, exercise, meditate, nap with them around. I am grateful for this stress-free life and wouldn't trade it for anything.

- Hema

5 comments:

  1. Hi Hema,

    Why did you not send them school, is it because you think these schools doesn't give them value education or some other reason?

    Thanks

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    Replies
    1. Hi Sheo,
      There are many reasons for not sending kids to school. I suggest you do your own research and reading. I highly recommend two books:
      Dumbing us down By John Gatto
      How Children Fail by John Holt

      There are many excellent blogs on the subject. Try searching for "unschooling".

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  2. It's good that you have chosen to break the convention, through homeschooling. People will be skeptical at anything that is not normal - that's fine, that's the way the human society is hardwired: To follow the rules, than to break them.

    But, as we know, some of the most important inventions were due to people who chose to break all known rules and conventions!

    However, I feel that homeschooling might have some limitations, as well. Exploring on the limitations further, might help you make it better. For example, do you think it's a good idea to go through the text books (meant for the child's age) and teaching your children some important concepts outlined there, in a creative way which they might enjoy?

    I have no idea/experience in homeschooling, but I should admit that I am impressed with the concept. But, how it is executed might make a lot of difference.

    Also, I like rebels. I am one, myself :)

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    Replies
    1. Rajesh K, The idea of universal schooling is not a very old cultural convention at all. Scholars trace it to colonial times and to the beginning of the industrial revolution. (Youtube: Sir Ken Robinson). We are not really rebelling in the usual sense being against something forced down. Our decision stems from understanding what harm schooling does to our psyche and thus to the society at large. And our homeschooling is an attempt to not expose our children to that harm (at least to the extent possible given our own neurotic habits).

      As for textbooks, we do look at them from time to time and then are surprised to see very little of real value there.

      If this idea is new to you, then there is some exciting stuff for you to explore. (Look at the previous reply for some pointers.)

      - Dev

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  3. Rajesh,
    Glad to hear from you, after our discussions at the unConference. My observation and understanding (both from personal experiences and books) have been that children are manipulated at schools and eventually they learn to manipulate situations too. What is learned at school can be learned, in a fraction of the time, if and when the child is ready,interested. The plenty of hours spent in teaching uninterested children if devoted to playing can make the children happy.
    We want to break free from mandatory learning that does not focus on deep and real learning. We are NOT against learning. In fact, we are totally for life long learning. Everyday my husband and I continue to work hard in learning music -- one of the things we really want to learn. John Holt's book "Learning all the time" comes to my mind.
    Real learning happens when there are real questions, those that are raised by the learner. We encourage questions of all kinds and try to answer them to the extent we can. We are glad to say "I don't know the answer to your question. But I will help you find out the answer" to many of the kids' questions.
    We do take the help of books and Internet. So far we have not found any text book that is really aimed at learning. They are aimed at kids scoring well in the exams.
    Kids are natural at staying curious. Boxed type curriculum curbs this natural ability. By not curbing this tendency we allow children to be children.

    Best Regards,
    Hema

    ReplyDelete