Gearing Up?

Going already is more like it. My daughter P's last day in first grade at the local elementary school is still a week away, but it feels like our unschooling journey is already underway. Two nights ago, P had a homework assignment that called for looking up words in a dictionary. A brief foray into dad's collegiate dictionary led to tears, and online dictionaries were no more helpful -- regular dictionaries are not designed with early readers in mind! -- so we hit the bookstore looking for kid-friendly reference books. We bought a Macmillan Dictionary for Children and a DK First Dictionary, as well as a Scholastic Children's Encyclopedia. This was, of course, complete overkill for the assignment, but the books were intriguing to both kids (daughter P, 6, and son T, 2), so I figured they'd be great to have on hand. The DK dictionary, instead of ordinary dictionary definitions, has much more helpful entries for early readers. For example, where most dictionaries define sensible as "showing good sense or judgment," the DK dictionary says, "Someone who is sensible does the right thing, and does not do silly or stupid things." It might not be the most exact definition you'll ever read, but it's a heck of a lot more useful to someone reading at second grade level who doesn't have any clearer idea about the words sense or judgment than she does about the word sensible.

Anyway, I came here to write about learning more than to do book reviews. So let's go this way: both kids spent hours yesterday browsing through these books. I thought the encyclopedia might be more intriguing, but the Macmillan dictionary has amazing photos and short sidebars that sucked both kids right in. I spent some time paying bills on the computer while the kids browsed, making mental notes of what P exclaimed about or called me over to look at -- the strongest theme was bones and fossils, but she also wanted to tell me about a geyser, a page about rodents, and an American Pika (we had a good time last week finding out whether a rabbit is a rodent, which led to learning the differences between rodents and lagomorphs, and to listening to clips of the calls of pikas, which along with rabbits and hares constitute the order Lagomorpha).

One of the essential skills for unschooling parents, as I've been reading for several weeks at AlwaysLearning, a yahoo list for unschoolers moderated by Sandra Dodd (author of Moving a Puddle, which I hope to read soon), is being alert to their children's interests, so that the parents can help provide access to the experiences that will fuel those interests. It's not unit studies, where the parent finds or designs a curriculum block or course of study on a topic that seems to be of interest to the kids -- it's more about helping the kids get access to things, information, and experiences that the kids want, and which they might have a hard time accessing on their own, given how limited being young can be in this world when it comes to getting what you want. Another important parent practice is "strewing" the kids' paths with potentially interesting stuff and experiences -- to give them more of a window on the wide world of things one might be interested in if one knew about them -- while taking note of which strewings lead to interest, but remaining emotionally unattached ("Oh, I hoped they'd want to learn to weave, darn it!")

The assumption with unschooling is that we don't need to explicitly teach our kids most things. By providing a peaceful and loving family setting, answering their questions when we can or helping find the answers when we can't, and helping them get access to lots of what the world has to offer, we help them learn what they are interested in learning. Things like reading, writing, and math skills, being essential so so many human endeavors, will naturally become skills they will want to acquire in pursuit of other goals. For most people in the world, the three Rs are not goals in themselves, but tools. Kids can use them this way, too -- and many unschoolers report that their kids have learned these skills rapidly, with excellent understanding, and with very little activity that looks like the teaching you'd see in school -- when the skills become important in the pursuit of the kids' own interests.

I think it's time to get our hands on some owl pellets so we can check out some real rodent bones. A few weeks ago P and I went on a parks-and-rec nature walk about great horned owls, and there was an opportunity to dissect an owl pellet afterward, but P was too involved in chucking snowballs down a hill to take much notice. She said later that she would like to try it, though.

Another interesting question I've fielded from P in the last few days is, "Can ants smell?" They can, as we found out easily, using receptors on the hairlike structures of their antennae. And they build amazing underground structures, as we saw in this brief video clip.

Two-year-old T, for his part, liked looking at pictures of dinosaurs in the dictionary, and loved the diagram showing the major systems of a car. While we were at the bookstore, he picked out a book called You Can Name 100 Trucks from the sale table. He asks me to tell him about the trucks in the book often, and I think he's well on his way to fulfilling the title's promise! T's been avidly doing jigsaw puzzles of 35 or 60 pieces (or 100 pieces with some help) for a few weeks now. And I mean for hours at a stretch sometimes. With just a little help from me, he's shown amazing growth in pattern recognition, fine motor dexterity, and other puzzle skills.

I never thought much before about how much skill is involved in testing the fit of a puzzle piece. You don't want to press too hard, lest you bend or deform the puzzle pieces, so you have to learn just the kind of touch that the particular puzzle needs, and how closely its pieces normally fit. The hands' motor and sensory apparatus are deeply involved in rotating, sliding, pressing, lifting, and testing whether the final fit feels right, and then of course there's whether it looks right. Do the designs and colors continue as expected? Does the result look like the picture on the box? These skills translate into some wider-world ones, too -- figuring out how to replace batteries in a device comes to mind. How does this thing come apart? How hard should I pull on this part? Am I going to disassemble it successfully or break it? And now that the pieces have flown everywhere, how do I get it back together? T is actively interested in these parallel problems, though his access to batteries and things with small parts is limited, given his persistent tendency to put small objects in his mouth. Sometimes we'll sit down and work closely with him on a normally forbidden object, so he can give it a try while we make sure he isn't getting hurt.

What I learned while writing this blog post: the plural of apparatus is either apparatus or apparatuses. Not apparati. Cool.

(This post was reposted because of technical issues with the blog. One comment was lost. Sorry, Mom!)