I have, as you know, four children – three of whom have never attended school of any kind. There are sometimes things I’ve had to explain over the years about school that they don’t understand. Sometimes I have had to try and explain things even *I* don’t understand.

Like yesterday.

“Tell me again,” said Addison, Master of Logic and Sarcasm, “why suspension is a punishment? Because they say so?”

And we were both left to ponder the illogic of if you are caught skipping school (cuffing, jigging, playing hookie) then many times the punishment, as it were, is that you are actually *forbidden* to attend.

One would think students would be leaving in droves. And I wonder what would happen, for instance, if a parent tried something like that? Oh, you stayed up too late watching tv last night? Well, for the next week, I am going to force you to stay up every night and watch tv. Didn’t do your chores like I asked? Fine, next week, NO CHORES FOR YOU!

Yeah. That works.

Awhile back, I had turned off new registrations on our forum. I just turned it back on with an extra activation step, instead of immediate.

Have a stop by, poke around, feel free to sign up. I had only closed it off because we were real queit and all the new member we got were spammers (and nasty ones at that).

CBC News: Analysis & Viewpoint: Minding your own – Home based education

Found this excellent article, which not only touches on the history of home ed here in Canada, but promises to explore more about our ethnic diversity and the choices marginalized parents are making.

Excellent article and an enjoyable read. There’s too many good bits to pick a quote from.

I was blog-hopping this morning, and read somewhere – it doesn’t matter where, as we’ve all heard this one eventually – how a person asked, “Won’t she learn how to sit still at a desk?”

I thought about this – actually, I had a few quick thoughts which are rather unlady-like. Then I thought about my kids, who have not spent a lot of time at a desk, at least not conventionally speaking. I’m going to skip over using Addison as an example for a change, as he is leaving for college in two weeks and will be spending plenty of time at a desk in the next two years, and will manage nicely thanks.

Sarah is the oldest of our children to reach near-adulthood without ever attending school. We did visit a few times, though. Aside from a couple of years of school-in-box, Sarah has never had to sit at a desk for anything. I fail to see how this is a needed skill in her life as well, considering she is also in the workforce. At her place of employment, there are no desks.

I can’t say there are no desks at home either. We did have an overabundance of them, as they were handy for individual craft work when they were not holding stacks of books and papers. Now we just have Emma’s desk (more a small table really, constantly full of items), this computer desk, oh, and the girl’s computer desk. Addison has two desks in his room, one for the computer, one for other things, I think storage.

Mostly, the people in our house sit at a desk when they want to use a computer. They did not receive any instructions on this, each one merely sat down, or crawled up on the chair, as the case may be.

I noted with careful observation the rest of my children, who have also never been to school, and their learning habits.

Emma spent quite a bit of time sitting on her bed drawing three detailed pictures, with text. She sprawled on the floor, lego everywhere and built various constructions. The floor was also good for exploring Cuisinaire rods. The couch and the bed were good for looking at books and sharing stories (and cuddles). (Oh, and jumping.) The dining room table was used to practise table-setting, drawing various pictures to express emotions, and looking at sales flyers.

Meaghan sat in the comfy oversized living room chair for literally hours and read a book. She also sat at the small kitchen table we have, quite still, while she concentrated on recipes in various cookbooks. Then she made fruit muffins. She also used the dining room table for craft work, reading, writing and using the laptop.

I concluded that learning to sit at a desk is much like learning to sit at the dining room table: you just do.

I’ve found 2 more posts, written in response to the Unschooling Voices question I answered here, by WJFR & Gem.

I also wanted to make a brief administrative note that it is sometimes several days between the time when I write a post and have a chance to see the comments. Hopefully, we’ll have that sorted out in the next few months.

Kim at Relaxed Homeskool says homeschooling is punk. You know, original raw anarchist punk, not the quasi-emo-punk of today.

Stick it to the institution, homeschool your kids.

and it has a post from yours truly. Country Fair.

Imagine this scenario if you will: you are expected to cook and present a meal, but you are not in a kitchen. Furthermore, you only have 3 kitchen tools to work with, a camp stove, and $13 worth of food. How hard it is going to be for you to accomplish your task?

Sometimes as parents we unintentionally limit our children in ways we wish they would grow, mostly because we’ve never stopped to think about it, or we’ve assumed this is how things are done and our goal will magically spring forth.

Take creativity, for example. Many times I’ve read moms who wish to expand their child’s creativity, looking for the right books to follow or the right activity, while the kids are doing page after page of coloring, or following instructions for some easy camp craft that can be made from household materials.

For about six years, I owned a small retail craft supplies business operated out of my own home. About half of it was mail-order, but I also sold locally and held classes, including an ambitious week-long craft camp for kids during spring break. One of the things I noticed was that in the adult classes, some participants had a hard time without any firm instruction or direction, even over things as simple as placing an accent on an item. Essentially, the adults I had the most problem with were afraid of doing it “wrong”. Children, on the other hand, had no problems with a vague sense of the end product and a pile of materials to work with.

Somewhere along the lines, adults don’t loose their natural creativeness, they get it instructed out of them.

So how do we nurture a child’s creativity?

Take your instruction books and put them away where you can’t see them. Now pull out all your craft materials, not just the kid’s craft items. Yes, I mean your craft items too. Yes, I really do mean the “good stuff” and things you’ve set aside for when they are older.

Instruct the children, if needed and when they want to try, on how to use the various craft tools you have. The craft punches, special scissors, pliers, glue gun – all those things. (Please use some common sense here too. I’m not suggesting you show your five year old how to use the rotary cutter. But your 10 or 12 year old might be able to handle it.) Instructing the child beforehand on how to use a tool safely will help keep down the risk of injury. Often children get hurt when they are trying to use something they haven’t been shown properly yet.

Now here comes the hard part: let your children use whatever craft materials they want to make something, without your instruction. If you really can’t bear to let the kids use certain items of yours, put them up somewhere for now. But please, let them examine and explore all the great things you normally set aside for yourself. A creative idea of theirs is bound to spark and soon they will be making something.

It doesn’t have to make sense to you, it doesn’t even have to look good, and in some cases you may feel they are just “wasting” materials, but I can asure you, we are working towards a process here, not an end result. If you have really small children who just want to cut things with scissors, give them used paper from the printer, newspapers, flyers and old magazines to start. Be sure to give them good scissors that you have tried yourself.

For example, I have a small selection of scrapbooking supplies, some of which were bought for a specific idea I had. One day, while trying to work on an album, two of our children hovered nearby and wanted to help. I do admit, I was torn between giving them free access and doing something for myself. Eventually, I identified a few things that I knew I really needed for this project, and let the other two use “my” stuff.

First, this was an example of sharing with them, even when it kinda hurt. Second, it helped the children expand their own creativity in being able to explore the function of new tools and products. Third, it was just plain fun. I was initially surprised when their efforts turned out better than I thought they could do, and a few of their ideas were things I had never thought of.

I know how hard it can be internally sometimes. We’ve bought materials to use up in making something, yet pace ourselves and stretch it to last as long as possible, as if the item (and sometimes it’s just a set of stickers) is more important than the child themselves.

By letting our children use the good stuff, we are telling them without words that they are important to us, as well as helping to expand the creative process.

I had a longer comment to Chris’s post here on some sad and sorry reading statistics for adults.

I’ll never forget the woman who came to me desperate for reading help for her two children in public school. I loaned her book after book for them, answered as many questions as she had, gave advice up the wazoo. Still she struggled with teaching them, and they with learning. Six months later, there was some improvement, and she asked if there was more she could do.

I asked her how much reading did she do – did she read the paper? Have favorite books? Did the kids see her read?

“Oh God no!” she answered, “There’s too much to do! I have a house to clean and look after. Who has time to read?”

It was then I knew I had lost her.

I didn’t help her much after that. How can you help people who refuse to help themselves? How can children love reading when their parents hold it either in contempt or just a thing you do to get somewhere else?

Joanne has put together a nice selection of posts for the first installment of Unschooling Voices. Well done!