If we were doing conventional schooling, Meredith would likely be starting preschool this fall. As it is, for the most part we plan to just continue on the way we always have been: living life and letting her explore and play to her heart’s content.
I am likely going to sign her up for a dance or music class, mostly because she has asked. The older girls in our community put on a little dance show and Meredith wanted to dance with them the whole time. Afterwards, she asked me if she could dance some more. I have registered for Victoria’s Home Learning group and through there got a recommendation for a good dance class for an unschooled three year old, so I think we’re going to give it a try. There’s a more general music class that looks neat too, with various instruments as well as dance, but I don’t know if it’s as good from an unschool perspective and at this point I just want it to be fun and unstructured. You only have to register for six weeks at a time, which is great because if she decides she doesn’t want to do it anymore it means I’m not out a whole year’s worth of registration fees.
I was thinking of looking into a French playgroup, but the only thing I can find in our area are actual preschools with structured circle times, etc. Not really what I’m looking for. So instead I think I’m going to make a bigger effort to find French books in the library, and to play some of her favorite movies in French. We did meet a family from Quebec at an EC playgroup the other week, so I may also post on the home learner’s group and see if there is any interest in creating a French playgroup.
I really want to record more the things we do and the things Meredith is learning. More for myself than because I think she needs any sort of record or report card or anything like that. I was thinking of making a scrapbook of sorts, but while I like the idea in theory, I’m not sure it’s something I’d be able to be consistent with. I think instead I’m going to try and revitalize my blog a little bit, and talk more about unschooling and how our days go and the activities we work on. That way the things we do and what she’s learning are recorded and in the future I can compile them and make a scrapbook if I want to. I think in the next little while I’ll likely overhaul this blog somewhat and, hopefully, start posting more. I was even thinking of starting a second blog, leaving this one for food, parenting, and life in general, and another for our unschooly things, but really one of the points of unschooling is that it’s not separate from life, so in the end I’ve decided not to separate it on the blog either. I may change my mind later, we’ll see. Or I may just format my blog so if someone is only interested in the unschooling (or cooking, or whatnot), it will be easier to subscribe to and read just those feeds. I also might archive the blog up until now and start fresh. I have my own school I’m working on too though, so it’s all sort of up in the air still.
For now, I’ve added a new category to the blog: Preschool (age 3). I debated just doing it by age, but adding the preschool part is at least very recognizable, even if we’re not technically doing preschool she is considered a “preschooler” now instead of a toddler. I may change later, but I figure in the future it will be an easy way to look back and find activities I did with her at specific ages (and later Fiona as well).
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I have heard of some people just keeping a binder with plastic sleeves (or something like that) to put things into like tickets or receipts to places they went etc. Not really a scrapbook, but a place to keep things. This is a bit more important later on if you need to show what you are doing to you school board. I got the kids each a big binder this year to put things into, I find they get a lot of paper from various things and it just gets wrecked or lost, so this year I intend to put everything into a binder.
I also want to use my blog to document things, partly so if I need to show that we have covered something in the future I have it. The head of our school board said that you could skip parts of the yearly curriculum (if you are aligned) if you can prove that you have already covered it. I am probably going to go aligned to get more funding because I think it will be fairly easy in the lower grades to seed the environment for curriculum, while still basically unschooling.
I’ve heard the binder with plastic sleeves too. I think a blog is good because I tend to take a lot of digital pictures of what we do, and with a blog I don’t necessarily have to print them all out, but in the future if I want to remember or read about it, it’s easy to find. I would love to have a physical way to keep things too. I’ve heard of people having a space where things go, and as they replace older things, those get sent to family and grandparents. I think that’s a neat idea too.
I agree about going aligned for more funding. We don’t have to do something like that to get the funding, but if we did I’d likely do the same thing in the early grades. With Self Design, we basically just tell the learning consultant what we do each week, and she turns it into school talk for the government.
We are at a similar point in our lives here. My oldest is 4 and youngest 15 months. We have always planned to homeschool, but about a year ago we really started embracing the unschooling philosophy with our family. I write about variety of topics on my blog and thought about splitting into 3- whole and traditional foods, Our crafty and hobby pursuits, and daily attachment parenting, living and learning, family life. At least for now I’m keeping it together because it’s all so connected. I look forward to reading more about your journey.
Thank you! I love to “meet” people at similar points in life. I’m going to head over and check out your blog too. I can’t figure out really how I would be able to separate everything either. Now I’m (possibly) going to add homesteading to the list of things, but that’s part of unschooling for us too!
I HATE the term “Preschooler”!! Sorry, just had to let that out. What were 3 and 4 year olds called before 90% of kids went to Preschool?
Ha! I’m with you there Emma. It only took me a few days I think after I wrote this post that I scrapped that category altogether. I decided I didn’t want to use a label that uses school as a reference point when we won’t be doing that!
Hello! I just found your blog via this post via google by searching for unschooling preschool. My daughter is 2.7. We are unschoolers by nature and recently loving Waldorf inspired ideas. I just started my blog in order to keep track of what is going on in our lives (dh’s mom is a retired schoolteacher and ever vigilent, ha, and I hope this will also help her relax a bit). It seemed much easier to do it in blog form due to links and photos. And I like the idea of being bale to search for things within my blog and also print out anything I need. I am also having trouble seperating my blog since unschooling/Waldorf is about the natural process of life. Looking forward to spending more time reading your blog!