Did I Ever Mention, This is My Unschooling Blog?

So, all over the country, little people are getting ready to be packed off to schools for another four months or so.

My little people will stay at home, and we'll keep plodding away like we usually do.

I've toyed with the idea of joining the Unschooling blogring, but it seems like I never specifically talk about unschooling here. On the other hand, of course I do. I talk about things that are vital to me, and it is all a part of our unschooling life.

My children are littlies, and if my older were in public school, he'd be starting Kindergarten next Tuesday. Oh, except we thought he was starting Kindergarten last year since we didn't know our public school district changed the age cut off. All that really means for us is that I have an extra year than I thought I would before I need to start notifying our school district that we won't be partaking, thank you very much, and then another 9 months before we have to start showing some proof that he's educated to an acceptable standard.

I guess it is the beginning of the rest of the world's school year that gets me thinking about unschooling. Even last year I was more nervous about it. I felt bold and different. Now, frankly, I just feel like us doing our thing. It's good that I can be rather clueless about what "other" people think, to a degree. I mean, I can do that to a degree, not that it's good to a degree. It's good to a great degree, and I'm sure I'll have more opportunity to employ the skill as time passes.

So, what do we do all the time? This and that. I think I spend most of my mental energy studying my children. That, combined with concerted attention to growth in virtue is how I have been spending my unschooling years thus far (which I reckon to be about two.) I realize that relationship is foundational, primary, non-negotiable for unschooling, since it essentially is an intense way of living together, with no school time, no curriculum to be a buffer between me and my children. So, I consider all of my pondering on this blog about my need for virtue and my search for it to be primary to our life of unschooling. Same about my passions for genealogy, music, understanding people and all the rest.

It is fun for me to realize that my son is learning to read without me having really taught him to read. Oh, I read to him quite a bit, and I read words for him, and I spell words and sound things out and encourage him to read, but I haven't sat down (in years) with a textbook and said "now we will have a reading lesson."

My daughter, well, she is scary smart anyway and will probably be reading as well as my son can now in about a year. I predict, anyway.

I see my every unschooling day as a challenge to be the best Mom I can (and boy, is that ever a loaded statement). I mean primarily to encourage my children to be fully who God made THEM and to accept simultaneously that I did not create their souls, nor can I form them into the image I desire. I am but a co-creator at best (didn't even get the biological gig on that account for my son), and I do need to answer to the Higher Authority for how I am managing His creatures. To practice wonder and awe in caring for them, and respectfully but with full endowed authority share with them wisdom in how life works best. I fail miserably every day, but I would fail more if I didn't even have a vision for what I desire to do.

Oh yeah, if they figure out some three Rs, that's good too, but that's the easy stuff!