Wow! I’ve not done a blog post on this site for 3 years. This is pretty much the same period since my oldest daughter turned compulsory school age. My life, on the other hand, has been far from quiet. We now have two 6.5 year olds and an 8 year old, so in fact, it is very very loud at times.
Summary of the end of Toddlerhood Years and Start of UnSchool Years
All three of my children are home educated in the UK. They live a very busy and happy childhood and have never been to school. The below post will focus on the life we lead as an unschooling family.
Unschooling Days
What has unschooling for ages 3.5 to 8 years looked like? Well, it’s pretty much a continuation of toddlerhood. Lots of mess-making, emotional expression and explosions. There have been many crafty creations, as well as breaking and making things. We’ve enjoyed holidays and covered plenty of life skills e.g. swimming and reading. There has also been a developmental leap from clingy children to having the ability to leave them with their Dad. Now I can walk out that front door, without even a peep from any of the children.
Home Education Family Holidays Abroad
We have been on several holidays in these past 3 years. Twice to Tenerife, to three different parts of Portugal, and twice to the Isle of Man.
Tenerife was by far the best location for a fun family holiday abroad. The weather was unbeatable, not too hot but very sunny and dry most of the year through. We had such a connecting first week-long trip there that we were all sad to leave. We booked to go again for two-weeks only a year later. During the second trip, I Googled how long it has been since Mount Teide had errupted. There had recently been tremors under the surface of Teide. The captain of our dolphin watching boat trip informed me that the neighbouring island, La Palma, had erupted recently. He explained that all of the Canary Islands were linked and so when La Palma erupted they all got worried Tenerife would too.
Well; you can imagine the alarm I felt. We had three young kids and were now trapped on a volcanic island for several more days! It was still a phenomenal and memory-making holiday but until it is of a very-low risk of erupting we will not be returning. Whilst here, we went to Jungle Park to swim with sea lions. We did this on both holidays to Tenerife. One sea lion even did a flip right in front of us. Breathtaking!
We have friends who moved to Lisbon, Portugal a few years ago. They have a holiday home in Grândola. We have all shared lovely and heart-warming times with all the kids together here. They have two boys; both being of similar ages to our kids. All of our kids have held a lizard, eaten fruit from their trees, played chase, driven in a kids electic car, laughed, talked and built deep friendships together.
It’s beautiful to see my kids feel at home with other children, as they haven’t very easily clicked with kids back home. We aren’t personally attached enough to any of the local parents to help them form the feelings of safety. Our children clearly do feel safe with our friends we had before becoming parents.
Whilst we were in the Algarve a couple of weeks ago, we went to an amazing free event run by the Police. They had ball pits, bucking surf-boards, people on stilts, and a board game where the Police asked our children questions about risks and hazards. This policeman informed us there had been an earthquake a couple of nights ago. This earthquake happened whilst we were asleep unaware in Albufeira, and measured 4.4 on the Richter Scale! Having never been in an earthquake before, this was a great space for our whole family to ask questions about earthquakes. We discussed richter scale results and researched the largest earthquake ever in Portugal. We found out how often different parts of the world experience earthquakes. We watched videos of people in severe earthquakes, and learned how to make yourself safe if ever an earthquake strikes. This was in-the-moment, relevant-to-real life learning.
I had personally never been exposed to this level of geographic interest in my own life. And I achieved a 1st class Geography degree! We also went to Zoomarine three times which included a dolphin experience, theme-park rides, wave pool, butterfly house, ray touching and much more!
And, let’s not forget our wonderful trips to the Isle of Man. My best friend still lives in the Isle of Man, where I used to live for 11 years. She has 4 children of different ages (3 – 16). Again, my children seemed more relaxed than usual with her children. The first holiday was Christmas-time which included their first visit to Santa on a train. The kids wanted to go back to the Isle of Man this Christmas but unfortunately Easyjet stopped flights all year-round. So instead we went in the summer and it was a non-stop adventurous experience. We saw seals thriving in the wild, a water-powered merry-go-round, went to visit castles, played on the beach. We felt very welcomed by the locals with our children.
Swimming
We have continued swimming every week at the independent school nearby (mentioned here in a blog post in 2021). A couple of years ago, this school agreed to setup a home education session. We haven’t done much marketing at all and a large number of local families have tried these wonderful sessions. The teachers at this particular school are very open-minded, mature and nurturing in nature.
On top of that my kids have been doing intensive swim lessons with a lovely teacher at this independent school. For the first few years, the staff were so kind in allowing me into the pool as my kids were too shy to be without me. Their attachment has grown towards their current teacher, and they not only get in without me, but they absolutely love their sessions with him! What a wonderful school environment this has been, without any of the school journey. We’d still rather our children be under our wings through home educating, but are so happy for their wings to spread in life skills with these safe and warm people too.
Unschooled learning in swimming lessons at this open-minded school has meant they haven’t typically followed the formal swimming curriculum. As a result of their non-stop playing, they have been Paw Patrol and had to dive to save their pups in deep water (equivalent of curriculum sinkers), played Alvin and the Chipmunks being on a boat going to islands and getting trapped under water. They’ve pretented they were wild sea lions and dolphins that they’ve seen on holidays before. As a result, our kids swimming strokes aren’t always the classic ‘front crawl’ etc, and so they may seem to have gaps compared to students in a formal curriculum. However, yesterday their teacher was astounded that they all dived 1.7m and on first try collected the sinkers from that depth.
Our oldest daughter also has such a far and consistent throwing ability. This sports teacher has never seen a child achieve this level of throwing before. So whilst there may be ‘gaps’ in a swimming curriculum, their unschooled skillsets branch into their own unique territory. This has to be the beauty of unschooling for every family who chooses this path.
Rock Climbing
All three of our children love to climb. They have been known to scramble up a cliff free-soloing. We have since set boundaries that this is too risky an activity in case of rocks falling. They are incredibly bold and efficient at mastering cliffs though, I’ll let it be known.
On the back of this wild cliff-climbing experience, we took them to an outdoor rock climbing centre. The staff there said our kids had no climbing fear and were competent. If they continued pursuing this, they would be phenomenal when they were adults. They love to go to an indoor rock climbing centre too, who do home education sessions in the daytime. This is muscle-building exercise but it’s so much fun for them!
Reading
We have three voracious readers. Our girls love to read, can fluently read and have been able for a couple of years now. Our son is not yet interested in reading independently, but has always craved us to read him stories. He listens to his sisters reading, as well as both of his parents.
As a parent of multiple voracious readers, it has been a challenge to find suitable books for them. They have different experiences to schooled-children so many popular books such as Harry Potter just didn’t hit the mark. We even found some of the current rated books have children talking rudely (e.g. calling people stupid or using language like ‘shut up’), or focus on success being measured by benchmarks. We have bought and donated many of these sorts of books. I will do a book review soon with which read aloud books have engaged my unschooled children. I am keen to share which books have made my kids beg for ‘one more chapter!!’ when I’m reading to them at bedtime.
I have no worries about our son not yet being an independent reader, as his sisters were so quick when they decided to learn by themselves. When he gets the drive to master reading, it will happen without us even realising. This is the same with all of their learning – riding bikes, swimming, climbing. They just learn it because it means something to them as part of their life. It doesn’t require much parental instruction before they’re masters at it.
Free Play – Especially Taking on Characters and Roles
The benefit of unschooling has meant my kids have played almost non-stop since my last blog post 3 years ago! They have taken on characters including from Frozen (our youngest daughter was officially ‘Elsa’ for a couple of years!). They all got passionate about Paw Patrol for a while. More recently they became obsessed with Alvin and the Chipmunks. They have made two of their own films from the Chipmunks using scripts we found online. They do great Chipmunks impressions which can be heard in many interactions even out-and-about. They often call each other Alvin, Simon and Theodore. A recent course I did with the Neufeld Institute made me realise this role-play will help them find their new identities during adolescence.
Social Groups
Attending groups is an area my kids have not been interested in. I used to take them to many groups because I feared that if a local authority representative turned up at our door they would issue a School Attendance Order for lack of social skills. My kids have always been very shy. This forced me to research frantically whether I was ‘failing them’. I will write a future post about shyness and how completely natural this in fact is.
On the back of my fear around their extreme shyness, I forced my kids to go to so many groups. I thought this would build their social network and friendships. It got to breaking point. After a few years attending these groups, they had still not spoken to the majority of people. It was also impossible for me to build my own friendships when I’d be tugged away by my kids. When they did branch out, the other kids weren’t used to my kids talking, so didn’t seem to hear them. As a result the other kids unintentionlly ignored my kids. Which sent my kids back in my direction.
So a year ago we decided to cut the majority of groups from our lives. My kids have been growing more confident around others as a result of pulling back our social experiences. This also had a huge impact on my own personal journey to maturation. What other choice do you have but to fully accept yourself and all that comes with ‘you’ when you hardly see other adults. I will write another post about this maturation journey soon too.
Conclusion
So that’s a quick summary of the sorts of unschooling activities we’ve been doing for the past few years. It has been a whirlwind of fun, tears, laughter, havoc and mess. Finally, we have reached a peaceful place and can crack on and enjoy all the freedom, love and independence that unschooling offers us.
Gentle Parent 