I don't want to break up how they are living into pieces for show and tell.

[crazychicknlady]

Sometimes it's tough for me talking with other homeschooling families. In particular those driven to have more structure and lessons and such in their homeschooling journey than I have (mind you, not hard to do).

Them: "So what are the kids interested in learning lately.

Translation: What schoolish related ideas are the kids interested in lately.

For C, recently motivated about letter names, sounds, reading, counting, even variables, it's easy to answer in a way that makes sense to the questioner.

For the girls, recently interested in My Little Pony: Friendship is magic, both Youtube videos and toys, playing online games, finding videos on Youtube, it's not so clear cut. I can translate what they do into separate chunks that will more or less resemble schoolish things, but then I feel like it's missing the point. I feel put on the spot, and like I'm coming up short, especially when I don't want to break down their fun and living into disparate pieces. What they get by living in freedom is learning woven together in everything they do. Hopefully they will create a very satisfying whole someday.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Ok, first you are not coming up short. I've met your kids. The journey is different, but our kids all get to adulthood taking their own path. Don't second guess your parenting style. The 11th Commandment is not to compare your children with others' kids (or compare the journey your kids are taking with others').

Quite possibly that mother was just trying to find a way to idendify with you and find common grounds for polite conversation? Just a thought. Granted I wasn't there...

Also, I find that most of the time what children are interested in learning has little to nothing to do with schoolish topics anyway--even with homeschooled/schooled kids. My more regimented homeschooled kids would rather tell you about their Mario games, making sock puppets or making of catapults out of office supplies than anything to do with dividing fractions.

S--

[crazychicknlady.livejournal.com]

It's definitely a case of having a different approach/perspective to kids/education. I just ended up feeling out of sorts after talking with a particular friend of mine. I don't expect she was judging me, but her confusion in response to my mentioning how much the girls are into ponies lately had me backpedaling in the conversation in a way I wasn't really proud of. I started pulling out schooly examples, and I really think I did a disservice to our overall approach by doing that.

Thanks for the kind words, and I don't have the same problem when I talk with you, maybe because you always have such nice things to say about my kids :). As it so happens, one of my kids' favorite things to do is answer arithmetic questions, as long as they can do them in their head. And I think making catapults out of office supplies would be awesome.