s/o of no curriculum...

[Mynyel]

Sothe idea intrigues me. Especially for dd12. She reads everything, I mean everything! She read the pocket constitution the day it came in the mail!

 

So that said, how would someone go about doing this or looking into it?

 

How would one teach things like writing and higher levels of math without a curriculum? English/LA, History, Science...yup I can see that. But math and Writing have me stumped.

 

So I am all :bigear: and willing to try it for one or more subjects!

[Guest]

I'm still perplexed on the math part myself (I'm the person who didn't use a textbook or program with math until 7th grade with my daughter).

 

I have also never used a writing or grammar program. My daughter seemed to come "prewired" for grammar, so we have been very casual about it: no MCT! We played endless MadLibs, read Ruth Heller's picture books about parts of speech, read Lynn Truss's picture book versions of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. We would take books off the shelves, read the first sentences, and discuss them and categorize them: short, long; simple, complex; full of adjectives and descriptions or action-centered, etc. My daughter also thought up so many writing projects for herself when she was of elementary age that I never once gave her an assignment. She had pretty severe dysgraphia -- wrote with her nose an inch from the paper, broke the lead in her mechanical pencil about three times a minute, couldn't sustain much writing -- but write she did, in bits and pieces, all the time.

 

When she was junior high age and getting exposed to the idea of reports and essays in a co-op, I described the five-paragraph essay to her as a game in about fifteen minutes, had her write one or two, and that was it. I think it was this easy because there was absolutely no pressure, and presented to her in the context of a game.

 

Now she's entering 9th grade. I taught freshman writing at the University of California for several years and literature classes for ten more after that, so I have a very clear idea of where we're going and don't have a rigid plan in mind for getting there. I also do not limit her writing to formal essays. We explore all kinds of writing, from manga and comics to newspaper opinion columns and blogs to very elegant literary essays like those of Anne Fadiman. I point out one or two elements of how they're put together when we read them; sometimes she makes comments. We sometimes pick out favorite sentences for sound or rhythm and will talk about what makes them that way. We do this fairly regularly, but it is not scheduled and it is not formal. It happens out of our reading and our interest in language.

 

My daughter has always been fairly non-conventional in how she learns and what she responds to, so when she writes now it tends to be things like:

--a satiric version of some element of a literary classic

--a letter from one character to another

--a dramatic remake of a prose chapter in a book (play form)

--a re-write of elements of a book in another form, such as newspaper articles, spy messages, melodrama, etc.

 

As long as she can write a coherent, focused essay in the long run, I'm not worried about how she gets there or how much time she spends on formal writing. I'm very comfortable with non-traditional literary trajectories from my reading of so many biographies of authors who came to writing outside the formal education system. I know it's a trade-off: a formal program teaches you certain skills while neglecting others, and bears the danger of turning kids off writing; an informal, idiosyncratic approach encourages creativity but will be less emphatic about continued practice in the essay form. My daughter leans so strongly toward creativity that I've chosen to work with, rather than against, this.

 

I read books about the English language with her continually, from Eats, Shoots and Leaves to David Crystal's The Little Language Book to excerpts from books on the making of dictionaries, invented languages, theories of the origins of language, the history of print and printing conventions (punctuation marks included). We also read lots and lots of books like SignSpotting, a series of photos of the most incredibly badly worded signs from around the world; my mother recently bought a book about excessive quotation marks with accompanying pictures. We regularly go hunting for bad grammar and mis-worded signs and writing in menus, travel brochures, amazon reader reviews, magazines. For Christmas I bought her a book called The Great Typo Hunt.

 

We're kind of weird. But it works.

 

Edited to add: just last night we were watching a program about the history of musicals and my daughter said she thought it might be fun to be a theater critic. So I'm going to suggest to her that we watch an old musical, then write pretend opening night reviews, then compare what we come up with to the actual New York Times reviews for that show. Things like this tend to come up sporadically and I try to follow them where they may lead.

Edited August 19, 2010 by Guest

[Ginevra]

Personally, going "no curriculum" would not work for me in Math. I think Life of Fred is the closest I'd come to not using a math curriculum. I just don't think you can easily understand and integrate the necessary problem-solving strategies if you don't learn math systematically. It's the part of the unschooling philosophy with which I least agree.

 

You could do writing exercises that work the way IEW instructs. I think this is pretty close to no curriculum; just have them outline and re-write some aspect of what they're already reading.

 

I don't know...even avid readers are not likely to find joy in just switching from book to book all day, every day. They still want to do an experiment to illustrate something read, or do map puzzles, or write in a nature journal or play board games.

[Guest]

I'm remembering reading an interesting book about a girl in England who won a huge math prize when she was still fairly young -- early 20s maybe. Her father was a math professor, and when his kids grew up apparently he was very hands-off with their school math, which was so-so. What he did was continually present them with mathematical puzzles: codes, logic puzzles, word problems that required unconventional thinking. There was a whiteboard in the dining room and when mathy people were over they were always working out long elaborate problems there. The kids didn't understand when they were young, of course, but they had a model of a working mathematician, someone who used math to think, someone who got them away from rote computations and formulas.

 

So the kids used a regular school curriculum, but their father never placed a particularly high value on it and just made sure they knew that mathematical thinking involved quite a lot outside the curriculum.

[Ellie]

The first hsers I met in 1982 didn't have a single textbook, but they had truckloads of "curriculum." :-)

 

People learned to write well for hundreds of years without a single "program." They learned grammar, and history, and science and everything.

 

Doing math without a textbook is probably trickier, and high school-level science, but you can worry about that tomorrow. :-)

[mcconnellboys]

I'd do some reading on Charlotte Mason's theories about living curriculum....

[LibraryLover]

We have found our needs are met through various resources. We have bought some 'curric' , but we are not married to anything! We use what makes sense, we use that which aids us and helps us to grow, or realize a goal (SAT testing, college etc).

Edited August 19, 2010 by LibraryLover

[Mama Geek]

I think a big thing with math is using it in real life applications.

 

Statistics are used every day in the news and it would be easy to get into standard deviations, means, medians, etc.

 

Geometry & trig can be taught doing things like wood working projects and boat navigation.

 

I took a business calculus class my freshman year of college. I had an excellent professor that applied calculus to business & economics.

 

Genetics, chemistry and physics all use math. If you can show how things apply, then teaching the nuts & bolts comes easier.

[Jean in Newcastle]

It isn't a problem bringing even higher level math into real life IF you know the math yourself. I can do that for basic fractions, percents, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and can easily think of ways to bring that into our cooking, sewing, building, crafts, finances etc. But algebra, trigonometry, more advanced geometry and calculus? Nope. I can't do it. And I wouldn't expect my kids to be able to do it - well, perhaps my son who is teaching himself electronics. . . wait- I just asked him but he said that no, he could not teach himself algebra using real life experiences without having been led through the actual topics so that he could then practice using them in real life.

[NanceXToo]

Read "the unschooling handbook, How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom" by Mary Griffith.

 

It offers great insight, reassurance, further resources, examples of peoples' unschooling days and how they apply things, and it's got sections on "Reading and Writing," "Math and Problem-Solving," "Science," and other subjects that I think you'll find really helpful and insightful!

[Amber in AUS]

Read "the unschooling handbook, How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom" by Mary Griffith.

 

Thanks for recommending this book. I have just ordered it, I've seen it mentioned a couple of times now.

[Pamela H in Texas]

Well, I think it depends on what you want. If you *want* to unschool, then you will have to realize that unless the child just picks things up or chooses to learn them, that they won't have certain things. If math and writing is important for your child to definitely have, then unschooling may not be your cup of tea.

 

A couple other things can factor in also. You may have a year or two that you allow this with an older child. Or maybe you choose this as a lifestyle before your kids are 7th or 9th grade then decide to hit the books.

 

Living and reading sounds like a great curriculum to me and what my daughter did most of her growing up; but *I* believe there is some basic knowledge I want my kids to have so unschooling is NOT for us in the high school years. Unschooling would require me to relinquish that control, to trust they would get enough of what they needed and wanted. Well, they no doubt would get significant information in certain subjects, but they may not choose to in others. Again, *I* believe there is some basic knowledge they SHOULD have by 18 so insist on them getting it, even against their will if necessary. And honestly, I believe that there are BENEFITS to learning some things when you're not particularly interested in doing so, it is difficult for you, etc so I'm glad my kids have gotten those opportunities also.

[EthiopianFood]

Well, I think it depends on what you want. If you *want* to unschool, then you will have to realize that unless the child just picks things up or chooses to learn them, that they won't have certain things. If math and writing is important for your child to definitely have, then unschooling may not be your cup of tea.

 

A couple other things can factor in also. You may have a year or two that you allow this with an older child. Or maybe you choose this as a lifestyle before your kids are 7th or 9th grade then decide to hit the books.

 

Living and reading sounds like a great curriculum to me and what my daughter did most of her growing up; but *I* believe there is some basic knowledge I want my kids to have so unschooling is NOT for us in the high school years. Unschooling would require me to relinquish that control, to trust they would get enough of what they needed and wanted. Well, they no doubt would get significant information in certain subjects, but they may not choose to in others. Again, *I* believe there is some basic knowledge they SHOULD have by 18 so insist on them getting it, even against their will if necessary. And honestly, I believe that there are BENEFITS to learning some things when you're not particularly interested in doing so, it is difficult for you, etc so I'm glad my kids have gotten those opportunities also.

 

Once again, the voice of reason. :)

[Ginevra]

It isn't a problem bringing even higher level math into real life IF you know the math yourself. I can do that for basic fractions, percents, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and can easily think of ways to bring that into our cooking, sewing, building, crafts, finances etc. But algebra, trigonometry, more advanced geometry and calculus? Nope. I can't do it. And I wouldn't expect my kids to be able to do it - well, perhaps my son who is teaching himself electronics. . . wait- I just asked him but he said that no, he could not teach himself algebra using real life experiences without having been led through the actual topics so that he could then practice using them in real life.

:iagree: My thinking, even when it comes to lower-level math, is that if you want to do it in "real life," you still need some sort of building, logical framework. While buying fabric to make a matching hat and top, it's true that you could say, "Now, childofmine, we need 7/8 yd. for the hat, plus 1 1/2 yd for the top. How do we find out the total amount of yardage we need?" But if they don't know what a denominator is, and they haven't yet learned about equivalent fractions, how are they going to now learn how to solve that problem? :confused: That's what always made unschoolish-type math seem nonsensical to me. At the very least, it seems much less efficient than just chipping away at math a little each day, using a curriculum.