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oops...I forgot to see how old this thread is. I'm not sure this information will still be desired, but here it is anyway.

We unschool our 4 children, ages: 8, 7, 6 and 4. We have some workbooks of varying grade levels about the house that the kids can work on if they want (but don't really have to unless I think they need to practice sitting still for a while LOL). Mostly we find that life provides plenty of opportunity to learn every day.

Our state is pretty lax on the legal requirments of educating at home, we have to teach the "seven subjects" in the english language and that's all...no mandatory registration, no standardized testing and the state has to prove (without prior access to our children) that we are NOT educating properly before they can begin an investigation. We don't have to keep any kinds of records of our/their work or progress at all.

As far as the WAY we unschool and still get them to learn some basic skills that they are not currently interested in, we encourage an interest.

For example: My oldest daughter just turned 7 less than a month ago. I have a friend who is a public school teacher and I can generally get an idea of where she would be in different skills, in the local public school. Her reading is easily in the 4th or 5th grade level and math in the 3rd. We're not really sweatng any of it right now. I'm happy with her progress and encourage her to read by gifting her books on subjects I'd like her to take an interest in. If she doesn't show an interest but one of her younger sibs does, I encourage them to ask her to read it to them. They're getting exposure to reading with a patient, loving teacher and she gets a thrill out of feeling so grown up as to be able to read to the youngers adn gets exposure to the material I wanted her to study at the same time. Usually she shows further interest after that.

My oldest son, though, at 8 doesn't like to read at all. He CAN and I've CAUGHT him reading websites about the Airforce and aircraft and UNDERSTANDING all of it better than I do! He doesn't like to display his skills on demand and doesn't always choose to display them on his own. It's a tricky thing to get him interested in anything that wasn't first his idea but we're getting along ok. I encourage him to read by NOT helping him as much in the way he wants.

When he brings me something I am sure he can read and asks me to read it to him, I put my finger on the first word and ask him to read it. If he still balks, I lead him through sounding the word out (what's that first letter...what does it sound like? Great! Now let's put it with the second letter...) until he reads it on his own in self defense. It's a challenging technique that requires an inordinate amount of patience and intimate knowledge of the personality of my boy. I very much doubt a PS teacher who only sees him in a class room with 18-28 other children could accomplish it.

The bottom line, I guess, for me is that no two children are the same size and shape, intelectually. No educational program that is, by design, meant to fit everyone can possibly work to their best advantage. It can ONLY fit a bell curve and the kids that get lost by not being in the middle area acceptable losses.

That's not acceptable to me.

I saw someone post something about money being a problem too...I have to say, we don't have any. My husband is an RN working in the lowest paying nursing home in our region and there are some bills that get rotated each month as to which one is going to be paid. That means some of them don't get paid every month as they should and it also means there isn't any extra money at all left over.

I won't say I don't work, but mine is the type that doesn't bring home a paycheck. I work at home, making our house a home and raising our children. We have not found that our form of "schooling" requires much, if any, extra money. We buy workbooks on occasion if they don't cost too much and we have a little extra cash but the kids treat them like puzzle books or coloring books...play, not to be taken too seriously.

We've run into the problem of grading as our church uses the local school grading system to place age groups together for youth group activities...K, 1st and 2nd graders are in one group, 3rd and 4th graders in another...We've asked what age each grade is in to determine where to place the kids and if the work they do in that group isn't challenging enough we get them bumped up a class if they want to go.

We haven't had any problems with socialization. If anything our children are more friendly and outgoing, less reserved and shy than their age mates in PS. They interact well and converse with adults adeptly and tend to choose friends who are slightly older than they are themselves. They have absolutely no use for bullies and can't understand why people like that behave that way. I've seen them simply shrug their shoulders and walk away to find something more interesting to do rather than deal with the confrontation with an aggressive child.

When talking about socialization, understand also that we don't really get out much. We go to church twice a week, so they interact with the kids there and we go do the shopping and bills twice a month when we get paid. The rest of the time we stick close to home because we can't really afford the gas to drive the 1hour round trip to town as often as we would like. We go to church in a close town so the time spent driving is only half as much but we have still wound up stuck at home those last few days before we get paid again because we only had enough gas left to get TO town, not home again.

They play with the kids here in our little farming community (population 200) after the neighborhood gets home from school and there's a good sampling of personalities available but in the end there are only about a dozen or so kids available to play with over all. We live across from the town park, though, so that provides plenty of opportunity.

I think I long winded myself out. If you have any questions about how we go about unschooling I'd be happy to share our methods in more depth. My home email is vmb@crackedpotpublications.com Just put "About Un-Schooling" or something like that in the subject line so I'll remember this conversation LOL

VMB