The term, “child-led learning,” does emphasize something very important – that the child is the learner! I couldn’t agree more. However, it also disregards the significant role played by the parent in helping and supporting and, yes, quite often taking the lead, in the investigation and exploration of the world that is unschooling.

On an unschooling email list, someone once asked if it was “okay” as an unschooler to ask if her child wanted her to read to him. She expressed concern that that was being overly leading – that she should wait for him to ask her, if he was interested. In other words, she thought unschooling should be entirely “child led.”

Questions like this concern me because it is such a distortion and extreme position and far removed from the reality of the unschooling life that my family has lived.

Unschooling is more like a dance between partners who are so perfectly in synch with each other that it is hard to tell who is leading. The partners are sensitive to each others’ little indications, little movements, slight shifts and they respond. Sometimes one leads and sometimes the other.

Asking a child if he wants you to read to him should not be thought about as any different than asking if he wants
to go outside and play pirates or help you bake a cake or wash the dog or play a game.

Unschooling IS very very often comprised of asking if the kids want to do something. That is a HUGE part of unschooling. (Caps for emphasis.)

Unschooling is also strewing – bringing ideas, objects, experiences, opportunities of all kinds into their lives. We don’t force them. We don’t force them. But we certainly offer. And we often recommend, too. And once in a while we say, “I think you should….”.

Unschooling is not child-led learning. Neither is it parent or teacher-led. It is child- focused. It is child-considered. It is child-supporting.

When someone asks if it is okay to ask if their kids want to read with them, I am really worried that they are taking a far far too hands-off approach – a wait-and-see approach – sitting back and waiting for the kids to come up with ideas of what they want to do. Unschooling parents are very involved in offering the world to their child. There is an art to knowing when to back off and when to step up and be actively involved, but even when kids are busily pursuing an interest on their own, unschooling parents are paying attention and readying themselves to offer enhancements or extensions or alternatives, etc.

Calling it “child-led learning” gives the wrong impression. It leads to people thinking unschooling means waiting for a child to tell the parent, “I want to do math.” That’s not at all how it works.

Electricity rates vary a lot – average in California, where I live, is about 16 cents per kwh, but in Washington State the average is under 8 cents per kwh.

Okay – so look at the reality. A 1,000 watt window air condition (a
medium size) uses 1 kwh in an hour. So it costs from 8 to 15 cents to run it for an hour or 80 cents to $1.50 to run it for ten hours.

A 100 watt lightbulb costs 1/10th of that – or .8 to 1.5 cents for an hour.  TEN hours of leaving a 100 watt lightbulb on would cost 8 to 15 cents.

If you use compact fluorescent replacements they will cost about 1/4 of that — so about .2 to .4 cents for an hour or 2 to 4 cents for 10 hours.

So – switch to CF lighting – and figure even if he left lights on for the entire month, it would cost a total of about a dollar and a half up to maybe three dollars for the whole month, 24 hours per day.

Is it worth stressing and messing up your relationship over a light bulb?

Maybe you could go to this website – put in your appliances and figure out where you really could save enough money to make it
worthwhile to worry about it?

I know my husband sometimes gets on us about leaving lights on and I sometimes remind him that if he just turns them off when he notices it, that he might save a penny or two and he can also save a negative moment if he just does it without letting it annoy him (or us).

On the other hand, my husband earns most of the money that lets us live this amazing lifestyle and so I try to honor that by using the money carefully. So I’m not saying to encourage waste, I’m saying that you should know how much money you’re really talking about and decide whether it is really worth having hard feelings over it.

A ref picks a topic (e.g. “eggs”) and times you while you try to speak about that topic for one minute. You get a point for every second. You’re out if you hesitate, repeat a word (other than small, common words like “the”) or go off topic.

Other players call you on fouls, and if the ref agrees you’ve screwed up, the caller gets to take over your original minutes. After each round, choose a new ref.

Example:

Ref: The topic is “grandmothers.” Go.

A: My grandmother died five years ago. She was my favorite relative. Before she died, I…

B: Repetition of “died”!

Ref: I agree. B takes “grandmothers” for 50 seconds.

B: Grandmothers deserve more credit than they get, because … um …

C: Hesitation!

Ref: Right. C takes over for 45 seconds.

C: My grandmother used to bake me chocolate chip cookies. They were really tasty. I used to take them with me to school and give them to all my friends, which made me really popular, and…

A: Deviation! He’s not talking about grandmothers.

Ref. Right. A wins back “grandmothers” for 32 seconds. Go…

Player A says a number between 1 and 10. Player B has to say the number that comes after it, very quickly. (A rhythm of 1/2 to 1/3 second for each response is good, you can clap together to get the feeling of a rhythm.)

Then, Player A has to say another number, keeping the same rhythm. (It can be the same number or a different one, but not the next one.). Player B has to say the number that comes after THAT number.

Back and forth it goes, until someone makes a mistake. At that point, start over with roles reversed.

Mistakes: Player A makes a mistake if he takes too long to think up a new number, or if he mispronounces a number, or just counts up one more. Player B makes a mistake if she takes too long to think of the number she should say, or if she says the wrong number.

Scoring: A mistake counts as a point for the other player. First person to a certain number of points wins. (Scoring is optional, you can just keep playing back and forth indefinitely).

Advanced Play: If you get really good, set a certain number of correct responses which will result in a point for Player B. (15 or 20 correct responses are easy enough to count on your fingers.)

The object is to spell a spontaneous mystery word, as a group, with each player taking sequential turns adding a letter until the word is complete. The first player unable to add a letter loses.

The first person will think of a word and say the first letter of that word without revealing what they are thinking. The next player will think of a word beginning with the same first letter, (which may or may not be different from the first person’s word) and say the second letter out loud. The third will say a third letter, and so on in a round until there are no more letters that can be added to the word or someone can’t think of a word starting with that combination of letters.

Challenges can be posed if one suspects a player of making up or misspelling a word, but the challenge loser loses the match.

Game Example:

Player 1: ‘E’
Player 2: ‘G’
Player 3: ‘Y’
Player 4: ‘P’
Player 1: ‘T’
Player 2: ‘I’
Player 3: ‘A’
Player 4: ‘N’
Player 1: ‘S’

Pick a category, e.g. makes of car, types of fruit, films with Bruce Willis in them, superheroes, etc. Players then bid as to how many things in that category they can name. Bidding must start at 1 and go up 1 at a time (i.e. someone can’t make a first bid of 4 followed by someone bidding 7).

When bidding has ended (not everyone has to bid, but you can bid more than once), the person with the highest bid must try to name that number of items.

“Sequels” are not allowed, so in a “time travel film” category you couldn’t have Terminator AND Terminator 2. What constitutes a “sequel” in other categories is open to debate and decided by group consensus (e.g. if the category was “sports played with balls” you probably wouldn’t allow minor league baseball and major league baseball.

Some people try to heckle the guesser, to distract him. But in my family, we let one person go as far as they can and then, if they falter, we turn it into a cooperative challenge and try to see how many we can name together.

Each person gets a dollar bill and finds the best poker hand they have among the card values given by their serial numbers. No flushes are available as there are no suits, but many other hands are there.

Pick a category (animals, TV show characters, etc.) and start describing something until your child guesses what or who you are. “I’m long and skinny, I have no arms or legs, I live in the earth, I wiggle . . .”

“A worm!”