Eclectic Parent

For a long time we had an idea of what the kids should be learning, general interest stuff, and pointed it out to them. They’d either start a conversation or not. Last year we went more unschooly and really let them get into - or not get into - whatever they wanted. While I do believe total unschooling can work, our kids tend to get to bickering to alleviate boredom rather than becoming creative. And while I don’t have a written curriculum and love floating around as things come up, I also like to have a casual list in the back of my head. So back from vacation, I decided we were going to make a trial run of more ‘come join the fun’ projects.
I started by tracing their bodies on large paper and then let them color themselves in. The boys both ended up with lots of scabs and B had purple hair and green skin . . . until she found the gold crayon. Then we grabbed all the body books we have off our shelves. We read a book about skeletons and Everybody Poops (a giggle classic). We also named all the body parts we could think of - my favorite was when B couldn’t remember knees so she called them leg elbows. At dinner, we talked about the path of food and pulled an adult anatomy book off the shelves to show them. Then we read The Gas We Pass, which is another one good for a giggle.

We also finished the last chapter of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, by CS Lewis, which we began on vacation. After a slight reluctance on their part to begin, they definitely got into it. Now they immediately want to read the next book . . . which I put somewhere before vacation and can’t find. Time for a library trip, I guess.