Home Ed....Supervising son's education!

[milou2]

I'm sitting at my lap top on Mumsnet, hot water bottle by me, listening to the bangs and crashes as DS2 plays on his shooter game. He is sort of singing to himself and every so often there is a break in the game and he tells me more details about how it works or I ask what some new term means. This is easy!

[julienoshoes]

Yeah!

[nomoreamover]

Is this a bit sarcastic or am I missing something?......

[mummyofboys]

It was a Saturday ??

[julienoshoes]

no sarcasm from me anyway.
I took it that milou2 was enjoying supervising the education her son is getting for himself from the game he was playing.
Life and learning could have been like this in our family any day of the week-or it could be packed with something like french, sailing or jam making or Lego, or whatever the children fancied.

Have just come across a new (to me) blog of an 'Unchooling family' (who would be known as 'Autonomous home educators' here in the UK)
The Sparkling Martins would appreciate the moment too milou2

Joyce Fetteroll explains a little more about this type of home education on her site Joyfully Rejoycing where she asks

"What is a day in the life of an unschooler like? ....
To put it in a nutshell, unschooling days are like great days of summer vacation. They can be anywhere from filled to the brim with activities or they can be laid back leisurely days of watching clouds (or playing video games ;-)"

If you want to read some of the research about this very efficient relaxed way of learning/facilitating an education , have a look at the latest book by Alan Thomas and Harriet Patterson How Children Learn at Home

and there is also an article by Alan Thomas written in 2002 where he compares informal and formal home based education

[nomoreamover]

I'm impressed - if I can encourage DCs to learn in this way I would be extremely happy. thank you for the links - I will enjoy researching into it more.

Being new to this I am sure I am full of misconceptions and won't always "get it"....

[Astarte]

My 5yo has figured out he can calculate his exact final position necessary to win Mariocart on points going into the last race!

His mental arithmetic is amazing where the wii is concerned. Even the wii is edumacational

[nomoreamover]

we're gettign a DSlite so that DS can do the brain training........

[julienoshoes]

Oh don't worry it took me time to get 'it'. After all most of us adults have been brainwashed into believing the only way to learn anything is to be sit down and taught.
Finally after watching and learning what didn't learn in our house and by talking to other autonomous home ed parents, I began to get 'it'

Then I remember at our first ever HESFES there was a speaker talking about Consensual Living and I commented to a friend that I wasn't onto this Taking Children Seriously malarkey. My friend replied with a snort, "That is quite obvious!" but if you met me now, we are radical unschoolers/autonomous educators/into consensual living in all walks of our lives.
Following this path we have avoided all of the teenage angst, the anguish and anger, we have had a lovely life with our off spring, enjoying every minute of theirs and their friends company. (and yes I do know differently having down the I'm in charge/teenagers going to school angst the first time round) Life (the children's education included) is much happier-and much less stressed for it for it.

If you are interested in autonomous home education, there is a yahoo support list.
Autonomous Education UK

You could come along and ask questions to help you along the way.

Right now they are discussing a possible Unschooling/Autonomous home ed conference happening in the UK.