2022 GoodRead Challenge – Book 11 of 50
What is Unschooling? Living and Learning without School – written by Pam Laricchia. In the fall of 2020 I came across a video on YouTube that had the word Unschooling. I have never heard this word before and I was curious enough to see what it was all about. I listened to the almost hour video of a husband and wife explaining what Unschooling was and how they implement it in their daily life with 9 children. I LOVED the concept and realize on some level I have been doing this very concept with my own kids but none of them were school age. I wanted to to hold out telling my husband about this concept until I have done some more reading. I got a few different books but reading them have not worked out. I started to read this book in Feb 2021 and I am just finishing it April 2022. The kicker is the book was not that long and it was a pretty simple read.
I will say that this book is a good introduction about the concept of Unschooling. The author has a few more books that is considered a series and I have another one in my queue on the book app. According to the app I am 14% into that book. I honestly do not remember starting it so I will have to restart it if I decide to read it. I ended up sharing the idea to my husband before I did a lot of reading on my own. We have agreed to homeschool our kids for years and after the last two years he is on board 110%. He works from home so he can play a role in our kids homeschooling experience.
The other morning he was showing our oldest how adding an e to the end of the word changes the vowel sound in certain words. Example: Cap – a is a short vowel but when adding e the a is now a long vowel.
I do love the idea of unschooling the thing is I do not agree with allowing your child to set his/her own bedtime and only eating what they want to eat. I feel there is a line that has to be drawn because if we let our 3-year-old go to bed when he wants and get up when he wants he would get only a few hours of sleep. Then we would only get a few hours asleep which would not work for our family. He just does not sleep and I have no idea why. He will sleep for a few hours and be up for a few hours and then go back to sleep mostly because he is bored. My oldest would only eat bread if he was given the choice and that isn’t going to be good for him over all. The video I watch actually shared that they do have set expectation and they do have a routine for the kids. It would be pure chaos if they let all nine kids do what they wanted at all times.
My husband is not on board with unschooling and since he is a present father I will not go against what he wants. I say all that because people who are true follower of this method will tell you how you are not a true unschooler. I know on some level I won’t be a typical homeschool mom but I also know that I need guidance to help me stay focus. Now that is a topic for another post – if you want to get a general idea what Unschooling is I would say pick up this book. I still plan on reading a few more books but since my husband is not open to the idea I will honor him, but I do plan trying to apply some of the concepts to our schooling experience.
Thriving in Chaos 
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