New To This.

[Rob Peace]

Hello All,
My wife and I have a 21 m/o boy and are looking to find some information about how all of this works. Can anybody recommend any good reading material or groups? How do you structure your day with your children? Do both parents work? Do you trade days with other parents? If so, how do you coordinate a supportive learning environment between homes? We have lots of questions and would love to hear from people with with little to lots of experience unschooling their kids. I, specifically, would really appreciate hearing from other fathers. I'm really interested in hearing/reading about a fathers experience in unschooling their kids. What kind of role do you take? Are you working? Do you take days off to be with your kids and support their education? Do you work with them when you come home? How is your role different if your kids are unschooled as opposed to if they attend a traditional school? We are very curious about how all this works and would love to find a community to be a part of.

[Dan Lake]

Hi Rob! It's nice to hear from other dads. There are a lot of Yahoo groups, even local ones here in the Portland area with many cool unschooling families. My wife and I have 3 kids and live in Hillsboro, OR. They are 5, 6, and 8 years old. I work during the day but have pretty flexible hours in the afternoons. I enjoy coming home and playing games with them or we go to the park or to one of their chosen activities such as ice skating or soccer. Most days they sleep late until 8-10am and spend the daytime with mom doing crafts, reading, building various things, visiting friends, cooking, or anything else they think of.

We travel quite a bit together when I get time off. We've been all over the northern parts of the US and southwest as well as several European countries and Hawaii. We go pretty budget and just do what we see the locals doing for food or transportation.

If you are interested in talking to dad's, I highly recommend coming to Life Is Good Unschooling Conference in Vancouver, WA in May, 2010. You can join the secret society of unschooling dads (SSUDS).

Welcome again,

~Dan

[Carolyn]

Hi Rob,

I'm coming from a mom's perspective, but thought I'd throw in my $.02. We have 2 daughters, now 7.5 and 4. Neither of them has been to school, though we did participate in a parent run cooperative play group with the older for 2 years.

My husband Bret works full time, I'm full time at home right now. In the past (when we lived in Wyoming -- moved here a year ago) I worked very part time (one day/week, some evenings/weekends) and if hubby could not be home with them, we either had both girls in a day care setting with someone I liked a lot and understood our interest in unschooling, or swapped with another kindred-spirited parent.

Just read Dan's reply below and would strongly recommend the Life is Good Unschooling conference in May in Vancouver, as well...LOTS of great families there -- and dads to talk to. I believe you can also join the Yahoo Group for the Secret Society of Unschooling Dads (aka SSUDS...they have an unofficial "meeting" at the conference where they have a beer or two, and talk about unschooling dad things...not being a dad, I don't know exactly what they talk about, but might be a good place for you to get some other feedback before May!). There are also other unschooling groups on Yahoo -- Always Unschooled and Unschooling Basics are good places to start -- you can join and just read the archives for a while to learn more...There are also 2 groups specific to portland -- PDX Unschoolers, and PDX Radical Unschoolers...

So even though Bret works full time, he is very involved with the girls -- and their "education" -- I use quotes, because as unschoolers we feel that EVERYTHING is educational! Bret used to joke at work that our girls don't even get summer vacation...but of course jumping in mud puddles is part of our "curriculum". The girls have a good chunk of time with daddy every evening when he returns home around 5:30pm...and since we don't have to wake up early for school, we can stay up late together.

Our days are full of crafting, reading, watching TV and movies, going to classes (clay, DoJump, etc), visiting with friends, running errands, thrift shopping, cooking, etc, etc, etc...we live life together, and learning just happens.

So some books I would recommend are (I'm a librarian!):

Parenting a Free Child (An Unschooled Life) by Rue Kream -- this has a great, easy to read Q&A format, nice to just look up a specific question and get a reply from a long-time unschooling family

Anything by John Holt (but my favorite is still Teach Your Own)

This is a one of my favorite websites: http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/
and of course, http://sandradodd.com/unschooling

Gotta go now, good luck with your journey!

[Rob Peace]

Thanks for the information and the resources. We'll look into the conference.