A lot of people like the general idea of unschooling, but find it a bit too unstructured for their tastes.  Or they aren’t sure how they’d keep records.  What I’m going to describe here isn’t quite unschooling (although you can adapt it to be more or less structured), but it is a more “freeform” style of planning that enables some degree of structure while still providing a lot of flexibility.

Getting Started: Ask the Kids

This process is going to work better with older kids.  It’s worth asking younger kids, but they might need more focused questions, and they might not have as fleshed-out answers.  Anything they do tell you will provide useful insights into their interests, but it’s not going to give you the same result as with older kids.  This method will work best with middle schoolers and high schoolers, I think.

Looking ahead to next year and the coming years, I wanted to give my older kids some more freedom to choose how and what they study.  When we’ve tried this before, it’s been a bit too open-ended, and one of mine, in particular, is not very self-motivated, so it’s ineffective to give her free reign.  So what I decided to was give them an assignment to tell me what they want to study and how they would propose to do it.  The idea was to use the result as a starting point, tweaking it and fleshing it out as necessary.

The parameters were that they had to consider all major subjects (i.e. science, history, math, language, Bible…).  Which “specialties” they selected within those was up to them.

Tweaking, Adapting, & Filling in Gaps

I was pleasantly surprised by what both of the girls turned in.  Ariel’s (16) was more thorough.  She’s had more opportunity to determine what she’s passionate about, and she has more schooling behind her.  Her proposal included items like this:

For…literature, I’d continue to do what I do now: read books and write reviews for them on Goodreads and my blog. I honestly wouldn’t care if I got graded on them if I got to just write reviews like I already do. It’s basically literary analysis, but I don’t have to get out of a book exactly what some curriculum wants me to get out of it. Even a set list of questions about the contents of the book, if it was applied to books I naturally read, would be tolerable.

This is a good example of a couple of things.  First of all, she’s specified the subject and she’s specified the process.  This could be turned in to the county as a curriculum plan for those who need to provide such information.

Second of all, this is an example of something that has a good foundation but probably needs tweaking.  My kids are avid readers, but they aren’t so good about reading a variety.  Leaving her to read only the books she’s interested in with no nudging to get out of her comfort zone would likely be pretty one-dimensional.  But a slight tweak would be to assign her to choose a certain number of books from a given list, which would preserve the heart of her preferences here, as well as her ability to have some freedom of choice, while still offering some direction and that push to move past her comfort zone.

Sophia’s (almost 12) was a little “gappier,” which is to be expected for her age.  However, she was surprisingly aware of the limitations of what she gave me.  There was also more information in what she provided than she realized.  For instance, she had this to say:

For science, I’m also not really sure. I’m interested in computer science and programming and stuff, but at the same time it all seems really confusing and intimidating. And I know that’s a stupid reason to not want to learn something, but I can’t help it. I’m not particularly interested in astronomy, or chemestry, or human biology, or physics, or Earth science. Of all of the options I think I’m most interested in botony and zooology.

(Yes, we have a few spelling words there.)  She did specify an interest in computer science, but not much beyond that, particularly given how many years she has left in school.  And she recognized this.

And I think I have a problem. I’m pretty sure most of the things on this list (like history and science) I basically just said I’m not really interested in at all.

However, there’s more information in her proposal than she knew.

Outside of music… I’d like to cook/bake more just to experiment

She didn’t realize it, but she offered some prime information here for moving forward in science.  Cooking is an excellent context for studying science — and she enjoys it.  So that’s information we can work with.

History was truly a gap in her paper.  She and I talked about the fact that a good part of the reason for this is likely that one has to be exposed to something in order to know whether or not one is interested in it.  So probably a good starting point would be to get a strong general overview of history, and maybe that will inspire further interest.  (We’re looking at The Story of the World and The Light and the Glory and its sequels as a quick, narrative-style way to get a basic overview of world and American history, respectively.)

Even though this is not necessarily something she’s thrilled about, since she identified that gap, she’s more open to finding a way to fill it than she probably would be if we simply said, “you need to study this.”

Structure and Recordkeeping

I haven’t hammered out all the details yet, but in terms of structure for the year, I’m looking at drawing up some type of contract for the girls that has two “tiers.”  The first tier would be the daily/weekly requirements, and it would be fairly general.  The purpose of this is merely to provide accountability for their actively working on their schoolwork each day/week.

The second tier would be more specific, and would require that check off the completion of whatever skills, content, etc. we determined together was reasonable/acceptable, based on their proposal, as tweaked.

You can leave it at this, but if you want to keep a more thorough “big picture” record of what each student has or hasn’t learned, The Checklist is an excellent tool for this.

More Help Building Flexible Studies in Unfamiliar Subjects

Maybe you need a little more help with covering essential content in a subject that’s unfamiliar to you.  Some of my favorite resources are “skeleton”-type tools.  That is, they have the key skills and minimal information for addressing them, without being fleshed-out — so you can adjust them as you prefer.  I don’t have a specific resource to recommend for history (apart, perhaps, from reading lists by historical period), but I have a few to offer for other subjects.

For math, Math on the Level is a clever system designed by a homeschooling mom.  It includes a list of skills, along with information about teaching each one.  (Including activities, games, etc. for most.)  There is also a tracking chart and a review system of just five problems per day.  You can be as structured or unstructured as you prefer in teaching the individual skills, but still be structured in tracking what the student does or doesn’t know.

For grammar, I use KISS Grammar at my house.  This is a free program offered online by a retired college English professor.  There are workbooks available for each level if you’re not confident teaching the skills yourself, but you can also just use the general method and do it on your own.  I like that it’s minimal and unfussy.  (No fluff.)

There’s also a Self-Paced Course that was originally intended for teachers who need to brush up on their grammar in order to feel equipped.  By design, this can be done independently, and all the necessary grammar can be learned in a single year using this course if it’s saved for high school.  (Grammar is developmental, so the ability to work with certain constructions grows as children grow.  By high school, all of them should be accessible.  Prior to that, you can only progress so far.)

For composition, I like the method used by Institute for Excellence in Writing, again because it’s flexible and adaptable to the content of your homeschool.  And again, if you prefer to delay these skills and then teach them in a concentrated fashion, the high school essay intensive will teach the bulk of the necessary composition skills.

IEW has done-for-you workbooks for all ages, but if you want to stick with the “freeform” theme, you’ll probably want to take the Teaching Writing: Structure and Style seminar (in person or via DVD) so you can introduce concepts yourself and tailor assignments to your child’s studies.

For science, an ebook called Science in the Kitchen: Fearless Science at Home For All Ages, by Susan K. Stewart, offers some fabulous tips for building a science curriculum without textbooks.  (Guest Hollow’s High School Chemistry course is probably what we’ll use for Sophia to capitalize on her interest in cooking.  It seems to have been designed with methods similar to those described in Science in the Kitchen, and is what I would probably build myself except it’s already been done!)  Science in the Kitchen is part of this week’s Ultimate Homemaking Bundle. 

The Basic Idea

The basic idea here is that you need to have an idea of what information or skills you consider essential for your child to learn by the time he graduates.  This might be specific (“addition,” “ability to identify the clauses in a sentence”) or general (“3 sciences”).  My personal recommendation would be to keep your expectations for  content subjects more general, although much of the expectation for skills subjects will probably need to be fairly specific.

If Your Kids Are Still Very Young

If your children are still very young, you might be interested in another resource that’s in this week’s Ultimate Homemaking Bundle: Montessori Beginnings ($77 value).  This short online course introduces the key concepts of Montessori-style education, particularly with relation to toddlers.  This helps build and establish a lifestyle of learning early, and of encouraging independence.  (Note: when I say “independence,” I mean in the sense of children taking responsibility for themselves, not in the sense of their being independent of authority.)

The bonus activity lists in the course are a good “minimalistic” tool in keeping with the flavor of this post and the approach it describes.

Freeform Homeschool Planning How-To is a post from: Titus 2 Homemaker

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