Some of how our unschooling plays out

So every now and then the little demon of doubt pops up in the back of my mind and tries to tell me that I'm failing my children; that they aren't learning anything; that I'm just so lazy about their education. This usually happens when I get busy with life (read overwhelmed with a million and one half finished projects around the house) and try tackling them (read minimal attention on the kids...lots of computer games and movies) to get at least some of them finished. This week has been such a week.

I was thinking such negative things, but then I sat down with my eldest and had a conversation with her as we worked on her knot blanket. The 2 little ones were asleep and Daddy was reading, so there was just us girls talking in such quietness (oh how nice the silence can be). I was asking her different math word problems like, "If 4 friends are eating dinner and Megan is cooking shrimp, and Daniel is allergic to shrimp, how many shrimp meals should she make?" To which she quickly replied, "3 because Daniel can't eat the shrimp, so don't make him a shrimp meal."

I then decided to throw in a thinker and see how she navigated it. "If you have 9 people eating dinner, and your recipe makes 3 servings, how do you use the recipe?" She sat there for a minute or two thinking things over. Then she said, "You double 3 it." Even though I knew what she meant (triple the recipe), I asked her, "Which is it, double or triple?" "You use the recipe to make 3 servings. Then you use it again to make another 3, and then you use it again to make the last 3." All that from a 6 year old. And to show that unschooling isn't unlearning, I have never formally sat down with her and explained how to divide 9 servings by 3 servings. She was able to rationally think through the situation and what she would do if she was in that predicament. That led into discussing how to just triple a recipe, rather than make it 3 separate times (which she can do if that floats her boat). She said, "I know, like if it says 1 cup of flour I would use 3 cups."

So stupid little demon of doubt, you've been squashed, you hear?! Don't come poking your ugly little face around here, because my kids are learning what they need to, when they need to, and they are able to think things through on their own accord, which is more than forced memorization will ever do!