Unschoolers who go to school

Both of the girls, and Little Man too, are free to learn at their own pace. They are not forced to sit and do "school". Spy Girl has deadlines to meet for different things, but that's just like in life with meeting deadlines for commitments you've made, or for a job you have. Reading is learned at each kid's pace. Spelling is learned from sounding out words, or listening to mom slowly pronounce the word (instead of mom just spelling it), and through being given spelling words every now and then, especially when some obvious patterns in misspelling arise. Math is learned by Princess exclaiming the answers to word problems she came up with and figured out on her own, like, "There will be 5 apples left because we have 8 and we're eating 3 right now!" They each have a math notebook to do different problems, like skip counting, multiplication, division or whatever else they want to work on in math. It is a way of tracking progress, rather than making them learn anything. Same thing for science.

So if we just live life and don't "school" them, why does the title say, "Unschoolers who go to school"? Well, both girls attend a Korean elementary school 2 days a week for half day. Yes, Princess wanted to go to a Korean school all of her own accord! She's gone for a total of 5 days so far. At lunch Spy girl was using her chopsticks to make and name the Korean letters, Princess then took the chopsticks and put them in the shape of ㅅ and said, "she-ut" (ut like in put the book down). Wow. For those of you who do not know my middle child, this is huge. She is very particular and stubborn, and wanted nothing to do with being in Korea for the longest time. If we were staying another year she would be speaking Korean I'm sure. But, as is life, once she is accustomed to the idea of living here, we are getting ready to move. C'est le vie. At least she will be a little sponge for the last few months here.