I’ve been thinking a lot over the past year about the concept of unschooling.

I know that unschooling means different things to different people.  To me it simply means self-directed education.

Even though I am quick to link myself to the unit study approach, I believe I’m an unschooler at heart.  I try my best to supply the resources for my children, but I give them a choice in the matter.

This is why we do not always have a unit study going.  Sometimes we’re busy learning about Stan Lee or Japanese anime’, or graphic arts. 

Time 4 Learning has beome a great tool in our unschooling toolbox.  It’s so easy to use and it’s so fun!

Wednesday I had my 3rd grader and 4th grader work from their Sonlight language arts and then do the other subjects on t4l. The newly revamped Sonlight LA program focuses on being a good writer. My special needs son prefers t4l learning LA because he doesn’t have to come up w/ the answer on his own, he gets to choose the answer. And he doesn’t have to write! He feels the same way about math!

I would like to have them do some Sonlight LA more regularly, but I love though that if things get hectic, I can depend again on t4l LA.

Also, I signed up for a free month of Pokemon learning league for my neighbor’s grandson(age 11, almost 12). My kids never watched the show, but this kid loves it. Everyday I let him do one lesson of t4l and then the other subjects on the Pokemon site. Anything to help the medicine go down, I say. He has some learning differences, too. I just love hearing the Pokemon characters teach what he has already been taught on t4l w/ a “Pokemon” spin to it. I hope it really reinforces the lessons for him.

My daughter who is a first grader is doing awesome. I tended to let her just listen in to lessons as she wanted to, many times skipping activities I had planned just for her. Sometimes she would just play in her room or maybe watch a movie or play on the computer while I tended to the other kids. Now she gets on t4l and does the most lessons and the most subjects of all my kids!  We were all telling my husband Wednesday night what a hard worker she is. I am so glad; and she is very proud of herself.

Hi, I’m Lisa! 

My husband, Tim and I have been married for 21 years and have five children.  We currently homeschool four of them.   They are 17g(next week), 13b, 10b, 6b and 2b years old.  

We are closing in on the end of our 10th year of homeschooling. The years have flown by!   It has been hard, easy, scary, fun, challenging, but always….real.

We chose to home educate mainly for Biblical reasons in the beginning.  Being Christians, we wanted to add Godly principles to our children’s education.

After a short while, we realized we were also dealing with dyslexia and dysgraphia in our oldest child.  So, our story and our reasoning changed a bit-still Christian, but more. 

Now our homeschool also covers a language/developmentally delayed fantasy/sci-fi fan , one “easy breezy” artistic child, a very bright, possibly ADHD computer freak and the baby-our medical miracle heart baby!  Whew….

Our 6 year old is currently using T4L and is doing great!  We hope to add our 1o year old soon and then our 13 year old will squeak in before he gets too old.  Oh, how I wish I had T4L back in 1998….

That’s our story.  I hope to get to know you all and chat about all those things that make us who we are; so different and yet, so very similar…

My boys have started blogging… Yup, thats right…   They are now part of the blogging community.  Each boy approached me and asked if he too could have a blog.  I have had one for several months and it has become a sort of family “joke” .  “Tracy did not tell you what was going on?  Didn’t you read the blog?”  The boys have heard and seen the blog for a while and have decided that they wanted one.   I could not hold them off any longer.  I wanted to wait until t4l got a blog for kids but this is going to work fine now.

I told them it was their responsibility and that they would have to keep it up and they would have to  post often if they wanted comments and they wanted people to keep going back to it.

Quentin surprised me first when I went to put photos on that he asked me to put on.  I saw that he wrote something about T4L on his site.  Zachary followed with putting a poem that he said is now his “favorite” on the site.  I encourage originality but am happy that Zachary is at least posting something and keeping up with it!  Zachary is all about the poems on the T4L site and he has to read me each one that he comes across.  He has a few printed off and they are hanging on the wall next to his computer.

I hope that their blogging helps with their grammar, punctuation, spelling, and writing.  In Zach’s case I hope that it helps with his self confidence.  It will be interesting to see where they go with it and how much T4L is mentioned and how many references is made to T4L.

And a side note…. Quentin informed me today that he wants to go to S. America.  Why you ask?  from him: “It sounds like a neat place and I was learning about it on T4L.”

I just never imagined getting so much from a curriculum!  Thanks again guys!