More Unschooling Magic

Aharon continues to drag the reader into my room every night at 10:24 or so, with just enough time before 10:30 to read.  Last night he read two pages.  His reading is not as fluent as a 2nd grader in "regular" school, but he's much faster than his older brothers.  The other day, while I was davening out loud, he came to look over my shoulder.  I slowed down and let him read the very last syllable, which he did.  He seems interested in getting his reading level to the point of being able to daven.

(Jack has stopped asking for Chumash, and Elazar and I are doing trup very spottily.)

Jack comes up for snuggle most nights in the early 10s, to get a snuggle before my 10:30 cutoff time.  Last night, I was hanging out in bed, talking to Chen, when he came in.  He asked what division was.

I explained it like I had explained it to Elazar about cookies and the amount of people who want cookies and to make it fair.  So we started with 15 and I said there are 3 people.  I gave him one of my hands so he'd have 15 fingers and could visualize it.

He spent a long time thinking.  A really long time thinking.  One might even say a ridiculously long time thinking. 

And he wasn't using my hand, and dividing into the obvious 3 equal parts.

What was he doing?

Eventually, he said "5."  That was right, and he was thrilled, and he asked for another.

Chen was extremely curious about how he had done it.  So we asked Jack to do the next one out loud, if he could.  To talk as he was doing it and to say what he was thinking. 

He was guessing what it might be, then counting by that number, to see if he ended up with the right answer.  So 24 divided by 6.  He guessed 4.  Then he counted.  4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24.  That was 6 jumps of 4, ending with the right number.  Had he started with 3 it would have been: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18.  Wrong.  We did a few more problems until Aharon came in to read.

A few things really struck me about this. 

• He LOVED it.  He got so much enjoyment from thinking about this and figuring it out.  It was something he was wondering, he came to me and asked me about it, and was rewarded with the pure joy of figuring it out, discovering it, thinking about it. 
  
• He took a really long time to think about it at every step.  He thought about what it means to divide.  He thought about how it might work.  He wrestled with how it works, and tried different things, and figured out a method of calculating it.
  In school, you don't have time to do that.  Firstly, you don't have time to wonder.  You are told what you are learning and that's that.  Secondly, you are told how to do it.  You aren't given the space and time to sit and really think things through.  You simply don't have the time to sit around thinking about how division might work.  You don't have time to play with it.
  
• Division is going to be really meaningful to him.  He will understand it on a deep, gut level.  It will be part of him.

Oh, and last night Aharon forgot the ך and I told him to practice the sofises, since he stumbles over them.  I know he works on them in his mind at random times during the day, because last week he came to me, eyes shining, and told me that he mastered nun sofis (ן).

I had stuck an aleph beis printout onto the fridge haphazardly a couple of years ago, because I felt that having it in sight might incline them to look at it, and definitely showed the kids that Hebrew reading is a value of ours.  Although the kids use the multiplication chart I have on the fridge frequently, I don't see the aleph beis chart getting a lot of use.

But apparently Aharon has been using it.  This morning he came over to me, and with his eyes glued to the chart, told me that he's working on the ך and the ף.

the tablet, rewarding for reading, and unschooling Hebrew reading

So Elazar just came over to me and asked me to do another line of Shema so that he can earn another hour of tablet.  He's only played on it for a few hours and he mentioned that it's already getting a bit boring because all the great games he was anticipating playing only have a few levels for free and it turns out he'll need to spend more money.  He also was quite upset about having to earn it for a Siyum when he is paying for it with his own money.  He brought up "Ploni Almoni" whose mother bought him a tablet AND gave it to him for nothing.  I valiantly tried to hold off but eventually the words "every family has different rules" and "when you are grown up you will make the rules for your household" came out of my mouth.

So as he is reading through his line in Shema, I started thinking about unschooling reading again.  It was an excruciating 5 minutes.  He is improving, he is remembering the letters and nekudos better, he's blending beautifully, etc.

As I look back at my blog posts about reading Hebrew, I hilariously discover that I have this same question every year at about this time.  Two years ago, Elazar learned the nekudos ridiculously quickly and efficiently.  I am just about positive (scary scary scary unschooling!) that he will learn to read Hebrew fluently in about a week when he wants to.  So why am I hocking him?  Why am I nudging a reluctant organism to do things his brain doesn't really want to do, when if I leave it alone, he will do it with joy and alacrity and it will take him a fraction of the time?

What the boys are up to

Elazar is 7, in 2nd grade.  He recently picked up the aleph bina again and asked me to review the nekudos.  He remembered most of them.  I started the page with the kamatz with each letter of the aleph beis with a kamatz underneath it.  He immediately grasped the concept of blending and zipped through the page.  He forgot about 4 of the letters, which I told him.  Over the next couple of days, he did the patach and the tzeirei very easily.  He still needed reminders of the kaf/chaf and the pey today.

Elazar wants a laptop for a siyum present and asked what can he learn in order to get it.  He asked if he can learn to read.  I said I'll teach you to read, but a siyum is for limud Torah.

Regarding his English reading, he plays some board game and has been reading some of the cards.

Jack will be 5 next month.  He's been asking to write recently.  He's been writing his name and other things.  He mainly writes at night during bedtime, but he's recently started writing during the day a bit.  Ari took Jack and Elazar to Avos U'Banim learning on Motzei Shabbos and said Jack knew the aleph beis better than Elazar.  Jack still needs to learn the sofises before his siyum.  The siyum will be a selection of candy from Oh Nuts to share with the neighbors (also homeschoolers).

Aharon is 3.  The book by his bed is Aleph to Tav by Yaffa Ganz.  I bought it many years ago when Sarah was young.  We were just reading it every night when I realized that Aharon knew the aleph, so I tried teaching him the next letter.  He is now up to zayin.

This is unschooling and I only do "schoolwork" with them when they ask.  Months and months can go by with no reading or writing.  Elazar is on a reading streak now, but I can't even remember the last time he was interested.  (Actually, I can probably check this blog.  In July he did some English writing and in June he did a bit of English reading.  The last time he did Hebrew reading was May, which was 6 months ago.  And the time before that was... hey, last November.  About a year ago.)  So he learned the nekudos for about an hour almost a year ago.  Then 6 months ago he reviewed.  Then last week he became interested again.  And now he can read Hebrew (though at this point we've done only 3 of the nekudos officially).  So far he is still doing one letter + vowel sound.  I'm going to go through the book in order unless he requests otherwise (let's say, he might bring me a bentcher or a Chumash and ask me to help him read from there).  When I spoke to unschooling boys who were grown up about their limudei kodesh experiences, they assured me that when the time came to get ready for their bar mitzvas, they were interested in learning to read and to leyn and to daven.  In our family, I guess it isn't really left completely alone, insofar as we have lots of aleph beis games and puzzles and some posters up around the house.  And whenever the kids ask to go to the candy store I always say, "Sure! As soon as you learn your aleph beis we will have a siyum from there."  (#~AlfieKohn)

unlimited media: it's not always like this, but sometimes it is

Jack, age 4, yells to me as I'm closing a drawer:  "I WANT that!!"

I look around.  There is his DS with a little cartridge next to it.  He must be talking about that.  I pick up the cartridge and hand it to him.  "No! Do it with me!" he says.

Okay.  Maybe he needs help. I pick up the cartridge and begin to insert it into the DS.  "Noooo!  Thaaaaat!"  He's pointing to the aleph-beis flash cards.

unschooling aleph beis writing

Elazar (age 6) came over to me with a blank piece of paper and a pen and said he wanted to write.  He asked for aleph beis, not the alphabet.  He said he didn't want "lowercase" (that's what he calls script).  I said in Hebrew we only write script, we don't write print in Hebrew.  So he agreed.

What was new about this activity is that I didn't write a whole row of "follow the dotted line."  Up until now, I gave him dotted lines for every letter.  This time, I just wrote the first letter dotted.  He chose to copy the rest freehand.  He didn't have that capacity the last time he sat down to write.

He did really nicely except he got a little confused in the middle of the gimels.  (And as he was writing them incorrectly, he was saying, "I'm sooooo good at these gimels!"  But alas).  I told him it's a line and a C, and he did the next one correctly.

He was tickled that a Vav is just a straight line.

unschooling limudei kodesh

It was Friday night and Ari went to shul, and I was looking forward to sitting down and relaxing with a book.

This was not to be.  Elazar pulled out his Chumash, and Jack pulled out a flip book with aleph beis given to us by a friend.  It has two books in it, and he gave Aharon one.

People often ask how to teach all the kids at the same time.  The fact is, I usually don't.  I usually teach each child individually, at different points during the day.  But Friday night was pretty much what most people ask about.  Elazar was reviewing Chumash.  Jack and Aharon were clamoring about the letters.  (Aharon, although only age 2, spent numerous hours a day watching Team Umizoomi and somehow learned all of the numbers.  So he has the capacity for letter recognition, and he kept asking me "What's this?")  Elazar then asked about rashi, and I started showing him inside rashi, but then went upstairs and pulled out the memory matching Rashi game that I have that has all the letters, and we spent some time matching rashi letters to print letters.  We were setting up the squares, and Jack kept undoing the set up, etc. etc.  He read the Hebrew word "רש"י" and saw it was the same in the Chumash.  He picked up one card and laughed, "This is a funny one!  What is this?"  And it was the aleph.  He thought that was wild and completely unexpected.  We went back to the Chumash and found a few alephs in rashi.  It's possible he might have done more, but Jack was crying that I wasn't helping him learn, and Aharon was also getting insistent.

I was basically exhausted at the end of the hour, when Ari came home.  It was a relentless hour of them pushing and pushing and insisting that I teach them.

One of the things I have found about unschooling that I really like is that the children are inclined to walk by it, see it, and pick it up.  In mainstream school, or at least my own personal experience of it, it was a rare phenomenon to pick up something that was school-y and want to learn it outside of being obligated to do it.  I really enjoy when my children don't see learning that way.  Although I spent many hours learning in school as a kid, I also equally wanted nothing to do with schoolwork when I didn't have to be there.  And I was considered a pretty self-motivated kid who loved learning.  I just really like when my kids want to learn just because they are interested in the subject, and for no other reason, with no other pressure, and no expectations, and no goals.*



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*Which reminds me of an article I reread last week about expectations being the enemy of creativity.