| Self Guided vs Curriculum Based Education? By Jyotsna Tummalapalli |
| During one of our parent enrichment nights with our unschooling group, the focus was "Teaching Tools". I was able to see all of the curriculums that I have heard about so far...Oak Meadow, Live-Education...both Waldorf curriculums, Five in a Row and Sonlight. I was glad to see these in person, as I clearly don't want a primarily focused Christian oriented curriculum. I can see how we could gain alot from Charlotte Mason, and also from Five in a Row. But we would be careful to pick and chose the books that have limited Christian philosophy. After having seen Oak Meadow and Live Education, I feel we are in line with Waldorf Homeschooling. However, we don't want to use a curriculum all the time. We believe in the creativity and spontaneity of being a child, so we will use curriculum to make sure our children are getting the basic's in, but it will all happen in the frame of unschooling, or child led learning. The curriculum will be a resource to use...not the main focus for our child. We will start with the Oak Meadow First Grade this year. Oak Meadow's Waldorf philosophy is spiritually focused. Although children will be encouraged to celebrate some of the Christian holidays, they will also be encouraged to celebrate Jewish, Buddist and Hindu holidays and spiritual activities. Waldorf education starts with make believe, reading fairy tales, creating beautiful personal notebooks that reflect the childs work, music..especially the parent learning music to sing with the child, keeping a seasonal table..bringing things in from the outside to observe the seasons, and playing with the seasonal table. Artistic ability is highly valued in Waldorf education. Molding clay, knitting, painting, and coloring pens and crayons are just a few ways a child can express himself. Another important ideal of Waldorf education is to provide your child with natural materials to create beautiful, useful and real things. Together with the child, parents can help the child to make their own toys out of natural materials, like finger puppets from wool yarn, or using high quality bee's wax crayons to draw a picture. Also, avoiding plastic toys and rather using wood, wools and cottons for cars, balls and dolls. It is more natural. |
| In my personal opinion, the Waldorf way is the right way for my family in combination with unschooling. We thrive on spirituality, on natural materials, and a little bit of structure to make sure we are not going off in the wrong direction, but other families educate their children without curriculums. We hope to be like that one day, to shake loose the fears that we are not capable of educating our children without being tied down to an official education. I know many families who live very simple lives. They get up in the morning and head out to the backyard with their children. They tend to their gardens while their children play in the sunshine, with sticks and rocks, catching beetles and digging up earthworms, watching birds fly through the air, and running through the water hose getting sopping wet. They just play, and they are just being kids. Natural scientist who explore whatever they see. Through out the day, they read to them, feed them, and lets them play outside and they are homeschooling their children too. The children live a very gentle life, playing, smiling, laughing, doing what they want. When they write up their food co-op orders, they have the eldest child add up the numbers, and they are teaching them math. When they explore in the backyard, they are learning about science. When they read to their children, they are teaching them language, reading and grammer. When they come to the kitchen to help cook, the parents are teaching them life skills. They have lots of confidence in their children. I am told that is takes a few years for a parent to be comfortable with unschooling, because you need to believe that you are going down the right path, and in the end, that your children will learn. So do you take a self guided path such as unschooling? Or do you go for a curriculum based education for your child? Or do you educate your child with both philosophies? It is all up to you. You know your child better than anyone. Jyotsna Tummalapalli |