How We Prepare Our Unschooling Days

hi friends and welcome back to our channel in today's video i will be talking about how i prepare our unschooling days let's get into it i have to be honest with you guys i have been putting this video off for a long time simply because it is almost impossible to share with you in one video how i prepare for unschooling in the same way that it's almost impossible to show you in just one video what unschooling looks like because one day can look very different to the next so i've decided to approach today's video by just giving you some top tips some advice on how i generally approach our unschooling preparation but to also show you some physical examples of what that looks like and make sure to stay tuned to the end of the video because i have something really special to do with prepping and stirring to share with you guys so on to my tips of what i do on a daily basis to help prepare for our unschooling journey if however you are interested in how i plan the entire unschooling year then i shall pop a card up here because i did a video on how i prepare my unschooling year so i will always first and foremost follow my children's passion and any sounds that they make about things that they're excited about or interested in or things that they're reading about and i will squirrel away those ideas and remember them and that would be my starting point for anything that i'm going to be looking for in terms of preparing for future days an example of that is that finn has recently started making sounds about things to do with history so we've played a few games trivial pursuit being one of them where there's been some history questions and it seemed to have sparked a little bit of curiosity in him um so in my mind i was okay that's obviously something he's quite intrigued by so i made a note and that was when i then i did a little bit of research and i came across the program horrible histories for which he is now completely obsessed so from that one little moment during a game that i just noticed his curiosity i realized that that was something that may just be of interest to him so i wrote that down did some research and then i was right so he absolutely loves that program now he's now got a few history books and he's as much of a history buff as i am or from just hearing that wonderful question so sometimes just talking communicating playing with your children they will make sounds or you know you'll talk about something that they don't know about they might just be intrigued about and those are the things to pop down in your notepad for future when you're in the evenings and you're trying to find some things that might be of interest to them another example of that is that pops is really into dance she always has been but she's particularly getting into um fashion design at the moment and i thought marrying the two would be a lovely project for her so um i sort of had a little browse around at different things that might be suitable and she is now going to be designing her own tutu so that's going to combine her love of sewing her love of fashion design and also her love of dance so it's about really getting to know your child getting to know all the things that just make them tick and that will give you the best opportunity to realize what sort of things it is that you can offer for them so i guess that is my top tip really is to get to know your children as best you can because just by being together you will really understand the things that make them tick um the things that they will get excited about or indeed the things that they're curious about that they don't know about that you might be able to offer some help with so you know get yourself a little notebook or a phone that you can pop some notes in and just drop these things down because they can just be little throw away comments like i said with the game of trivial pursuit it was just a question about tudors and um he's got this um history timeline um and he just spent sort of an hour or so just looking at that and just seemed really curious so it's just those little moments that you know might get lost perhaps if you're not really intentionally there with your children just conversations they can spark so many ideas of interest and that is your best weapon at being prepared for unschooling because you are then supporting everything that they are curious about and giving them all the armor they need in order to face it basically the next thing that i do is i get prepared with just a generalized list of things so that will be things like netflix lists i will have a look through different shows that i think might be of interest to them you guys are brilliant to always share things on facebook and instagram um that i think yeah that would be great i think they'd like that um other things that i would do is obviously go through pinterest i might put in things like space or history ideas or science projects just little things that you know embroidery whatever it may be that i just think that might be fun christmas crafts and then i get together these boards of just loads of ideas we've got really lovely lego board at the moment so it's just all these things that if there's that quiet moment you think oh what are we going to do now or if you know today seems to be that like lego is a flavor um flavor of the day then we you know i give them those ideas then so having that sort of um back list of items you know oh mum i feel like cozying up on the sofa okay great let's have a look through my netflix list or you know oh i feel like doing science today or you know mommy i'm a scientist or whatever it may be then you'd be like great i've got my list and you're prepared you don't have to do all that sort of trawling through that you would do that takes up so much time and you know you can quite easily get lost with you know your agenda but if you're doing it preparing it before you are sharing it with your children then you've got this lovely list of things that can get them excited um and support any question that may come up another example of things that i will build and screw squirrel away is i will go through our library catalogue and look at different things that i may be able to order for the kids in certain series that they may be interested in already or looking up and researching other book series that might be similar to ones that they've already enjoyed um and then obviously looking up topics and things so i could for example grab a bunch of books on a specific topic and then offer it to them in a streaming environment which i shall get onto uh shortly in the video but um just basically gives them that sort of big selection um of books all around one topic just to get them really involved and excited about the things that they're about to learn about also i spend a lot of time researching either seeing things on instagram and facebook or google searching or asking around in my local home ed facebook groups um about games and things like that that might be suitable for a specific age group i know there's quite a few facebook groups that are dedicated to either sort of activities for home editors or games for home editors um so if you have something in particular your children love we are really into board games at the moment then you know you can join a specific group that will just give you loads of ideas that you may not have thought of or give you really good reviews sometimes i'll just troll through amazon and just look at the reviews of certain games to see what you know what's great and what's not um and then i have those in my little list as well so if it's something that is a birthday coming up or a treat maybe then we might get the game or if i've already done the research and then i'm in the charity shop and i think yes i know that that's a great game i know that it's worth spending some money on we quite often like to change with the seasons i know a lot of you like to live seasonally too so we will quite often try and squirrel away items that are relevant to specific things that happen in the year so that could be christmas obviously that's coming up now so a lot of our activities are related to you know making christmas gifts and making the home feel festive the other things that we will do will be season changes so from you know summer to autumn that sort of thing so i will make sure that in my pinterest boards or in my printouts or whatever it is that i'm preparing i have you know scavenger hunts or things that are relevant to the season change so that we can really celebrate that time of year speaking of printouts we have a couple of folders um that over the years we have collected nice printouts that have just sort of sparked a bit of interest at that point or just ones that we know that are going to be particularly popular with them we then pop them into the folders and we leave them there almost as a sort of strewed items that they are there whenever they choose we never ask them to do worksheets it's always if they have asked for something in particular that we will then print it out or we will just offer them like i said seasonally there's a bunch of christmasy worksheets here if you want to do it this month that's great um and yeah so that's just there for them and quite often they'll go through sort of phases they'll sort of forget about them for a few weeks and then they'll do one and then that's it they're just like really into it they want to do loads i've had a lot of you ask me about worksheets we where possible try and get free worksheets but some of the um some of the favorite ones that we have and that we use are from twinkle we actually got a free subscription during lockdown and we had used them previously when we were sort of very regimented home education um and sometimes they do free ones they have some really nice bits and bobs there and then we also like the playmobil free printables if you're going to playmobil.co.uk they have a play section um they've got those activities and printouts there and we've just recently found some printouts at learningresources.co.uk i believe i will make sure to link those down below for you they're all free um but you know with with the lines of unschooling it's always got to be your child's um choice and uh obviously never want to push anything like that on them because that's um kind of goes against the ethos that they are then in charge of their learning journey and you might find some resistance if you're sort of suggesting it as opposed to them um asking for it but yeah by all means obviously share worksheets with your children and say you know these are here if you want to do them and quite often children will be like yes that looks like loads of fun with the same mindset as the worksheets i quite often like to have everything that they could need to hand so for me that is a really important part of our preparing is making sure that their learning space their home whichever it is whether you've got a dedicated room or just you're just using your whole home that everything that they may need in order to full power go ahead with their unschooling journey is to hand so by that i mean making sure that all their paper and pens are something that they can reach obviously if you have really young children then you're going to want certain items not accessible to them for example scissors um but yes we make sure that all of our craft items lego board games you name it they are all in a place where they can just go straight to and grab it all of their um supporting resources like their weighing skills um sun timers everything is there so if they have a question or they want to research something or they just want to create something there's nothing stopping them they don't need to ask me first they can just go and grab it so i think that's a really really important part of being prepared for unschooling is just making sure that you are giving them everything at their fingertips basically so that that doesn't hinder you if you're doing other things um it doesn't hinder them if they're in the flow and you then don't have to sort of question it like why do you need that you know what's that for is that gonna make a mess they just go for it they're just doing their thing and then you know deal with the chaos afterwards i mentioned in our other unschooling preparing for the year video um about a national calendar now we don't use this all the time but it is something that i have on my phone that if we have a day where we just kind of haven't really got any inspiration which i have to say is very few and far between because quite often they already have an agenda before they've even got up in the morning but sometimes you just want that sort of like um what are we gonna do today and you notice that it's national pancake day for example or you know national send a gift day whatever it may be i think those are just lovely little ways a bit like sort of honoring the season changes it's having those little celebrations where you may have not been doing anything particularly exciting but you know now you're going to have pancakes it's going to make a pancake party or you're going to have a tea party there's so many national days guys there's like national splash and a puddle day national you know wear a curtain on your head day that's not one of them but they are some of them are really bizarre and fun um and they just spark a little bit of joy you know just some little fun ideas you weren't you wouldn't have done before you wouldn't have thought about i will try and link the national calendar down below the one that i use um but yes just a bit of fun and you might find you then have a little bit of a crazy afternoon that you perhaps wouldn't have had before i think one of the lovely things about doing some preparation for unschooling is that you are offering gifts and not only offering gifts but you're then investing yourself into things that you think that they're going to enjoy which means your enthusiasm and your excitement when you're offering these things are like the same feeling of giving a gift and that's contagious so when you're like hey kids i just found this really amazing pin on pinterest i cannot wait to share it with you they're like oh wow yeah so it's that sort of like um contagious um sharing of something that makes you kind of fizz and as excited and like yes and that is just going to simply make them like open books they're going to be like yes mum is well excited about this this sounds great um you know in the same way if you're positive about anything it's going to rub off on your little ones so i think being prepared with lists and games and pins and shows and all those other things by giving your time to it and preparing some things for them to do it doesn't have to be all day every day you know that's not realistic and it would probably hinder the unschooling journey if you did just constantly throw things at them but by having these little gems every so often it's a bonding experience because something you've found for them they feel like oh mum has done this for me um but it's also really exciting because i get excited like oh my god i know they're going to love this and then that rubs off on them and then obviously it turns into this lovely experience and a happy memory one of the other things that i like to do to be prepared is to make sure that when we go out and about i have specific items in my bag now that will usually be maths items because my two really love to just use masks when we're out and about so that's just make sure we've got a tape measure at least one pen and paper sometimes some chalks in a little bag um some string for like measuring around things uh what else do we like to take um obviously my phone i've got a calculator they like stop watches they like to have races when we're out um and then just little notebooks and things like that so that they can just drop down like oh my goodness i've seen like 10 red cards today mummy and then they do like a little tally chart and they can do a bar graph when they get home it's just little things like that that making sure that you're prepared before you go out you've just got some extra items with you that you wouldn't normally take you're going for a walk to the park you know let's take some chalk today and just measure out some giant dinosaurs on the pavement you know that sort of thing just adds an extra element to their learning journey makes a little bit more fun gives you something a little bit different to do than just standing around in the park and it gives you a focus sometimes when you're out and about it's nice to have something that you know you can talk about okay so lastly i want to talk about strewing strewing is something i didn't know about before we started unschooling and if you don't know what it is i should give you a quick um description now so that you're not thinking i'm completely crazy um basically strewing is when you offer items to your child it's usually based around one specific topic but not necessarily um and you sort of like leave them there as an invitation to play uh without any sort of coercion or any you know we're going to do this now you sort of leave it there for them to just suddenly peruse and go oh what's this this is new this is exciting um sort of a bit like montessori when you leave out items for them just to explore themselves um yeah it's like uh an invitation to play that's how i like to um describe it i am going to show you some examples of what that looks like because we do these a lot because my two absolutely love waking up in the morning and having just something different even if it's the same things that they have but put in a different way they just love that sort of like oh what are we doing today mummy so some of our favorite ones of these are maths related it's one of their favorite ways to do maths so i would leave out lots of maths resources so for example we would have weighing scales we would have tape measures obviously we would have paper and pen for them to drop things down sometimes we have balance scales little counters sometimes we'll use food items like rice or pasta other times i might leave something specific out for them about a particular type of math so we might leave a table of fraction items out for them to enjoy or we might leave some maths books for them to enjoy with some tape measures and some teddies so they could um you know it's just a gentle suggestion they could perhaps measure the different teddies but you know that game may may turn into something different it may be that you know there suddenly the teddies are poorly and the tape measure becomes a head bandage you know that's the beauty of unschooling there is no rules or restrictions they can literally flow with all the items you share with them and they will surprise you so much by the things that they come up with and that is something to be celebrated and not feared don't worry if they're not doing the things you're expecting them to do because the beauty of it is that they will find their own way and they will learn so much more that way other invitations to play are things like bookish play so we will have a lovely book that they just love it's beautiful it's very engaging it looks quite artistic it will then inspire some sort of a project we had this lovely book sent to us from um quarterbooks it's called ways to say i love you and it just inspired this idea of me i'd seen it on pinterest and it just instantly came into my mind when we read the book it was basically they created these little love bug jars and so they decorated these old jars into little bugs and then inside the jars they wrote down all the different things they loved about each other and they've still got them on their bedroom window still now and they will every so often write new things and just pop it in when they're feeling just super loved up and then the other one gets to pull them out whenever they're just feeling a bit low or they just want a little you know pick me up and they get this lovely little message from their sibling about why why they are loved so much other simple ideas for invitations to play can be small-world sensory plays you get dinosaurs or little characters and some sand or it could be an ice water play melting the ice with little characters inside i mean there are so many options guys and this is another reason why i have so many pinterest lists because you can just literally put in sensory world small world bookish play all these lovely tags that are there to help you find these fantastic ideas for your little ones one of my favorite things to do with streaming is always centered around books so that's why i said about having the library books list or sometimes i try to go to the charity shop and get a big collection of books and i would just leave them out for them to enjoy they don't have to be of the same topic sometimes just having a selection of new books there is inviting enough but sometimes if there is a theme to the books that i've chosen i will then add in little parts as well for example like pine cones if it's autumn or a specific teddy that i feel might resonate with that story just a lovely um a set of items that will then support that little project so with books at the heart of everything that we love i know you guys are going to love this next thing that i'm going to share with you too my sweet friend ginny has created a wonderful website called read create play where she creates bookish play subscription boxes she is so passionate about books and children's education and these subscription boxes that she puts together are simply beautiful she goes above and beyond to find tales that are not your average book that you would just find on the bookshelf they are beautiful stories that i've never even heard of before and they are so magical and wonderful and the activities that she comes up with are so thoughtful and my two absolutely loved this box i have included some footage of the children opening this box so you could just see how magical it is to be given such a wonderful gift the children have loved the story inside this book great choice jenny thank you and the activities have just been so much fun the beautiful thing about these subscription boxes is there are so many options for you guys you can order individual boxes or you can order a 12-month subscription there are also choices for quarterly boxes or bi-monthly boxes and they also come in different age categories too she has a picture book box which is ages three to six this box will come with a beautifully engaging picture book as well as crafty activities and also some handy hints on how to further explore your books the next box is the one that we have that you can see on this video guys it's ages 6 to 12. these books can be fact or fiction and obviously include a lovely creative activity plus there's project inspiration and links and ideas for other bookish play and coming soon to her website she has something called the family feast which is a special occasion hamper which i'm so excited about ginny has kindly offered us a voucher code for you guys so the first five of you that are quick enough to get over and get your quarterly subscription you will receive 10 pound off using the voucher code that i shall pop in the description i will obviously also in the description leave all of ginny's amazing social media accounts her website all the information that you need to go and get your amazing subscription box what a beautiful idea for a gift for christmas and the perfect thing if you have family asking what shall i get your little ones for christmas you'll be like i'll have a 12 month subscription to recreate play please it's just the perfect sort of present that just keeps on giving and what lovely happy memories that can be created from all of these lovely activities that ginny has put into the boxes be sure to head over there now if you want to be one of the lucky ones to get that discount code i know they will be snapped up very very quickly i hope you enjoyed today's video guys i hope it's given you some ideas on how to bring a little bit of organization into your unschooling journey how to perhaps create some lists that help you guide your little ones towards things that you know they're gonna find exciting um yeah share with me down below things that you guys like to do when you're planning your unschooling journey i'd love to know i'm always open for new suggestions i hope you're having a fantastic week as you know we're not sticking to a specific upload schedule so make sure that you are subscribed and turn the notification bell on if you want to be notified of our future uploads and we will see you guys in the next one thanks for stopping by 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Channel: Real Family Journey

Views: 7,151

Rating: 4.9763312 out of 5

Keywords: unschooling, unschool, unschool kids, unschool mum, homeschool mum, homeschool mom, homeschooling, homeschool, home education, education, life learning, world schooling, Fuji XT3, Fujifilm X-T3, unschool parents, unschooling uk, home schooling, unschooling family, unschooling mum, schooling, unschooling life, unschooling math, unschooling blog, un-schooling, unschooing, unschooling support, slow living, inspiration for simple living, slow living lifestyle, unschool family

Id: aTiL29oDlz4

Length: 22min 36sec (1356 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020