Whole Family Learning: An Unschooling Friday

It's been a long while since I have done a week-in-the-life-of-an-unschooling-family series, and I thought now was as good a time as any to start one. Partly I am starting now because I *think* the upcoming week will be a fairly typical one for this time of year, as spring classes end and we fall more easily into summer rhythms. But I am also starting this series today, on a Friday in June, to reinforce the point that whole family learning doesn't occur only at certain times in certain places with certain people at certain times of the year. Living and learning, for our family, are constant and continuous and completely seamless. We learn as we live, we live as we learn. Always.

Today's snapshots reveal some of the happenings in our corner of the world. Our Friday began with a full morning of homeschool soccer for the girls, my older in the first session, my younger in the second. My seven-year-old son had been participating in soccer up until a couple of weeks ago when he lost interest, deciding that he is, for now at least, done with soccer and onto basketball. Still, there is so much to do on Friday mornings at the soccer field when not playing the game. My boys are content to play soccer and soccer-ish games with the other kids not in class, and my older daughter typically brings some kind of craft or activity to share (as do others). We have been lucky this spring, with warm Fridays that allow us to linger at the field with friends long after the coach goes home.

Once at home, we all had a bit of midday down time. Inspired by Brian's recent goal to read as many classic books as possible, I grabbed Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. I have never read any of the Bronte sisters' books, or any Jane Austen, and those are now on my reading list--if I can pry myself away long enough from the stack of non-fiction that typically captivates me. (My newest non-fiction acquisition is Horace Mann's Troubling Legacy, by University of Vermont professor, Bob Pepperman Taylor.)

I read as my two-year-old napped on me and my nine-year-old daughter read beside me, my seven-year-old son read the instruction manual for his new electric guitar amplifier, and Brian and my five-year-old daughter checked on her beloved bugs.

Later in the afternoon, my oldest and I walked to our new community garden! We just found out a few days ago that we got off the long waiting list for a temporary (one-season) community garden plot here in the city. Hopefully it won't be too many more years until we get a permanent plot! But for now, we are so excited to begin planting in our 11x11-foot plot this weekend, with seeds and seedlings provided by good friends and local organic growers.

And now I had better go because I hear guitar music on my front porch, and my gang is outside playing with the neighborhood kids on this beautiful June evening.

Wishing you all a most beautiful start to your weekend! Please join me here again tomorrow night for An Unschooling Saturday.