From the Homeschool Front … Unschooling by Colleen Hroncich

In their early years of life, children learn to sit, stand, walk, talk, and scribble. They learn the names of people in their family. They’re insatiable learners—exploring their universes with endless curiosity. They do all of this without sitting in classrooms.

But once they turn 5 or 6, society seems to think they can’t or won’t learn independently anymore. Kids are put in classrooms at younger and younger ages. The nation’s largest teachers’ union wants the government to mandate full-day kindergarten for every 5 year old. How long before their call for universal preschool also becomes a mandate?

It seems that people have lost sight of the importance of free play when it comes to children learning. I first realized this when my oldest daughter was in school. We’d chosen a small, family-oriented, academically focused, Catholic school for our kids. While there was a lot we liked about the school’s atmosphere, I was troubled by the lack of free time for the children. With so much time structured, how would kids learn to cooperate, share, regulate their own behavior, and think creatively? 

Eventually we switched to homeschooling, in large part to gain control over our lives. We wanted more flexibility and more family time. We wanted our kids to become independent and to love learning. We didn’t want to replicate school at home; we wanted to embrace learning in our home.

I hadn’t heard of unschooling back then, so I described our approach as “eclectic.” I didn’t use a formal curriculum other than for math. My kids learned history through books, videos, trips to museums, and discussions. They learned to write by writing—blogs, letters, stories, and even books. My oldest entered essay contests for fun and won thousands of dollars and a trip to NYC—now the other kids follow her lead. They enjoy writing, which I think is at least partly due to the freedom they’ve had. 

Speech and debate has helped educate them in a number of ways. The research and writing skills they’ve acquired are transferrable to any field. Despite our casual approach to science in the lower grades, they’ve done quite well in college science classes as high schoolers. I think this is because they’re inquisitive and know how to think, research, and communicate. 

I now know that our approach to homeschooling is often called unschooling or child-directed learning. It focuses on actual learning rather than checking off the boxes of school. More and more people are beginning to embrace unschooling. There are even unschooling “schools,” where kids have access to things like labs, workshops, apprenticeships, and art studios.

In a typical school—with a rigid curriculum, emphasis on grades and standardized tests, and students whose parents might not understand the concept—it might seem tough to embrace the idea of unschooling. However, finding ways to give students some freedom amid all the rules and layers of bureaucracy can help them take ownership of their education. If we want creative thinkers and problem solvers in future generations, we need to give them some freedom now.

Colleen Hroncich loves that homeschooling allows her to learn right alongside her children. A published author and former policy analyst, Colleen’s favorite subjects are economics/public policy and history. She has been active in several homeschool co-ops and is a speech and debate coach.

From the Homeschool Front by Colleen Hroncich...100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know

I’ve always been interested in law, history, economics, and politics. So when I saw a book titled An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know, I was immediately intrigued. By a stroke of luck, I was in Washington, DC recently when the authors were giving speaking about their book and the multimedia platform behind it.

Randy Barnett, professor at Georgetown Law and Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and Josh Blackman, professor at South Texas School of Law, developed An Introduction to Constitutional Law to innovate how constitutional law is studied.

Purchasing the book gives you access to an online library of 63 videos featuring photographs, maps, and even audio from the Supreme Court that bring the 100 cases to life. Blackman says he uses the platform to flip his classroom; the students read the chapters and watch the videos before coming to class. Then he can focus class time on discussing the importance of the decisions and really digging deep into the issues at play.

The book is roughly chronological, but it’s primarily organized around key constitutional principles, such as enumerated powers, federalism, equal protection, and specific constitutional rights. Since it includes background and supporting information for each case, the program also provides a great history and civics education.  

The authors emphasized that the book is meant to be widely accessible. While it is great for law students, it is equally valuable for high school and college students. Given our participation in speech and debate, I correctly assumed my kids would be pretty interested when I showed them the book and the video library. We’ve only just begun digging into it.

Barnett describes the book as “an overarching story [constitutional law] about 100 individual stories [the cases].” He says the best way to understand the story, which starts at the founding and continues to the present, is to learn about them in the historical context in which they were decided. 

With most Americans lacking even basic knowledge about our constitution, this program could be an important step toward improving constitutional literacy. 

PS from izzit.org – Randy Barnett is one of the Constitutional experts in our new video, Becoming Equal Under the Law, which explores how the Constitution has changed over the years to give civil rights to more people. Watch it now!

Colleen Hroncich loves that homeschooling allows her to learn right alongside her children. A published author and former policy analyst, Colleen’s favorite subjects are economics/public policy and history. She has been active in several homeschool co-ops and is a speech and debate coach.

From the Homeschool Front … Online learning aids by Colleen Hroncich

Home educators today are incredibly lucky. Homeschooling is increasingly embraced by society; there are numerous homeschool clubs, co-ops, sports leagues, and more; and many colleges have adopted flexible admissions guidelines that allow them to evaluate homeschoolers individually. However, the thing that I am most frequently thankful for as a home educator is the internet. 

It never ceases to amaze me how many online learning options there are today, many of which are free or very low cost. The most well-known of these is probably Khan Academy, which includes thousands of videos covering math, science, history, civics, and more. These videos are great supplements to other curricula and are particularly helpful to students who are struggling in specific areas. Skill checks are built into the courses so students can focus on areas where they need extra work.  In recent years, Khan Academy has partnered with the College Board to produce prep courses for the SAT and AP exams.

There are also online options to help you learn or improve at a foreign language. Duolingo’s website and app allow you to learn a language for free. Many libraries subscribe to language-learning sites like Mango Languages – you just need to enter your library card number to create an account. Rosetta Stone, Babbel, and Rocket Language are some of the fee-based sites. While these online learning options won’t have the same structure as a language course in school, they can help you become conversational, improve your pronunciation, and build your vocabulary.

For students who are interested in computer programming, online options abound. Codecademy has free and fee-based courses in multiple computer languages. We haven’t tried code.org, which is free, but I’ve heard good things about it. Scratch and Scratch Jr. are geared toward younger kids to get them used to the language and structure of coding. Khan Academy also includes computer programming courses.  

If your older students are interested in history and civics, Hillsdale College has tremendous online courses at no charge. Offerings include U.S. History, the Constitution, Literature, and Economics. Liberty Classroom is a fee-based option that covers Economics, History (U.S. and Western Civilization), and logic. Many other sites, including banks and financial service firms, offer free or low cost financial and stock market courses.

Whether you’re a homeschooler or a teacher in a public or private school, these tools can open new horizons for your students … and for you. I’ve taken advantage of several online classes with my kids and on my own. These days the biggest problem is choosing which ones to take given the numerous options and limited time.

I’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to online learning options. If you have other suggestions of courses you’ve used, please share them in the comment section.

Colleen Hroncich loves that homeschooling allows her to learn right alongside her children. A published author and former policy analyst, Colleen’s favorite subjects are economics/public policy and history. She has been active in several homeschool co-ops and is a speech and debate coach.

From the Homeschool Front...Life Skills by Colleen Hroncich

Life skills. Way back in the old days, parents and grandparents passed life skills on to the younger generations. Basic carpentry, plumbing, home repairs, sewing, food preservation, and more were common knowledge to most people. Not anymore. These days it is a challenge to find someone with one of these skills – much less all of them.

Several years ago it occurred to me that neither my husband nor I had any of these life skills. How would we pass them on to our kids when we didn’t possess them ourselves? Moreover, with the school calendar ruling our lives, how would we ever find the time for the kids to learn them from someone else? This problem was one of the initial motivators in our decision to begin educating our children at home.

Of course, having the kids at home didn’t solve the problem of us not having the skills to pass on to them. For that we’ve had to use outside resources. Fortunately, in the homeschool world these skills aren’t so hard to find. Friends of ours have given our kids lessons in sewing, knitting, gardening, and construction. My son was able to help the contractor who finished our basement and learned how to frame walls, hang drywall, and install electrical boxes (although we won’t let him try that one on his own!). He and I went on to build beds for him and my daughter – we even added a bookcase headboard to his.

My girls weren’t too interested in carpentry work; the culinary arts appeal to them. They’ve taken classes in cooking, canning, and gardening. My oldest daughter takes on meal planning and preparation a few days a month, and her sister wants to follow suit. (I don’t like to cook, so it works for me!)

We still have a long ways to go before I can say my kids are proficient at these life skills. But at least we’re farther down the road than we were a few years ago.

Colleen Hroncich loves that homeschooling allows her to learn right alongside her children. A published author and former policy analyst, Colleen’s favorite subjects are economics/public policy and history. She has been active in several homeschool co-ops and is a speech and debate coach.