What Does Unschooling Look Like Today?

After breakfast, Asa and I play Scrabble in our pajamas. Mackenzie is at the dining room table making a claymation movie. In a few minutes, Asa and I will head to the Performing Arts Center where she'll be appearing in a teaser of Annie - a selection of songs and scenes - performed for about 200 - 300 people. After that, she'll go to her Mime class.

Mackenzie will head out just before noon to go to an internship he's doing with a man who has his own web design business. This has been a terrific opportunity for him to not only learn skills like HTML programming, but to see what it really takes for someone to run their own business.

After a late lunch, I'll take the kids to the homeschool resource center where they're both taking a 5-week short course. Mackenzie's is in web design from his favorite computer science teacher, Asa's is a craft class where they'll make and embroider a purse. Then Asa will go to her dance class and rehearsal for Annie. She more or less lives at the combination dance studio/theatre these days (lucky for us they are in the same building!).

Mackenzie will go to a gaming night tonight, it's a group of adults who play a wide variety of board and card games, from strategy to storytelling to whatever. He really looks forward to Thursdays because of this! I'll pick up Asa at 8:30 and Mackenzie closer to 10:00.

Not all of our days are this busy, in fact Thursdays are the busiest on our schedule right now. But the theme that runs through our days is interest-driven learning, interaction with a wide variety of people and places, and best of all an amazing array of people who have chosen to share their time, energy, talent, and teaching with these kids. From the director of the play to the computer science teacher to the guy who invited Mackenzie to the gaming night to the man who is mentoring him in web design to Asa's encouraging Mime and Dance teachers, their lives are filled with so many wonderful adults. I feel that we're very blessed. Some people see homeschooling as a mom at a kitchen table with her kids and their workbooks. In our case, it is an interaction with the world at large and all of its exciting possibilities.