To School Or To Unschool? By Susan T Roberts

Many parents feel passionately about giving their children the best and having the freedom to raise their children the way that they believe is right. This often shows itself in the causes that a parent will fight for, and also in the decisions that parents will make even when they go against the grain of society. Home schooling is a practice that is born out of parents’ desire to give their children a very specific type of education, as opposed to that of the local school system. A parent might choose to home school for religious reasons or for other more unique family circumstances.

It is no secret that many parents are dissatisfied with government schools or the government and local school system values. Therefore they choose to home school their kids in an attempt to protect and pass on their values. The decision to home school children is nothing new. Home schooling has been around since the United States was first formed. Although in the 21st century home schooling would be considered the less conventional way of educating children, it is traditional in many ways.

Although home schooling can give children a less pressure-filled education, most homes follow a specific curriculum, even if very loosely. In most States in the USA, home schooled children are tested on a regular basis (usually annually) to ensure that they are on par with other children of the same age group that attend conventional schools. This forces parents to at least have loose guidelines as to the subjects they must cover with their children and at what level these things must be explored each year.

Unschooling is a method of teaching children that derived from home schooling. With this method, parents basically use every day life as a classroom and as the catalyst for the day’s lessons. Unschooling freely allows any activity to be a teaching moment. Families basically allow their child’s curiosity to guide the subjects that they explore each day. Parents that use this style of teaching, speak about visiting a sausage factory with their child after they began to ask questions about where sausages come from. It is a method that apparently never leaves children bored.

Educator and advocate of home schooling, John Holt coined the phrase ‘unschooling’ in the mid-1960s. Around that time, he published a book entitled, ‘How Children Fail’. Holt and his writings have been very influential in promoting the idea of home schooling and for the increasing popularity of the unschooling style of home school education. His teachings are challenging and always leave home schooling parents with the question, ‘To school or to unschool?’

Unschooling sounds like a very ‘cool’ way to educate children and it sounds very laid back and ‘happy’, however traditional educators have many questions and doubts about this way of educating children. First of all, they feel that every day life does not provide adequate enough intellectual challenges to help unschooled kids compete with their peers at traditional schools. They also doubt whether these children can compete with a child that is being challenged at high levels both scientifically and technologically.

As innovative as unschooling sounds, it seems that it can only be successful if it is done with certain boundaries in place. Unschooled children should not be placed at a disadvantage, they should be able to compete with other children their age. More importantly, although it is great to follow a child’s interests, there will be and should be certain subjects that must be taught whether children like them or not.

Resource: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=421518&ca=Parenting

Back to School Snack Box Help By David Kraft

With a new school year beginning, parents of kindergartners and younger children will soon be faced with the task of supplying snacks for some sort of activity at school. In the case of you kindergartner, the 'snack box' is a largish tub that has a lid. Each week, it goes home with a different child who brings it back on Friday full of snacks for the entire class. We were the 6th family on the list, so I asked my daughter what kinds of snacks had been brought in previously to get an idea of what to send it. I was surprised to hear that I'd be up against some pretty stiff competition.

According to my daughter, previous snack box goodies had included cookies, chips, candy bars and chocolate bars. At first I was skeptical of this report, but a call to the teacher confirmed her report.

To say the least, I was amazed. I understand that not all parents are aware of the growing obestity problem among today's youth because it doesn't effect them, but even I wouldn't allow my kid to eat these kind of 'snacks' on a daily basis. It simply doesn't matter if you have an overweight child or not - all of these products made from refined sugars are not good for kids. Sure, they're alright every once in a while, but not on a daily basis.

So what can you do? How can you convice the other parents of the class that they should be sending in healthier snacks? Better yet, how do you send healthier snacks? You can't make things at home anymore because of the potential for food born illnesses, so any snacks that get sent in for other children than your own need to be store bought. And, they need to be the kind of thing that kids will eat...which might be the hardest part of it all.

So, what I did was simple and seems to be something that other parents like. I got in touch with some other mothers in the class and brainstormed some ideas with them after sharing my concerns. One of my other children attended a weight loss camp a couple years ago, so I had a good number of ideas when we sat down to develop a plan. The hardest part was figuring out how to 'scale' the snacks for an entire classroom, but with a group of adults, we were more than able to figure it out. Once we had some ideas ironed out, we printed out a take home sheet that we gave to the teacher who then distributed it to the rest of the parents. Of course the teacher was on our side - she had been battling sugar snacks for years! Would you want to have 20 or so kids hopped up on sugar under your responsibility?

Here are some of the things we came up with. Some of these ideas won't work if there are children in the class with peanut allergies, so make sure you check with your child's teacher.

1) Yogurt covered raisins, cashews, and soy nuts mixed together like a trail mix

2) Strawberries and Cream: Sliced strawberries (or unsweetened frozen strawberries) and plain vanilla yogurt. For service, call a local restaurant and ask them if they'd be willing to donate some small 'take out' containers that the kids can use and check with your local deli or ice cream shop to see if they'll donate some small tester spoons.

3) Sugar or Toffee coated nuts and grapes. (Yes, there is some sugar involved here, but the proteins, vitamins, and Omega 3 in the nuts far outweighs the sugar).

4) Turkey and cheese rollups (these are essentially a piece of turkey from the deli rolled together with a small piece of mild cheese)

Keep in mind that these are snacks - not meals. They may not seem like a lot of food, but we're talking about 5-8 year olds here that have small stomachs, right? Let's keep it that way.

On another note, I mentioned above that some of the snack ideas I had came from when my older child attended a weight loss camp. If you have a child that struggles with weight issues, it is especially important that you do your part to make sure that 'snack time' is a healthy time of the day. And, if you really need some help, know that there are a lot of excellent weight loss camps for kids out there.

Resource: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=421515&ca=Parenting