We took him out of school and I worked with him at home for the next two years using simple, short books on science and reading workbooks from K-Marts. I sat down with him and we worked on these books for an hour each day, including weekends and holidays. At age 8, he still could not read on his own in spite of his obvious intelligence.

Then one day a light went on in his head as we worked together; I could see it light up his face. Something came together in his brain and he suddenly understood what reading was. In the next year his reading level went from grade one to grade six. Unfortunately his math level didn’t keep up, so we ended up putting him in 3rd grade when he returned to school (a rural public school this time).

Once he had mastered the tools of the student trade, he took his school work very seriously as his business or job and was a mostly ‘A’ student all through grade school and high school and an all ‘A’ student through five years of college even though he never completed a degree.

I share all this to encourage you to not be too hasty in looking for concrete progress in your homeschooling. Sometimes a certain level of maturity needs to be reached before things you are presenting begin to make sense in a way your child can use. I’ve since learned that boys in particular are often not ready for formal schooling until age 8.

I intend to write about my idea for curriculum development for K-12 students in my next posting to my web log this coming Wednesday. I hope you’ll give it a read and let me know what you think.

Anything written by John Holt or John Taylor Gatto has just reinforced that for me and been very inspirational. Also, I belong to a great unschooling list at Yahoo Groups (unschoolqueendom) with an amazing group of women - one who has a grown daughter completely unschooled all her life.

And no, I don’t think unschooling has anything to do with raising super kids - at least it shouldn’t. To me it’s all about continuing to respect and trust our kids to know exactly what they need and to do it in their own time. And to keep their love of learning alive and never let them think that learning is something that has to be done or only happens at certain times.

Have you checked out the Unschooler’s Handbook? I loved it - down to earth, not preachy and it has some very reassuring antecdotes.