Caleb working on his Blog.
Caleb, my 10 year old talkative, full of life, totally huggable youngest boy has started blogging!
I never would have guessed that blogging would bring him so much joy. He’s never liked to read or write much. He loves computer games so he’s familiar with the computer, but I’ve never seen him want to create so badly in his life! He shot out like a rocket yesterday wanting to take pictures and write about everything in sight.
THIS is unschooling in action. It’s so rewarding to watch the sparks that ignite in our children and watch them run with it like nobody’s business. No history of prodding from me about writing. No writing assignments. No forced reading. No forced grammar. No worksheets. He has never written a paper in his life, so I was surprised when he was able to get his thoughts down in such a comprehensable way. I shouldn’t be surprised though. This is how unschooling works.
We let our KIDS lead US. We allow them to follow what they love. We help them find avenues that will lead them to MORE. They trust in themselves. They trust us as their guides. They learn. With whatever it is that interests them at the moment.
Caleb was asking me about puncuation yesterday. I was telling him about periods, commas and question marks. He loved that and wanted to implement it into his writing!
I told him that in traditional grammar, we capitalize the first letter of a sentence and we capitalize proper nouns. He DIDN’T like this. He thought every word DESERVED to start with a capitol. So that’s what he did and I loved that he felt comfortable in making that decision. After all,  E.E. Cummings didn’t always follow traditional grammar rules. Jim Davis who wrote Garfield doesn’t use periods. So who am I, to force Caleb into changing it? I love that Caleb feels comfortable in making these kinds of decisions without regard to how it should be done. He knows how it’s most commonly done and for now has chosen to disregard it.
Caleb’s first blog post
Caleb has seen me working on my blog. He’s seen his dad work on his blog as well. Add to that we have a family photo website that he has always loved to visit. He’s watched us work on these things for years, but we’ve never told him he had to do it too. We’ve offered in the past, but he never showed an interest so we left it alone. My genious husband however, decided to buy web domains for everyone in the family years ago, just in case. So it was super easy to get Caleb up and running.
Where did all this inspiration come from? Well, he has another unschooling friend that lives in Michigan that writes a blog. When Caleb discovered this, he visited his friend’s blog and was enamored. I could see the wheels turning in his head, connecting dots and realizing that he too could start one of his own.
He has also recently been experimenting with photography. When he realized he could combine photography with blogging, he was thrilled. So with camera in hand he set out to take photos of his dogs which led him to write a blog post about them.
I posted his first blog post on Facebook and some of my awesome friends visited and commented. You would have thought it was Christmas morning when he saw those comments. He approved them right away and instinctively wanted to reply. “I want everyone to know I care about their comments,” he said.
He’s learned more about writing and grammar in the last two days of blogging than he could in a classroom for a year. Why? Because he sees the value in it. Because he is INTERESTED in what he is doing. The motivation comes from a place within him that wants to create and share with the world. He values expressing himself and wants to do it better each time. That, my friends, is where we want our kids to be. Happy, enjoying themselves, engaged with the world and yes…learning.