Friday’s were usually a day that came very quickly and we were all a bit tired. But with unschooling, our days are far more relaxed and it doesn’t necessarily matter if it’s Monday or Friday. On this particular Friday, though, Ethan was excited because a couple of his friends were coming over for a playdate.
Morning prep
Ethan cleaned his room in anticipation of his friends coming over. Usually, we would invite one friend over but since today was a reading break for public school students, we also invited another boy over to play.
A funny thing about Ethan since starting unschooling is his willingness to happily do things like cleaning his room. It may be because he has greater choice over what he does.
Dong Eun has noticed that Ethan seems more mature after the road trip and happily accepts tasks and chores.
While waiting for his friends to arrive, Ethan made book 19 of Adventures of a Piece of Paper.
He then read a book about the planets that he borrowed from the library yesterday.
Once he was done, he hung the Chinese lanterns he made to start decorating our place for his friends to see.
Excited about friends coming over
Just so show how excited he was that his friends were coming over, he also made signs for his friends to see. I think he was especially excited today because one of his friends is a new who hasn’t been over before.
While waiting for his friends to come over, Ethan watched some Khan Academy math videos. This one was about converting degrees Celsius in degrees Fahrenheit.
He also watched a video about testing solutions to inequalities. We’re not sure how much he completely understood what he was learning, but the fact that he was interested enough in this topic was another reminder that unschooling has been a great way for Ethan to expand his learning and follow his curiosity.
Friends
The first person to arrive is a boy from nature school who isn’t a homeschooler. He goes to public school but takes one day off a week to attend nature school. He’s the same age as Ethan and the two of them get along very well.
After playing chess, they made some more Chinese lanterns.
Then they went out to the beach to enjoy the mild weather.
Ethan found a sort of Fibonacci sequence in some concrete tiles.
At the beach, the kids had a fun time just enjoying the outdoors.
Back at home, Ethan and his friend made a comic book together. Ethan was the writer and Kal was the illustrator.
And after everyone was gone, Ethan printed out a math worksheet to practice solving equations. He likes to try new things and challenge himself.
So, this Friday went quite well. There was, however, a challenge when Ethan didn’t like the way one of his friends was touching things without asking for permission.
This set off a sequence of events where both boys were unhappy and Ethan expressed his feelings about that boy in a not so positive way. We had a talk with Ethan about how his friend is a couple years younger and maybe hasn’t had as much experience playing with other people’s things.
We mentioned that Ethan was just the same a couple years ago and that we have to try to understand and respond in a better way. Hopefully, the message sunk in but only time will tell.
When situations like this arise, it’s nice to be homeschooling because we can easily observe this type of behaviour and help Ethan learn. We liked it when his former teacher in public school would let us know of any situations with other kids, but we really had no idea what was really happening.
Anyway, let’s see how he does when we have playdates like this in the future.
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