Unschooling, Strewing and Unplanning
The other night I turned off my computer for the day, and settled down with my family to watch a movie… at least I tried to watch. My mind kept straying from Beauty and the Beast to Evernote. Then just as the beast demanded Belle join him for dinner, I had this ‘great’ idea’. Great? I don’t know what you’ll think of it, but it made me feel excited. I couldn’t wait to try it out. I reached for my computer, turned it on again and began experimenting.
So what is this fabulous idea? It’s all to do with unschooling planning. Unschooling planning? Yes, I know: Those two words don’t belong together. I don’t actually plan what my girls do each day. They just follow their interests and one thing leads to another… Learning is a wonderful adventure. But there are times when planning is required.
Whenever we apply to reregister as homeschoolers, I have to provide the education authorities with a learning program for my children, that covers the school syllabus. So how do I provide such a plan when we don’t actually know what we’ll be doing from one week to another? That’s where Evernote comes in. I thought of a way I can use Evernote to write a plan (I could call it an unplan!) which can be used for registration purposes, as well as be useful for us.
Now this is only an idea. I haven’t actually used it for homeschool registration so I don’t know if it will be acceptable. But I have used it with my girls and they like it.
I still haven’t told you how my idea works. I could just write about it but I thought it would be easier to explain my idea in a video. So that’s what I’ve done. I spent yesterday afternoon making another screencast tutorial. Shall I admit my tongue got into a twist so often it took me an awfully long time to record just what I wanted to say? I think I got there in the end, but it’s certainly not the best video ever!
In the video, I chat about unschooling, strewing, unplanning, registration and Evernote, as I show you my idea in action. As usual, time flew by and the minutes mounted up. I considered chopping out some of the video. But in the end, I just left it as it is. Please feel free to fast forward if it gets boring!
Thank you to anyone who takes the time to watch my video. And please stop by and share any ideas of your own.
So onto the video…
Update
Since writing this post, we’ve had a homeschool registration visit. The Authorised Person who came to see us was very impressed with my Evernote records. She liked my unplanning notebook. This idea worked!