Homeschool World Forum

I was considering this method, but in doing some research, it seems some kids have a difficult time transitioning to a high school/college classroom atmosphere with test taking.

I am concerned with this and wanted to get some feedback. Is anyone at this point? Did you do anything during the course of unschooling to avoid this transition time?

We don't totally unschool, but I never let my kids take standardized tests until they were 16 years old. They both got super-high scores, even on very their first tries.

Ramona

We do not unschool but are very relaxed in the elementary years. My oldest son started using formal curriculum in all his subjects when he reached the 7th grade and was able to ease into it with no problem. Hopefully the same will be true with the younger children.

Math is my weakest subject so we use a curriculum for that (Bob Jones until fourth grade and then Saxon). We use 100 Easy Lessons and A Handbook for Reading to learn phonics. Other than that we simply have the philosophy "Read something every day, write something every day." History and Science is purely "delight driven" at our house in the younger years. We study what ever interests the children at the moment. (Right now it is castles and nights so we are studying the midevil period.)

If you plan to continue unschooling, whether or not the child takes formal courses in high school will depend on the individual and what he/she wants.

I have a friend with three unschooled teenagers. One chooses to do formal courses at the local college while another works at a horse farm since that is her passion and she's less of a "school" type person. The youngest is still figuring out what he wants to do.

The point is that there's no hard and fast rule saying that unschoolers absolutely must make the transition in 9th grade. Unless you plan to stop using that approach.

Have you read about Laurie Chancey, the girl who is getting her doctorate and was totally unschooled until college?

http://www.chancey.info/index.html
http://homeschooling.suite101.com/artic ... nschooling

Interesting article. Thanks, Jan.