If you are following me on my “Blog’ journey, you read my post on De-Schooling and how important this step is to de-program from the public school. It is for them to forget they have to learn. De-Schooling allows them time to want to learn! I want the boys to enjoy learning, I want them to retain what they learn because it was exciting to learn.

I don’t know about everyone’s kids, However I do know my Grandkids and the two older ones don’t enjoy doing school work. Collin went from A’s & B’s to D’s & F’s this year. He just wouldn’t do the work. And the teachers were like either turn it in or get a zero. She didn’t care, she had too many kids in her class to worry about just one.

Matthew has been struggling from day one in school. Any amount of homework was a fight. I mean a 7/8 year old in a full out, hours of crying, pleading, stubborn, slobber, drooling, will power fight. What would or should take him 30 minutes, takes two to four hours to complete and he never retained any of it. Nothing! This was a pointless process for a school, that kept talking about failing him. However they never did, they just keep allowing him to pass grades.

Every day when I picked them up from school, I would say…So boys, how was school today? There reply was “Fine” So boys, what did you learn today? There reply was “I forgot” I would say, What? you already forgot what you learned today? response “Yea” So me trying to keep the conversation open, Umm, OK, I’m not sure how that is possible! Then silence from the back of the van. They had no desire to communicate. School was too much for them, time to forget about the day for them.

Before I quit my job, and even when Krystal was in school. It was expected for kids to go to public school. This process achieved two things in my mind. 1. To teach our kids, and 2. To watch our kids when we went to work. Now come on don’t tell me that’s not one of the perks achieved when you send your kids to school! School was something we just did. And during the summer we was ready for them to go back to school.

I never noticed this was happening until I started spending more time with the G-Sons and realizing how school had changed them over the years. Collin and Matthew used to love to learn until they were forced to!

The school has a plan, a step by step curriculum they have to follow, to achieve a certain goal, that they need to achieve by the end of the of the year. There is hundreds of children in the school system. They are a for profit company, their budget is per child. I’m sure more goes into the budget process but maybe not.

However my concern right now was to De-Program the boys and get them back to learning because it is fun to learn. So we didn’t do anything the first 3 weeks since school ended. However on the third week Matthew had pulled out his science experiment box and was trying to do some experiments on his own. The three younger kids do ABC Mouse, most of the time I had to encourage them to work on it, however lately they have been asking me to log them in. Looks like they want to learn more, maybe De-Schooling is working.

Week 4 Collin was spending almost all day on his Switch playing games, so I decided he needed to do something else. However, De-Schooling is about forgetting about anything to do with pushing them to learn. It is very hard for me. You know after being conditioned my whole life that we needed to learn in the traditional way.

I felt like I needed to inject something else in Collins routine. So I told Matthew and Collin they needed to do 30 minutes of something. I told them to do Kahn Academy, but later on I allowed Matthew to do ABC Mouse and Collin to do Kahn Academy.

Kahn Academy has a lot of different programs and they are FREE! When Krystal was in College she used Kahn Academy to help her in her math assignments. They are K- through very advanced math. They also have language arts and computer programing.

Collin was doing Pixar Programing however it was a little hard for him so we went with their regular programing class. He can do anything in Kahn Academy he wants to do. Math, language, Pixar or programing for thirty minutes. That’s it! That is all I’m asking for from the boys.

Matthew has been doing ABC Mouse for his thirty minutes of work. However today I gave him the option to read a book to me and the twins instead. To my surprise he read the book “Green eggs and ham” with very little help from me. That is a great accomplishment for him.

I just want them to learn, not just do the thirty minutes, time doesn’t matter, its not about putting in the time, it is about them learning something. School was about learning and dumping, my goal for them is to love to learn and retain information.

De-Schooling is just as much for Krystal and myself to expence, as it is for the boys. We all need to get back to #learningeverywhere, and lerning all the time. Learning comes from all parents all the time. I’m super proud of our family and the journey we taking.