Raven House Unschooling

06/02/2022

WELCOME TO RAVEN HOUSE!!If you are looking for a community for you and your homeschooler/unschooler check out Raven House. We are a small in-home licensed center opening this Fall. We have 1-3 day a week options for Drop-off. Serving ages 5-9

The program is self-directed with 2 hours of offerings each day. Offerings range from scouting, cooking, gardening, baking, cooking, science experiments, botany, entomology, pokemon card trading, games galore, worm composting, art and design and more. All offerings are optional, some offerings are hosted by adults others by children and we value the knowledge of all members in our community. The rest of the day is free play and each day ends with mindfulness activities and reflection. Outdoor access is unlimited and the yard is home to a giant sandbox, mud kitchen, play structure, climbing dome, large garden and a bunch of bikes, scooters, skateboards, balls, basketball hoop and more.

The curriculum is not set and is guided by the children. Should they be interested in any particular subject ,outside resources will be brought in. Parents and community members are always invited to host an offering and share a skill set. While not required, this is a huge part of the community building within our special place.

more info can be found here

Raven House was born out of an urgent need to provide my children with a place where they can be free to learn through living.  When we transitioned to homeschooling and soon after unschooling, two things became clear.  First was that my children were learning everyday in their own way, on their o...

05/22/2022

When children feel responsible for their own education, they learn to love learning. The other night, my daughter, who is an artist, picked out this book to read, The Girl Who Drew Butterflies. As I started reading, I thought she would instantly be bored as the language is quite above what I thought would keep her attention. I was wrong. She has grabbed it every night since. The book is about Maria Merian, a girl living in the oppressive days of the 1600's who loved to study and draw insects. Despite society not allowing her to go to school and even risking her reputation as a witch during the witch trials, she continued to do the tedious work of witnessing the transformation of many different species of caterpillars to butterflies. In one particular part of the book they discuss how long and hard this process was and how it took her months of waiting and painting every little change, just to document one caterpillar. It went on to say something like, despite the grueling process, after documenting her first transformation, Maria was inspired to document all of the different species. My 7 year old sat up excitedly and with great enthusiasm said "Yep, thats right, because thats how kids are, when we are interested in something, nobody can stop us, will stay up all day and night researching it, even when our parents say we should be sleeping!"

My daughter is 7 and has been unschooled for the last 2 years. This was a kid who came from a 1/2 year of Kindergarten, at which point would always make comments like "Learning is boring" or quickly push away homework activities I truly thought shed be interested in simply because it was not her choice. My daughter would be considered behind in any school setting you put her in. But this kid spends her days busy working, designing, strategizing, working out social issues with friends, researching.. all without being asked. She is constantly working on this or that and is 100% intrinsically motivated.

05/20/2022

Wondering what unschooling is? Often the term Unschooling gets a bad rep since we have all been raised in a society that highly values the concept of school. But when you reflect back on your own school years, and start to ask questions about what you truly learned, and if you actually felt prepared for the world when you finally emerged into it, you start to question, are our traditional ideas of schooling helping or hurting our children? Is removing them from the real world for 12+ years from their lives actually preparing them for the real world? At what point in your grown up life have you been required to be an expert at 8 subjects? As an adult, would you simultaneously read 8 books and dedicate equal amounts of time to them even if you could care less about 90% of them? Here is a great clip from researcher Peter Grey that discusses the philosophy behind Raven House.

Video made by Stomping Ground. An overnight camp dedicated to self-direction and growing empathy and possibility through playhttps://www.campstompingground.c...