Hellobee

Here are some questions you guys had about our homeschooling/unschooling adventures!

a typical unschooling day — an intermediate hour long hike to a waterfalls with Charlie

What is Charlie’s current school path as he gets older? What are options if you decide to stay here longer? I know you are also thinking about moving elsewhere eventually.

For the size of the population here, there is actually a decent sized homeschooling community. Olive’s school serves as a homebase to connect homeschoolers, as the founder of the school homeschools her own children. I have met so many super bright homeschooled kids here, and I’ve been really impressed with them! They even come and compete at our adult trivia nights. Olive’s school will end with this school year, so she will most likely be homeschooled starting from next year as well. I don’t know how much longer we will be living here – probably two more years at least as we have many affairs to settle here first. Where we will go to next is the big question. Option #1 is to take a year off and travel around the world, which would mean unschooling and worldschooling. Joining unschooling, wildschooling, and worldschooling Facebook groups has been an amazing resource where parents share tips, ideas, resources, etc. It really keeps me inspired! Option #2 is to move to Europe like I’ve been dreaming about since having kids. And Option #3 is to move close to my parents in Los Angeles, at least for a little while. My parents are getting older and despite the fact that neither I or Mr. Bee do not want to live in Los Angeles, it would be wonderful for the kids to be able to spend as much time with their grandparents as possible. Then again, I’m sure they wouldn’t stop tigergrandparenting!

Because it is very likely that Charlie will reenter the public school system one day, we’re pursuing a hybrid of regular homeschooling for subjects like math and writing. But honestly it has mostly been unschooling because I didn’t have much time to devote to homeschooling. Biology, history, geography, geology, etc. was often incorporated into our real life unschooling adventures, and Charlie happily reads about those topics on his own. We recently had a teacher move here from the United States whose educational philosophies are very much in line with ours. She has experience working in a public school setting, but she also loves unschooling and wildschooling. She is worldschooling her own 5-year-old daughter by taking teaching jobs around the world — they previously lived in Tanzania and Wales. She will be teaching Charlie for 3 hours/day, as much less instruction time is needed when it’s one on one.

How have you addressed socializing? Do you have to make a special effort to make it happen or do you think it happens enough in his current activities?

Socializing has been no problem because Charlie and Olive share most of their friends. The kids in Olive’s class are actually closer to Charlie’s age because the school year here is one year behind the US. Most of the kids in Olive’s class are also in taekwondo with Charlie and Olive, which meets three times a week. On the weekends we have plenty of playdates as well as a constant stream of friends visiting from El Nido or the US.

we finally learned how to skip rocks! The trick is in choosing the right rocks and putting a spin on them!

I wonder if it would be a good idea to consider not using a label like unschooling going forward? A lot of parents haven’t read Holt’s books and they see the “un” part of the word unschooling and think it means something like a free-for-all with no or little structure or guidance from parents/adults. Which is definitely not what he meant. And not what your family does, obviously!

Anyhow, I wanted to mention that because I feel like labels that are freely tossed around in homeschooling circles frequently confuse things when used in the outside world. Unfortunately, I think that happens with the term unschooling. I know you had a prior post with definitions and examples, but at least in my experience, I find that plenty of people simply can’t get past the label. It’s funny how that happens. I guess it’s because education is such a personal topic.

My parents only know about the traditional way of schooling, and worry that Charlie is falling behind kids his age that attend public school. When I told my mom that we were coming to the US for two weeks, the first thing she said was that she was going to enroll the kids in Kumon Math. The last time we visited them, Charlie and Olive took private tutoring lessons every day. #tigergrandparents

Olive currently attends school while Charlie has been largely unschooled in our 3 1/2 years in the Philippines. Olive thrives in a structured setting and absolutely adores school. However, homeschooling is much better suited to Charlie than a traditional school setting, especially the strict religious schools that are our only options here. I saw it with my brother who was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age and put on Ritalin. He was very bright, but constantly got into trouble at school. There were too many things distracting his attention. When he pursued independent studies in high school, he truly thrived.

Charlie has been absolutely thriving in the unschooling atmosphere; his ADHD and anxiety is much more under control because he has much less daily stress on him; he is curious, inquisitive and loves learning; he’s self motivated to read about anything that interests him; he’s a complete bookworm; and all the time he spends in nature has had a profoundly positive effect on him. I think the carefree childhood he’s having here has been the best thing we could have done for him. We’re very lucky to be able to cater to our individual child’s needs here, and I don’t care too much about labels because I mix and match what works best for us.

How do you fit it all in? The working, family time, religion, traveling, entertainment, other responsibilities, PLUS quality preparations and carryout, record keeping of your curriculum?

Our lives are very full, yet still much, much simpler than they would be living in the United States. I don’t concern myself with record keeping of our curriculum because I know the kids are learning so much, but we will follow a more structured curriculum now that a teacher has moved here just for Charlie. I’ll definitely be writing more about that as we move forward! The truth is that Mr. Bee lives in El Nido most of the time working every day without a day off, while we’re in the island capital most of the time for school and activities. I work on resort stuff remotely as well as Hellobee, but just solo parenting takes up a lot of my time. I do have help – a driver 25 hours a week that runs most of my errands, and a cleaner that comes three times a week for a couple hours. Family time is our biggest challenge right now as it is peak season at the resort. But as we go into low season, we’ll be spending more time together and even closing down the resort to take a big family trip to Japan. We’re still figuring it out as we go along, but when it comes down to it, I think our kids are happy and thriving here, which is the most important thing of all.