If I've ever doubted unschooling...

...and believe it or not, I do once in a while. Either way, tonight is NOT one of those times. My youngest, Charlie, who will be 5 in March, learned how to multiply today! Holy Moley! I'm still in shock myself. He's been going through  Abeka's 2nd grade Math book and when I first saw it, I was in shock that toward the end of it, it introduces multiplication. "Yeah, right," I thought. See, that's what I need  to really stop doing - doubting him and his abilities. So anyway, we've been going through the book and there's nothing that bugs me more about math curriculums than the constant repetition of the material. So we've been skipping through it pretty quickly. I was amazed at how quickly he understood subtraction with borrowing, but he did. He can now look at a problem like 347 - 212 and tell me the answer without us going through the steps. We did single digit subtraction with carrying, then triple and when I saw it continued with 4 digit subtraction, I just skipped it. What was next? Multiplication! I kind of giggled with that negativity running in my head! Shame on me! But I gave it a go. I said "Charlie, come here, let me show you something." 20 minutes later we were doing all of the 2X! I gave it a break and then sat down with him again. "What's 2X3?" "What's 3X3?" Although we went in order and he caught on to the pattern, he went all the way to 3X10! Granted, he was spinning around in a circle while I would ask the problems and he would jump every time he said an answer. You can't do that in school! I bet you can figure out what label that would get him. Of course, what 4 year olds are they teaching multiplication to anyway, even if they were to ask!

I sometimes feel like people might read this and thing "she's showing off." Believe me, that is not my intention at all. My intention is for others to see that kids want SO BADLY to learn things - all sorts of things! Think about when you want to learn something very eagerly....you learn it very easily! Our kids are the same way. Sometimes you just need to be observant and figure out what it is they are wanting to know. Sometimes, they don't know what there is to know. They see letters and they like the letters but they don't realize that when they put them in a certain way, they make words and that's reading! Show them a little and they most likely will BEG for a lot! My point is that I believe ALL children are truly like this and Charlie is really not a rarity.

Please comment. I'm curious to your thoughts!