decoding language his own way

Kale has had some fun this week decoding Matoran secret messages in a Lego Bionicle book. Once decoded, Kale then asked me to read out the clues (the words that came from the decoding) so that we could apply them to the story and eventually reach the objectives.

"Do not seek the Seventh Toa in the dark caverns of Po Wahi"

At 8-years-old, Kale isn't yet interested in printing or drawing to a significant extent and hasn't been ready to read by himself (aside from very simple 2 or 3-letter words). But then he comes across books and activities like this and he is suddenly super-keen to solve them. He doesn't mind how much writing and letter sounding is involved.

translating symbols into sentences

Kale visually memorizes words like "villager", "gold", "quandary" and "food" in order to play Age of Empires against his big brother on their computers, which he's really into right now.

I love the magical part of letting go and allowing Kale's process to unfold as it will. I know that if Kale finds something that draws him in, like the book above, or a board or computer game or even an active physical game that somehow involves language, he is able to absorb information and process it naturally and painlessly. It is also more meaningful learning and it stays with him. We see so many new skills and abilities develop this way.

I often describe us as an unschooling family, but it's not because one day I heard about unschooling and thought, "that sounds fun" or "that's what I want us to be". Kale spearheaded the movement toward unschooling in our family. He led me toward the unschooling philosophy just by virtue of the fact that this is the way he learns. This still involves using any of the (math, language, science, arts, etc...) resources that may be used in a school setting; but the use of these things is determined only by his current interests, not a prescribed schedule. And he may never use many of them at all.

I've had to work at dismantling my inner school in order to better support him on his path. I've needed to develop a deeper level of trust in life and its processes and a stronger sense of who I am and who we are. And I am so grateful for the world that has opened up to all of us as a result.