a novel study

I haven't blogged in a while. A long while, actually. I guess we've just been busy living and enjoying each other, and it's been wonderful. But now that it's fall, and TWO of my kids are "school age" (when did they get so big?!?!), I feel like I should get back into writing. I want to share the things we are doing, and the things my kids are learning, in the hopes that it might inspire some of you in your own journeys. Or, at the very least, I hope it will assure any of you with lingering doubts that my kids actually are doing ok.

Recently we have been reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with Ella and Liam at bedtime. They love anything even slightly "magical," so the concept of a whole world through a cupboard door is amazing to them. As much as they have been enjoying it, though, I had my doubts as to how much they were actually understanding. The language of the book is very old-fashioned and British, and there have been many words that I have needed to stop and define for them. And the storyline, while exciting, was a little hard for them to follow at times. Or so I thought.

The other night, after finishing off a chapter, Liam took the book from my hands and started looking through it himself, right from the beginning. At each new chapter he would ask, "What is this chapter called?" When I told him the name of it, he would summarize the events in the chapter, at times using the few illustrations in the book to jog his memory. As he got further and further into the book, flipping the pages and stopping at the pictures to tell me more about the story, I couldn't believe how much he had remembered. And not only remembered, but also understood! Here was my 5-year-old son, spontaneously conducting a review session of a novel written for people much older than him!

One of the concerns that people often bring up with unschooling is that I might not know if my kids are learning anything without testing them or requiring them to do some work. Well, I know for a fact that Liam has listened to, absorbed, thought about, and understood all of the main concepts in this particular novel. I didn't need to test him, I didn't need to make him do a worksheet, and I didn't need to force him to summarize each chapter after we completed our reading. Heck, I didn't even need to ask him any questions about it. I just needed to make myself available to him, sit with him while he flipped through the book, and listen. Amazing.