getting ready for (un)school, re-thinking screen time

Summer is chugging along here, and it's somehow mid-August already (I say that and yet when I think back to the beginning of summer back in NH it feels like an entire lifetime ago). We're getting ready for a school switcheroo this fall-- it's now Quinn who will be starting montessori preschool in a couple weeks, and D will be home with me. Part of me feels a little weird about opting to send Q to preschool since we've already decided to homeschool D. Part of me is also not looking forward to going back to a regular school routine, having to get out the door by a certain time every morning, etc. But I do think it will be important for both Donovan and me to have that time just the two of us in the morning, to be able to try projects or whatever that are more, uh, challenging to do while little brother is around, and also to give the boys a bit of a break from each other (they get along really well most of the time, but I think they're kinda starting to get fed up of being around each other all the time). I also think Q kinda requires a bit more social interaction, so that will be good for him too.  

We're unschooling, which means that right now the biggest thing to work on really is on my own perspective and mindset. I'm "de-schooling" myself, meaning trying to get over the mindset of reading, writing, and math being the most important skills to develop at this age and instead opening ourselves up to seeing all the other many learning opportunities we have every day. In the past few weeks D has been really interested in penguins, sharks, and other sea creatures so we've been reading and watching videos about them a lot. I introduced him to MythBusters, so he's been watching a lot of that and learning about setting up experiments to test out a theory (and a lot of other random stuff about electronics, physics, and whatever other things the myths happen to be about). The past couple days he worked on an army of little paper robots (robots drawn on slips of paper that stand up), and he set them up on a table then decided he needed more space so worked out how to make a paper platform extension off the edge of the table. It's pretty amazing to watch him learn. I'm also figuring out how to dance along that fine line of giving enough guidance and help while letting him do things on his own. Not that it's always sunshine and unicorns, mind you-- we've also had our fair share of moodiness and yelling and brothers fighting, etc. But, I am learning that if I can relax I really think this can go really well, and be really cool for all of us.

I'm also questioning and re-thinking my views on "screen time." There seems to be a sharp divide among homeschoolers, with highly restricted screen time on the one side and fairly unrestricted on the other. I've been really fascinated to read some of the arguments and research studies on the possible benefits of TV and video games. There's this understood assumption that reading books is always better than watching a video, but videos can be incredible learning tools... And a lot of this might depend on what you're watching, why, and how. So I'm researching, thinking, and experimenting with loosening our time restrictions and seeing how that goes.