What’s that boy up to now?
Sep 5th, 2011 by lapazfarm
I am glad to report that our move back into unschooling for Superboy was exactly the right move. He is once again enthusiastically pursuing projects of his own choosing, and impressing me daily with his capabilities.
Anyone who has ever wondered what unschooling a teen looks like, here is one version. These are his subjects, totally his choice:
1. Spanish–taking a class at the local high school. He has had only one class meeting so far, and is very much enjoying it. His teacher is enthusiastic and welcoming to homeschoolers, he has several friends in the class, and I think he will do just fine.
2. Photography: This is an art form he has enjoyed as a hobby for awhile, but now wants to learn much more in depth. He got a sweet new camera for his 16th birthday:
So now he has no excuses!
He is using the assignments at Outdoor Photographer as his weekly assignments, and he is knocking them out beautifully, meanwhile building his portfolio. Here are his first two pieces:
This is for the assignment “abstract” :
And this for the challenge “summer flowers”:
All he needs now is Photoshop so he can learn to edit his images like a pro. We are currently saving up for that investment.
3. Graphic design–he wants to learn more about this art form/career option, so when I stumbled upon this book:
I knew it would be perfect for him. He snatched it up and is tackling the challenges with vigor. Challenge 1 had him design a logo for himself, which he did, and applied it to a business card and letterhead. I think he did a great job. It is purple and artsy and very much HIM.
4. Computer Animation: I had no clue how to help him with this, so we did a little searching and stumbled upon some open source ( free!) computer 3-D graphics and animation software called Blender. We downloaded it and Superboy has been watching some excellent YouTube tutorials in order to learn how to use it. Pretty amazing stuff!
5. Literature: As long as he is reading something worthy, we are good and I won’t interfere with his reading choices. Right now he is reading Waiting For Snow in Havana, the memoir of an “Operation Pedro Pan” Cuban exile. Definitely worthy. I’m reading it next!
6. Calculus: Superboy and I will be learning this one together using the Teaching Company DVD set titled “Calculus Made Clear.” Lets hope the title is accurate! My old brain hasn’t tackled higher math in a while! But I am taking this opportunity to learn something I never got around to and am looking forward to it. We start this next week. Wish us luck!
7. Physics: Superboy is reading his way through the Flying Circus of Physics and picking out projects from Make magazine to gain himself a physics credit. I personally can’t wait to see what contraptions he comes up with! His first choice: a Wimshurst Spark Generator. Talk about ambitious! Yikes!
And that is about it! I have a few tricks up my sleeve I am going to entice him with after giving him time to get a bit more settled into his routine. But for now, all is well with the boy!
Tell me, how are your teens enjoying their new school year?
That IS a sweet camera! I received the same one as a gift, and it is so much fun. You boys shots are gorgeous. It looks like he has a bunch of interesting things to explore this year…
My teen is ramping up for the end of 12th grade. He’s finding that his EMT career will need to wait until he is closer to 18 though, the college has rules. But, until then he has History, Sociology, Psychology, Math and Accounting to keep him busy.
WOW! What great topics he is learning. His first photos look great.
Blessings,
Dawn
While he’s saving up for PhotoShop, have a look at GIMP, which is also open source. There’s a few things it doesn’t do as well as PS but it will get him pretty far. Could be all he needs for now.
Yes, now *this* seems more like your boy!
And I’m loving that Creative Design book. I might need to pick that up for my artsy daughter! Have a great year. I look forward to reading more of your unschooling adventures.
Wow! Nice choices. I read them off to my dh, who is hard core college prep, and he was very impressed at the diversity and difficulty of the courses superboy has chosen for himself.
Fun stuff for your boy!! Thanks for linking the photo site and the design site, my Matthias will totally groove on those. Hope SB had a great bday, 16, WOW!!!!
Waiting for Snow in Havana was excellent, I’ll bet you can hardly wait till you get a chance to read it yourself! Marianna is enjoying French this year – more conversation, less emphasis on vocab.
It sounds like he is going to be able to follow his passions and prepare himself for an amazing career! All the best this year!
Looks like a fabulous assortment, thanks for sharing, I’ve always enjoyed reading about Superboy’s homeschooling adventures. And that book looks fantastic! My 12yo is high school level in some areas, middle grades in others, thanks for the inspiration.
Thanks for sharing what he is doing right now. We’re just starting high school stuff and want to stay with the unschooling way of life we’ve followed all these years and so will be interested to check out the links that your son is enjoying to see if it is something that will fit my son’s interests.
What a fabulous, challenging line up of activities. I’m off to check out Blender.
Those photos are gorgeous. I love the courses he’s chosen for himself. My Katie woul enjoy some of these as well, thanks so much for sharing and give SB my best, I’m really impressed by him.
So far – two week in – my 16yo is loving her courses for this year, which overlap quite a bit with Superboy’s. For photography they are looking at things like line, space, proportion, texture and so on – they had to take pictures for each as a pre-course project, and now are looking at them in famous photographers’ work. Her product design course is tough but good – researching art deco and working on mood boards for an art deco mirror she has to make as her first project. I think the next project after that is a graphic design one.