Boy Stories

Usually I speak and write about my four youngest daughters. But not today.  For this week’s podcast, I share some boy stories. I received a comment saying: “I want to hear about when your boys were younger.” So that’s what…

Popularity, Learning to Read and Shakespeare

Is there such a thing as a typical unschooling day? What about a typical unschooling week? Do my children spend equal time on all the key learning areas? The answer is no! We tend to get immersed in a few…

Reaching the Finish Line: Achieving Our Dreams

If we’re willing to learn new skills, persevere through any problems, put in a lot of effort, and ignore our fears, we can achieve our dreams and inspire our kids to do amazing things of their own. So, what’s your…

Latest

Could Ebooks Save My Unschool Blog?

The other day, I logged into my blog hosting account to find out when my next payment is due and how much it will be. When I saw the bill due later this year, I gulped and said to my husband, “Do we want to spend so much money on a site that’s often slow or offline because of a problem? Do we have that much money? Perhaps it’s time to delete my blog.” Andy reminded me that my blog…

My List of Brilliant Unschooling Blogs

Remember when blogging was the thing to do? We all created blogs instead of social media accounts. We shared our lives, writing our stories, filling our sidebars with photos of our kids, sometimes naming them, frequently hiding their identities under pseudonyms like Princess and Tiger. We followed each other’s blogs. When a new name and face appeared in our followers widget, we grinned. Someone new wanted to read our posts! We rushed to read each other’s offerings before leaving lively…

How Unschoolers Can Deal with Questions and Sceptics

My mother-in-law visited us for the birth of our son, Thomas. After he died and we’d buried him in his tiny white casket, Andy’s mother asked me if we wanted more children. As I replied, “Oh, yes!”, my mother-in-law’s face dropped into a disapproving frown. “She thinks we already have enough kids,” I thought as my defence hackles rose. But that wasn’t it. I’d misunderstood. In S3E3 of The Ladies Fixing the World podcast, How Unschoolers Can Deal with Questions…

How Kids Need Something Better Than Perfect Lives

If it were possible, would you give your kids a perfect life? Or do they need something better? Sitting on my faded blue chair in our back garden, clad in my pjs, at 7 o’clock this morning, savouring the relatively cool air that has now disappeared, I thought about how we put so much effort into trying to give our kids a perfect life. We want to bring them up in beautiful, calm, peaceful homes filled with every possible resource.…

When Our Unschooling Days Turn Grey

Life has felt grey for a while. The fog of tiredness hangs over me, trapping me in my own isolated world. Occasionally, after a reasonable sleep, the grey recedes, revealing bright delights and joys, and I think about how blessed I am to be living my life. My spirits lift. I rejoin the bigger world, thinking about how I can contribute to it. But on the whole, the fog swirls around, and I feel stuck. And sometimes desperate. It’s hard…

Unschooling: Making the Right Choices

Years ago, when life was overwhelming, and I was looking for yet another way to homeschool my kids, I was tempted to unschool. I thought if we were unschoolers, we could do whatever we liked, and if we didn’t want to do anything, that would be okay. Because unschooling is about freedom, isn’t it? We are free to choose what we do, so we can choose to do nothing at all. I discovered that unschooling doesn’t work that way. Yes,…

Unschooling: Coping With the Unexpected

I used to think I could control my life. To achieve a perfect life, all I had to do was organise everything well, including my kids. What is a perfect life? My perfect life vision included a graduated row of good-looking and well-behaved children. I wanted people to admire my family and home, saying, “Sue is such a good mother! Have you seen her home? It’s spotless. How does Sue do it?” I imagined my children growing up into well-rounded…

Resources for Unschoolers

Strolling towards the shopping centre, I spy an older man with three hand-reared brightly coloured parrots. A few wide-eyed kids are gathered around him, and as I watch, he transfers a parrot to one of their shoulders, where it bounces lightly upon its feet, nuzzling a little ear. The child grins, hardly daring to move. The children have questions which the man is happy to answer. Who doesn’t like sharing their passions with curious people? We often look for resources…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

How Unschooling Doesn’t Guarantee a Fairytale Life

Yesterday evening, like all Sunday evenings, my kids who live locally came to dinner. Six of us gathered around our dining room table, savouring a meal cooked by my husband while enjoying the usual end-of-the-week lively catch-up conversation. There was a time when we dreamed that all our children would buy houses on the same street as our family home.…

The Math Myth: How Do Unschooled Kids Learn Math?

There are many unschool maths questions. Here are just a few of them: Can kids really learn maths without formal instruction? What does unschooling maths look like? Can we strew unschool maths? Is it possible for registered homeschoolers to unschool maths? How can we provide evidence kids are learning maths when we don’t have formal records like workbooks and test…

Learning to Read and Trusting Unschooling

It is absolutely essential that we are curious people who are excited about the possibilities in life. The atmosphere in our homes gets picked up by our kids so they think it’s normal to learn, to be curious, to follow thoughts and ideas and try things out… I was battling with my kids for a while. They kept saying, ‘Why…

Christian unschooling

How to Write a Million Unschool Love Stories

I used to think the defining word of unschooling was freedom. Freedom attracted me. I wanted to be free to do whatever I liked. I wanted to get up each day and do anything or nothing at all. But I soon realised there’s a problem with freedom. If we always do whatever we like, won’t we become self-centred? Thinking only…

When We Don’t Know What to Do

I’ve just updated my blog. I started at the first post I ever wrote and then worked my way through 14 years of stories, reading each one before deciding whether to keep it or revert it to draft. I then checked the formatting of the retained posts, rearranging paragraphs, eliminating dead links, and changing or improving the images. As I…
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