Real Life Maths Resources: Some Thoughts and Links

I often go looking for real life maths resources to strew under the noses of my girls. Yes, I like to tempt them with different maths experiences, hoping they’ll think, “Wow! Maths is so interesting, and useful as well!” So…

Comparing Homeschooling Styles: a Child’s View

 Sophie and I are strolling up to the village together, arm in arm. Sophie is chattering but my mind is a million miles away… until I hear her say, “Miranda does much more school work than we do.”  “What do…

Time for Some Strewing

Sometimes life provides my children with more than enough learning experiences without any help from me. A bushfire might be burning on our doorstep, giving everyone a unique learning opportunity. At other times, ordinary life provides one question after another for us to answer:  We might…

Stolen Paintings and Real Life Maths

Last week was a hunting week… My daughters and I watched as the FBI tried to hunt down a number of stolen masterpieces. And then I went on a hunt for some real life maths experiences. (Where’s all that maths…

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

Unschooling: Dishes

This evening, after dinner, I didn’t want to help with the dishes. I just wanted to relax on the sofa and leave everyone else…

The Ladies Fixing the World

Unschooling: Trust, Autonomy, and The Realities of Learning

The Ladies are Fixing the World again! Cecilie, Sandra and I are discussing the words ‘self-regulation’ and ‘limits’. When we say, “I’ve let go of control, and now I’m waiting for my child to learn how to regulate his time playing video games (for example),” do we have expectations about what that regulation should look like? Do we want…

Unschooling Isn’t Freedom Gone Wild: Why Choices Matter More Than Ideals

My husband Andy returned to work today after two weeks at home. Holiday time is over. We’ve now moved into term time. A whole term of possibility days stretches before me. I’m free to do whatever I like with my time while Andy is at school. My eyes light up with delight. But then I remember there are many…

Christian unschooling

Christian Unschooling: Disciplining With Unconditional Love

If our children misbehave, what do we do? Make them sit on the time-out chair? Punish them? Perhaps we should withdraw our love. Be cold and distant. Make things unpleasant for our kids because they need to know how upset we are, don’t they? We want them to feel bad because then, maybe, they’ll remember to act in the right…

Bringing God into the Unschooling Picture

A few months ago, I wrote a post called Why This is the End of the Line for Me. I decided that I’d explored unschooling from every possible angle. What more could I write about? It was time for me to move onto other things. Let my kids tell their own unschooling stories and find something else of my own…
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