Unschooling: Absorbed
Many of us have a hard time focusing on the things we really want to do. We are easily distracted. We check emails or our social media notifications because that’s easier than getting down to some serious work. I had…
How Well Do We Love?
Driving home from the hospital, after sharing my dad’s last hours of life, I saw the sun rising over the cow paddocks, where trees stood knee-deep in mist, silhouetted black against the pink and orange sky. And I thought about…
Encouraging Children So They Get Excited About Learning
We never made a conscious decision to unschool. I didn’t wake up one morning and say, “Hey kids, let’s give unschooling a go.” No, over a long period of time I gradually threw out all that wasn’t working for us…
Acquiring Bucketfuls of Unschooling Trust
Everyone knows we need loads of trust to unschool. But how do we get it? Where does it come from? Trust isn’t something you can buy. It’s not something you can apply your will to: I want to trust therefore…
Facing the Fact We Are an Introverted Family
“We’re a family of introverts,” I tell my daughters. “Of course we are, Mum!” replies Imogen. “Have you only just realised that?” “Well, I’ve never really thought about it before.” A family of introverts? I probably suspected this, but I’ve…
How Children Learn According to Sophie
I’ve been pondering how children learn. So has Sophie… Sophie: If you want to learn something you have to be interested in it… like the elephants I was reading about today. That was really interesting and I remember so much. Sue: What happens if you’re not interested? Sophie: Then it all goes straight out the door. You don’t absorb it. Sue: Can you learn something like times tables even if it’s not interesting? Sophie: Yes, because you can use those.…
A Little Unobtrusive Help with Reading
Many years ago, I taught my first child Felicity to read so quickly and easily, I was sure I was a brilliant homeschooling mother. What was everyone else doing wrong? Teaching a child to read? Easy! Or so I thought. Then Duncan came along and the word ‘frustrated’ became part of my everyday vocabulary. He could remember the sounds of letters, but running them together to form words was a slow and laborious process. I suddenly realised I hadn’t taught…
Handwriting Matters or Maybe it Doesn’t
Some of my children have beautiful handwriting and some don’t. “What are you going to do when you go to university? Your tutor won’t spend time trying to decipher your essays. If he can’t read them, you’ll fail.” My eldest children went to university. “Handwritten assignments aren’t accepted, Mum. See, I didn’t need good handwriting after all!” So I was wrong. Times have changed. Good typing skills are now more valuable than beautiful handwriting. Even I don’t handwrite much these…
Learning about Punctuation the Lewis Carroll Way
I never used to bother with the finer points of punctuation because I wasn’t sure how to use such devices as colons and semi-colons. For a long time, I didn’t even know their proper names. To me, they were two dots, or a dot and a comma. And I’m supposed to be an educated woman. But one day, help arrived in an unexpected way. I started reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland out loud to my children, and I became very excited.…
Listening
Gemma-Rose’s turn to read. My turn to listen. When I was an eleven-year-old student, our teacher got out her tape recorder and played us a current affairs radio program. It was a hot summer’s afternoon, late in the day, and I felt sleepy. I didn’t even try to concentrate on the program. I spent the half hour I should have been listening, daydreaming instead. Apparently, almost all my fellow students did the same thing. And the teacher must have suspected that our minds were not on world news…
Why I’m Not a Good Homeschooling Teacher
Everyone thinks I homeschool my fourteen-year-old daughter, Charlotte. I don’t. She homeschools herself. I try to help her: “Charlotte, I have a new book we’re just about to start reading. What you like to join us?” “No thanks, Mum. I have something else planned.” “Charlotte we’re going to watch this DVD. Do you want to watch too?” “Not right now, thank you Mum. I’m in the middle of something else.” So Sophie, Gemma-Rose and I settle on the sofa together…
Education Doesn’t Have a Use-by-Date
Yesterday Imogen was peering over Charlotte’s shoulder, looking at all the interesting things she is learning. “You are giving yourself a much better education than the one I gave myself,” Imogen complained. “Look at all those wonderful books you’re reading. I haven’t read any of them.” “Well, it’s not too late,” replied Charlotte. “Your education isn’t over even though you’re doing uni work rather than homeschooling. You could read these books too.” Then she added, “Education doesn’t have a use-by-date,…
Doodling
My girls love to doodle. I do too! I used to think doodles were those scribbles people draw while they are talking on the phone. They are, but they’re also a whole lot more. Doodles are easy to draw, require little artistic skill but are so satisfying to work on. Anyone can doodle. Anyone can produce drawings that satisfy. I also like how they encourage creativity. Doodling is a bit like writing. You set off not knowing where you will…
Unschool: Babies and Perfect Love
Perfect Love and Gratitude I tell my daughter about the night she was born. I say, “It was love at first sight. I thought…
How to Have Demanding Children Who Rule the House
Things people sometimes say… “You’re not feeding that baby again, are you?” “If you feed your baby to sleep, she’ll never learn to go…
Why I Am My Children’s Number One Fan
“You have such good children!” says a woman as we come out of the church. My children smile. They glow with happiness. And then…
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…
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…
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: 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…
Parenting: Doing Our Inadequate Best
Do you ever look back - a few years, months or even days - at your younger self and wish you could have done better? Perhaps you remember dragon parent days when you failed to be gentle. Could you have said things you now regret? I know I do. Sometimes, I want to go back and put things right. But…