Our Unschooling Story

Imagine if you visited us. You’d knock at our front door. We’d invite you in. We’d sit around our kitchen table. Sip coffee. Eat chocolate muffins. What would we talk about? Lots of things! You’d tell me about your family.…

When Our Kids Are Wired Differently

Amina lowers her voice. “I don’t like to admit this, but one day I said, ‘Harry, can’t you do as I want for once? Can’t you be nice to me just for one day?’ Harry looked confused. Be nice to…

Sharing Some Thoughts on Children and Writing

Will my child write? This seems to be a fairly common worry for parents. Some children want to write and some are more reluctant.  All my children are writers and always have been. Is this because I am a writer…

Latest

An Absolutely Wonderful Book on the Apostles’ Creed for Children

The Creed in Slow Motion was written by Monseigneur Ronald Arbuthnott Knox. Arbuthnott Knox? Don’t you just love that name! It immediately captured my girls’ imaginations, even before they started listening to his book.  I first came across The Creed in Slow Motion in Suzie Andres’ book Homeschooling with Gentleness. Suzie and her son were reading it together, and they were both thoroughly enjoying it.  I rushed off to the Kindle store to see if I could also find a copy.…

Great Australian Historical Fiction

There was great excitement yesterday when the postman arrived with a book shaped parcel. Inside was a second-hand copy of Jamberoo Road by Eleanor Spence. It is the sequel to The Switherby Pilgrims which we read last year. Both books are published by Bethlehem Books and both books are historical fiction set mainly in Australia.  The Switherby Pilgrims  Miss Arabella Braithewaite of Switherby knows there is no future for the ten orphans—a remarkable mix of genteel and working class children—she…

A Homeschooler’s Thoughts on Her First University Exam

Yesterday, I spent over two hours sitting in the car outside the Flight Centre at Goulburn Airport. Inside this building, Imogen was doing her very first university exam. She has spent the last semester studying the unit Introduction to University Learning through an online course provided by the Open Universities.  During the long drive to Goulburn, Imogen and I had a chance to talk:  Imogen:  I’m really enjoying university work. It’s good to make friends (online) and discuss the subject.…

The Rose Round – children’s fiction

I have just finished reading Meriol Trevor’s  book The Rose Round to Sophie and Gemma-Rose. They were enthralled with the story from the very first page. So was I!  The book description on Amazon doesn’t say much at all:  Young Matt Rendal’s first experience with the extraordinary inhabitants of the great crumbling house called Woodhall was terrible. What had he done to deserve being sent here?  I don’t know if I would have been enticed to buy the book from those…

Charlotte the Unschooling Chemist

Charlotte comes into my room to say goodnight and have an end-of-the-day chat.  “Mum, can I tell you about the chemistry video I was watching today?” Her eyes light up as a flood of interesting facts come spilling out of her. I feel excited at Charlotte’s obvious delight in chemistry. She has a passion for the subject. The girls have started calling her The Nutty Professor. I call her Charlotte the Chemist.  I tried to teach my older children chemistry…

Smiling Over Unschoolers and Maths Text Books

 Last year, Sophie declared she hated maths. She would sigh deeply every time I logged her into her online maths course. I decided there had to be a better way to learn this subject. I decided to take the unschooling approach and let Sophie learn maths in her own time in her own way, encouraging her along with some clever strewing of interesting maths experiences. And it was going OK until the other day…  Gemma-Rose wanted to know how to…

Wanting to Learn How to Spell

Gemma-Rose isn’t a defiant child so when she said to me, “You can’t make me learn anything I don’t want to learn,” I stopped and listened. We were talking about spelling. Did Gemma-Rose want me to enrol her in an online spelling program? “No thank you, Mum.” “Well, how will you learn how to spell?” “I’ll pick it up as I go along,” she answered confidently. “But wouldn’t it be easier to do a proper program. Don’t you think it’s…

A Novel Writing Adventure

Imogen is sitting in the family room with her netbook balanced on the arm of the sofa. I look over her shoulder and notice she is writing a blog post…. another one. She always seems to be writing. The other girls also spend a lot of time tapping away on their computer keyboards. All my children love writing and I wonder how this came about. Did they see me sitting at my computer playing about with words and think, “Hey!…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

Why Picnics are Important

Many years ago, parenting and homeschooling could sometimes seem rather overwhelming, Some days my children refused to do what I asked. Or everyone needed…

The Ladies Fixing the World

Unschooling: How Do We Know They’re Learning?

There are loads of unschooling questions we could ask about learning: How do we know unschooling kids are learning? Should they be learning particular things? Is there knowledge that all kids need? Are our unschooled kids learning enough? Can they get behind? Should we just trust our kids are learning? But what if we have doubts? Or what if we…

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!…

Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Curiosity, Flexibility, and Trust

I’m a Lady Fixing the World! Cecilie Conrad kindly invited me to join her and Sandra Dodd for Season 2 of her podcastThe Ladies Fixing the World. We recorded our first unschooling conversation together in November 2024 before life got extra-busy with Christmas, and it has just gone live! The audio version. Here’s the audio version: You can also listen…

Christian unschooling

Losing Time

I’ve been reading a book called A Time to Die by Nicholas Diat, who visited eight monasteries to talk to the monks about the experience of death. Here’s something that caught my attention: One monk described how he cares for the old and sick, and how he has to guard against doing things in a routine way, trying to complete…

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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