Fighting on the Front Line
A couple of days ago, we had some good news: the status of our bushfire has changed from ‘out of control’ to ‘being controlled’. Isn’t that wonderful? The fire is huge so the fight to put it out is far…
Unschool Science
By Lucinda Leo My kids love science. We’ve never followed a curriculum. Instead, we’ve done experiments, been to science shows and read interesting books. Pinterest has loads of fun ideas, or you can buy or borrow books full of experiments…
A Doctor’s Waiting Room Education
We are sitting in the doctor’s waiting room. In the corner, a TV is blaring. Sound and images come hurtling towards us. It’s impossible to ignore them and soon we are staring at the screen watching The Morning Show. “What’s…
Why We Don’t Have to Push Kids to Work Hard
This morning, my husband Andy watched as our girls and I got ready to go for a run. As we laced up our shoes, he grinned and said: “What a mean mother you are making everyone run before breakfast!” Although…
How Our Unschooled Kids Need a Deep Kind of Example
Sometimes I’m asked: ‘How do I get my kids to get up early? How do I get them to exercise? And I’d like to get the chores done as a family at the start of each day. Then there are…
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!…
Fan Mail and Lots of Unschooling Thoughts
This morning I felt very discouraged. Perhaps it was the result of being overtired. I don’t know. It’s strange how grey the world looks…
Unschoolers Talk About Freedom to Choose
“If children are given the freedom to do whatever they want, will they choose to do nothing at all?” I ask my daughters. Sophie…
How to Respond to ‘Unlovable’ Kids and Cats
Poppy died, and I cried despite not liking the cat. Poppy was a grumpy animal. She was messy and unkempt, preferring not to groom…
Unschooling Is Carried by Conversations
Dinner tables, car rides, bedtime chats, and café corners are the real places where unschooling lives and grows. Conversations—often unscheduled, informal, and unplanned—can become the central structure of a learning life. Gathering at the Dinner Table In our house, we never met for breakfast or lunch. Those were meals where people ate what, where and when they liked. But we…
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…
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…
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…
About Me, About Being Different
When I was a teenager, I was one of those not-worth-a-second-glance kids. I lived on the fringes of the crowd. I was neither popular nor cool. With my long red hair parted into two pigtails, my very freckled face, my bony knees, and sensible clothes, I was positively ordinary. One day at school I was grabbed by the arm. “Come…