Is It Time to Unschool?
A new year. What’s ahead? More of the same? Or are you going to try a few new things in 2018? How about unschooling? If you’ve been sitting on the fence, thinking about it but not actually committing to this…
Goodbye, Stories of an Unschooling Family
TThe other day, I found a 5-star review of my book, The Unschool Challenge, on Amazon. It was written by Patrice Fagnant Macarthur from Today’s Catholic Homeschooling website. In The Unschool Challenge, Elvis provides short essays on various topics related to unschooling…
Does Unschooling Work?
Does unschooling work? I guess the answer to that question depends on what we mean by the word ‘work’. Where do we hope unschooling will lead? When parents are investigating unschooling, they probably want to know if unschooling works. This…
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…
Have I Changed My Unschooling Mind About Screens?
If I had younger children, would I give them iPads of their own? Would I encourage them to spend as much time as they liked using technology? Is this the right unschooling thing to do? I’ve pondered these questions a…
Turning Famous Paintings into Jigsaw Puzzles
My girls love putting together jigsaw puzzles. We often look out for cast-off puzzles at markets and garage sales. We come home clutching piles of old boxes, hoping all the pieces are inside. The girls like to work on huge puzzles that take days to put together. And though I can see putting together puzzles is satisfying work for them, it can be a bit frustrating for me: “When are you girls going to finish that puzzle? I’d like to…
Wednesday Adventures
One evening last week we were all sitting together in the lounge of our holiday cottage. The older girls were drawing, the younger ones were reading, and I was fiddling about with my camera. Although I’ve had the camera for a few months now I haven’t yet read the manual properly. I keep dipping into it and trying things out. I should have read the instruction booklet carefully from start to finish before actually using the camera, but somehow I…
An Unschooling Holiday
This morning, I crept out of bed just before 7 o’clock and met my kindred spirit, Charlotte in the kitchen. Neither of us likes lying in bed late. But everyone else… they were all still snuggled up under their quilts, enjoying a relaxing start to the day. No need to hurry. We are on holiday. Yes, our third term of the school year has just ended and holiday atmosphere prevails in our home. I wonder why holidays mean so much…
My Maths-Magician Helps Out
We are going on holiday, our first holiday in years and the girls are very excited. I am very excited too! We have a cottage booked opposite the lake, not far from the beach. A couple of weeks ago we received all the details about costs. There is a basic cost for 7 nights’ accommodation for 6 people (the boys are staying home- they’ll be working and cat sitting), plus an optional end-of-holiday-cleaning cost and a linen cost. I mulled…
A Mother’s Basket
It hasn’t been long since the last homeschooling meme. But if you are a book loving mother and would like to join in with another… Read on… Imogen and Charlotte decided to fill the gaps in Sophie’s education by filling a basket for her, with books they consider essential reading for a ten year old girl. They also put together a basket of books for Gemma-Rose. Then Imogen thought she’d hunt out all her favourite books for Charlotte to share. And…
Sophie’s Basket
Or Imogen and Charlotte’s book recommendations for their younger sisters We are sitting around the table munching our lunch and chatting. Sophie tells us she wants to learn more about horses and Charlotte mentions brumbies. “Brumbies?” “The wild horses of Australia… You remember the horses in that poem, The Man from Snowy River? “You have to read The Brumby books,” someone insists. Charlotte’s eyes light up. “Yes! They were good.” She thinks for a minute. “There’s lots of good…
Sew Easy
When I’m not writing, I love to sew clothes for my girls. And when I’m not sewing pretty skirts, I like to sew pictures. And the pictures I like to sew are red work embroideries. A few years ago, I discovered a couple of embroidery books by Wendy Brigg: Sew Red and Simply Red. All the patterns use very simple stitches and have been embroidered using red thread. As soon as I saw the books I had to buy…
Did I Doubt? I’m Not Telling!
A few weeks ago, I had a photography adventure in the bush with my girls. We had a wonderful afternoon strolling along the bush track with our cameras, and when we returned, I pondered: Should I plan a special lesson about how cameras work, or how the eye works, or the history of cameras or how light works or…? No! That would kill the girls’ interest in photography dead. I am sure the girls will ask questions or look things up for…
How to Parent So We’ll Have No Regrets
When I look at family photos from a few years ago, I remember those chaotic and messy days when I was at the centre…
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…
Respecting Kids and Christmas Presents
Does having a simple Christmas sound good? It does to me. This year, like last year and the one before, I wanted to announce…
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.…
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…
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: Should We Encourage Our Kids to Seek Security?
Should we encourage our kids to seek security? Is it our parental duty to make sure they receive the education and opportunities they might need to get safe, well-paying jobs when they leave our care? Or is that kind of security not what our children need? Could security be about something else?…
Christian Unschooling: Do Kids Need Silence and Space to Hear God?
We should share our faith with our kids, but do we also need to give them space to ponder, wonder, and hear God in the silence? Or is that risky? Is faith something we need to impress on our kids, insisting they adopt it without question? Because we don’t want to lose our children, do we? Faith is important.…