Chores and Our Typical Unschooling Day

The other morning, after we’d done the morning chores and said prayers together, I asked my girls what they wanted to do. “Can we go to the post office?” asked Gemma-Rose. “I want to post my letters.” My eleven-year-old daughter…

The Saturday Unschool Examen

Every Saturday, while my husband, youngest daughter and dogs are still in bed, I sit on the living room sofa, journal on my knee, scrawny cat by my side, and by the light of a lamp in the pre-dawn dark,…

Are You a Proper Unschooler?

I used to worry about labelling our family as unschoolers. What if someone came along and said, “You’re not proper unschoolers”? Some people don’t like labels. Labels can certainly divide us. Someone could say,”You’re not unschoolers but we are.” That…

How Sharing Interests Strengthens Family Bonds

The other evening, I scrolled through my Youtube feed looking for something to watch. I clicked a link, a video loaded, and I heard these words: “Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, I went to the weir,…

Latest

A Wasting Time Unschooling Challenge

When I was a child, I always felt I should be doing something useful rather than sit still and dream, think or watch TV. I thought I had to be productive and not waste time. As an adult, I‘ve discovered that we learn a lot by doing such things as watching movies and playing video games. These activities aren’t time-wasters. They’re rich learning experiences. But what about those times when we or our kids aren’t even watching movies, when we’re…

Rules for Having Fabulous Unschool Learning Adventures

I know unschooling isn’t supposed to have any rules, but we do have a few. They’re called Our Rules for Having Fabulous Learning Adventures. When my kids were younger, whenever we headed out the door to explore the bigger world, we chose to follow these seven rules: ♡ Adventure with exploring eyes and curious minds ♡ Talk about what we discover but don’t interrogate or lecture ♡ No worksheets allowed. If we have our eyes on a piece of paper,…

What’s the Best Place to Bring Up Kids?

Do you ever wonder where you should live? Are you providing the best environment for your kids? Is it rich and full of opportunities for learning? While Imogen and I were on holiday together, we wandered around Kiama where we were staying, taking photos and chatting about the differences between this coastal town and our village in the bush. Would we prefer to move to the beach? How would our life change if we did? Would we miss anything at…

When You’re Tempted to Leave Unschooling and Try Something Else

Every evening of our recent holiday, Imogen and I swished through the warm waves as we walked along the beach, waiting for the sun to set. One evening, I noticed a group of birds on the sand. At first glance it looked like a gathering of seagulls, but there were two imposters in the lineup. The word imposter makes me think of all the times I’ve felt like an unschooling imposter. For many years I’ve blogged, podcasted, written books and…

Could a Lack of Freedom Damage Our Kids’ Mental Health?

On the first morning of my recent holiday with my daughter Imogen, I got up early, grabbed my camera and headed to the beach. I sat alone on the sand, waiting for the sun to rise and thought about freedom. The last couple of years have been hard, haven’t they? In 2020, here in Australia, we endured a lockdown of several months. Last year, I was confined to home for almost 6 months. Right back at the beginning, when we…

Parents Or Friends? Or Can We Be Both?

A few weeks ago, my gorgeous adult daughter, Imogen, said, “Mum, we need a break. How about we go to the beach together for a few days?” Oh my, that was a fabulous suggestion. We’ve both had a hard time this last year or so. A holiday away from the cares of everyday life sounded perfect. Actually, it sounded like a lifesaver. So we packed our swimming gear, hoping the water would be warm, even though it’s now autumn here…

How to Turn Cooking into Unschool Maths Homeschool Records Notes

When you hear the words ‘real life maths’ or ‘real world maths’ what do you think of? Cooking? That’s the usual example, isn’t it? “My kids did lots of real life maths today. They cooked a cake for morning tea.” When my children were younger, they often made cakes and biscuits and even whole meals. And each time, I’d jot down some notes in our homeschool records notebook and label them as ‘maths.’ When I first started doing this, it…

An Adult Learning Unschooling Challenge

I have an adult learning unschooling challenge for you! It’s part of a series of challenges that I’ve written that, hopefully, will help turn unschooling principles and ideas into something real in your lives.  Years ago, I used to think education was for kids. I’d been to school and completed my education. Now it was my children’s turn to work (and their turn to suffer.) It was me against them. Some days getting them to learn was a real battle.…
1 … 21 22 23 24 25 … 109

My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

Will We Have Done Enough?

Are our kids ‘doing enough’? Maybe we often ask ourselves that question. But what do we mean by ‘doing enough’? Do we worry that…

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 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…

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…

The Discomfort of Letting Go and Allowing Our Kids (and Ourselves) to Grow

We organise life so we’re not challenged too much. We don’t want to stray outside our comfort zone because that could be painful. We say no instead of yes to our kids, not wanting them to go to parties at night, ride their bikes on the road, run through the bush alone, or learn to drive. We don’t want thoughts…
Go toTop