Thoughts Flitting Through My Mind

Travelling home, after spending a few days with my son Callum and daughter Sophie, lots of thoughts flit through my mind: We fear we might fail, but perhaps failure isn’t always as bad as it sounds. We might not be…

When Unschooling Spills Over into Parenting

Some random thoughts about unschooling and parenting… Sometimes I get the feeling most of the world thinks I’m a little strange. Whenever I post a parenting story I wonder if there are people out there thinking, “Wow! She’s a bit…

Learning from Life, Record-Keeping, and Strewing

Last week, life was very busy. And even though there was no time for such things as ‘school’, we had a week jam-packed with learning. By the time Friday rolled around, I had an equally jam-packed unschool records book. Yes,…

The Stories of Our Lives

In this episode of the Stories of an Unschooling Family podcast, I discuss a range of topics from unschooling and homeschool record-keeping to generating writing ideas and dealing with social media distractions. I also share some resources, including Tiago Forte's…

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Radical Unschool Love, Praise and Joy

Do you ever praise your kids? Do you tell them you’re proud of them? Some people say we shouldn’t praise our kids. Maybe that’s because our children might end up doing things only because they want to gain our approval. And is there a risk a child might think she is better than everyone else if we praise her too often? We don’t want our kids becoming proud and obnoxious, do we? So, many parents stay well away from praise.…

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…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

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…

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!…

The Math Myth: How Do Unschooled Kids Learn Math?

There are many unschool maths questions. Here are just a few of them: Can kids really learn maths without formal instruction? What does unschooling maths look like? Can we strew unschool maths? Is it possible for registered homeschoolers to unschool maths? How can we provide evidence kids are learning maths when we don’t have formal records like workbooks and test…

Christian unschooling

Christian Unschooling: Are Desires Important?

Do you have great desires? Are there things you want to do with your life? Maybe you know in a vague kind of way that you need to do something, but you don’t know what you should do. Or perhaps your desires don’t feel important. When I was a child, I had desires, but they came to nothing. Other people…

Bringing God into the Unschooling Picture

A few months ago, I wrote a post called Why This is the End of the Line for Me. I decided that I’d explored unschooling from every possible angle. What more could I write about? It was time for me to move onto other things. Let my kids tell their own unschooling stories and find something else of my own…
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