When a Child Has Only One Interest.

“It’s all very well, letting children follow their own interests, but my daughter only wants to do one thing. She’s not interested in science or maths or writing… All she wants to do is cook and how’s that going to…

Chores and Kids: What if We Said, “Yes”?

My most popular post ever is Getting Kids to Help With the Chores. After publishing it, readers flocked over to see what I’d written. Had I discovered the secret to having helpful and considerate children? Some readers were very skeptical…

Mothers, Unschooling and a Lazy Way of Life

Is unschooling a lazy way of life? Do mothers choose to unschool because they can’t be bothered putting together a proper homeschool program for their children’s education? Perhaps unschooling mothers don’t actually do much in a day. My daughter Imogen…

Latest

Unschooling: Good Education

When I open the front door, a man with a winning smile immediately launches into a slick presentation. Do I have children? Yes, I have two. Would I like them to receive a good education? Yes. Do I want to give them the best start in life? Of course. It’s my lucky day. The young man tells me he has just what I need: a set of encyclopaedias. He thrusts a brochure at me and says he can give me…

Christian Unschooling: Letting God into Our Kids’ Lives

I used to tick off my spiritual boxes religiously every day. I said a lot of prayers and read my Bible. And I got extra ticks whenever I was able to get to daily Mass, so I made the effort to get there as often as life allowed. It wasn’t easy doing all that, but I did it. I had to because my checklist was my safety plan. If my boxes were all ticked, maybe God would leave me alone.…

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 our children aren’t doing enough Maths, English, science? Or is there something far more important they need to know? My daughter Gemma-Rose was about 15 when I wrote this story about a day in our family’s unschooling life. I’ve been thinking about time, love, learning and doing ‘enough’. Early the other morning, my daughter Gemma-Rose and…

How to Unschool Maths and Still Fulfil Homeschool Registration Requirements

Can Registered Homeschoolers Unschool Maths? Perhaps you’d like to let your kids unschool maths, but you’re worried. Will you have enough maths notes in your records book if you let them drop the formal maths program they’re using? Can you satisfy the maths requirement for homeschool registration without traditional style workbook maths exercises? For us, the answer to these questions was yes. My youngest girls approached maths in an unschooling way, and we never had any trouble getting through our registration…

An End of the Year Unschooling Challenge

At the end of 2020, which was a very tough year, I wrote the following unschooling challenge. 2021 turned out to be a difficult year too. I think we could substitute 2021 for 2020 and do the challenge again! This week, we’re going to think about 2021 and write our end-of-the-year reviews. Maybe we don’t want to do this. It’s been a tough year, hasn’t it? We might just want to move on. Forget this year and hope that next…

Turning a Shopping Trip into Homeschool Record Notes

Earlier this year, when the covid restrictions eased, and life felt like it was returning to normal after our lockdown – and before the next lockdown arrived – my girls and I enjoyed a big shopping day out together. After we returned home, I wrote the following post for our unschooling community. Yesterday, I went shopping with three of my girls. We drove to a nearby city to the ‘big shops’ and enjoyed browsing for books, clothes and makeup. We…

Basking in the Reflected Glory

Not so long ago,  early one morning, I put on my coat – there was a bitter wind blowing – and set out on a solo adventure with my camera and a travel mug of coffee. Thirty or so minutes later, I turned off the main road and bumped my way over a few potholes and a cattle grid, and arrived at a nature reserve alongside the river. I’ve been to this place many times with my girls for picnics.…

Younger Unschoolers: What About Technology and Screen Time?

When I announced that I was going to write about younger unschoolers, a friend said, “I’d love to read about little kids and technology!” Could I share how we approached screen time during our children’s younger years? My kids all have a good relationship with technology. Is that because of how we handled such things as computers and the Internet during their early years? No. You see, we didn’t get a computer until after the birth of our 5th…
1 … 23 24 25 26 27 … 109

My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

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…

Christian unschooling

When We Can’t Decide What’s the Best Way to Bring Up and Educate Our Kids

Do you ever swap between the various methods of homeschooling looking for the perfect way to bring up and educate your kids? I used to do that. I’d try one thing after another, confusing myself and my kids, while never finding what I was searching for. As I said in my book Curious Unschoolers: … I pondered lots of questions:…

The ‘Risky’ Business of Trusting Children

Trusting children to make their own choices sounds risky enough when it applies only to education, but what if you extend this trust to other areas of life? Will children decide they don’t want to go to Mass or eat healthy food? Perhaps they will want to watch inappropriate movies or play computer games all day. Some parents decide they…
Go toTop