Some Strange and Interesting Bookish Questions
If you could have only half of a book, would you prefer the first half or the second one? My daughter Imogen and I discuss this question after I tell her a friend gave me too much money for a…
Wild on the Inside
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.…
Unschooling Resources: Discoveries of 2014
This week’s podcast is all about resources. I talk about some of the interesting things we discovered during 2014 and… I answer the following questions: How do I discuss at least 17 resources in only 30 minutes? Do I talk…
How Well Do We Love?
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Unschooling: Trusting the Process and Letting Go of Control
“I kind of love my title for this podcast. It’s very ambitious. Let’s fix it all!” And so begins another Ladies Fixing the World conversation in which Cecilie Conrad, Sandra Dodd and I dive deep into unschooling, sharing our thoughts…
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…
My New Book!
Quinn barks loudly at a man in a mask who’s walking up our driveway. I open the front door, holding back the dog, and the man thrusts a box at me. No need to sign for it. No one does that anymore. The box is from Amazon, and when I open it, I see six copies of my latest children’s novel, The Angels of Wallaby Way. Yes, I’ve published a new book! I wrote the first draft of this novel during…
The Important People in Our Lives
About a week or so ago, I received a beautifully encouraging message from one of my friends in our unschooling community who’d listened to my podcast, The Problem with Being Too Nice. You might remember that I made that episode in March last year, at a time when I felt overloaded with various difficulties, including the pandemic lockdown. As I rarely received any feedback about the unschooling work I was doing, I wondered why I was sticking around trying to…
What I Discovered When I Became a Video Gamer
Discover how video games helped one person cope with difficult times and how finding the right game can offer a chance for success. Explore the benefits of playing puzzle games and how they can improve thinking skills and creativity. Read on to learn more about the surprising benefits of video gaming.…
What a Day Without Rules Looks Like
My children said, “Sleep in tomorrow, Mum. You’re overtired. You haven’t had much sleep in the last 48 hours.” So I slept in. When…
Encouraging Kids to Become Independent Learners
Many years ago, at a homeschooling picnic, I met a family who had a baby a little less than a year old. I watched…
Encouraging Kids to Write (and the Youngest Child in the Family)
When my son Duncan was about six or seven years old, his head was bursting with stories he wanted to tell. Every morning he…
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 Role of Repetition in Learning, Unschooling, and Shaping Identity
What if kids want to watch the same movies, read the same stories, or play the same games again and again? Should we try to move them on to other activities? Or is there value in repetition? Does repetition have an important role in our lives?…
Unschooling and Connections: How Learning Is All About Creating a Web of Understanding
When I finished my university degree, I threw all my botany and biochemistry lecture notes and books into the garbage bin with relief. And I said, “No one will ever make me learn anything ever again!” I have a science degree, which was presented to me while I was wearing a fancy gown with a mortar board on my head.…
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…
Can Christians Unschool?
Can Christians unschool? We’re Christian unschoolers. Maybe you’re Christian unschoolers too? There are lots of us living this way of life. But are we doing the right thing? Or are we side-stepping our responsibilities when we choose to unschool? Are we choosing the easy, lazy path? I often hear of parents who are struggling with homeschooling. Their kids aren’t doing…