Sitting Quietly: Unschool Bits and Pieces

Kids Sitting Quietly in Church The other day, I was asked: How do you get young, unschooled children to sit quietly, without disturbing anyone, in church? This was my reply: When my kids were very small I didn’t expect them…

Meander the Unschooling Way

There are two routes to our local town. The first one is the efficient way. Once we’ve left the road that leads out of our village, we drive along the highway, through multiple sets of traffic lights before we arrive…

Getting Kids to Help with the Chores

Should parents expect kids to help with the chores? How do we encourage kids to have a generous attitude and want to be part of the family team, helping with the work? Here’s a simple suggestion that doesn’t involve chore…

Excited About Maths

“Hey! I’ve found an interesting website,” I said. “Do you girls want to have a look?”  “What’s it about?” asked Gemma-Rose suspiciously, and when I told her it was a maths site she groaned and didn’t look at all interested.…

Latest

Writing, Explosions, and Unsuitable Horror Stories

After a 4-month break, my daughter Imogen and I are back. We made a new podcast episode! This week, we’re chatting about: Finishing novels and beta reading My 19-year-old daughter Sophie and ‘graduate’ unschoolers Bushfires and exploding trees How our generous members saved our unschooling community Vlogging The TV shows we’ve been watching The Masterclass classes we’ve been enjoying We’re also discussing the question: is it okay to expose our kids to ‘unsuitable’ movies and books? Show Notes …

Be Brave

Yesterday, my Youtube subscribers must have fallen over backwards with surprise: I published a new video! It had been a very long time since my last one. In this vlog, I’m sharing a story about red hair, shampoo, and being brave enough to do the things we want to do before time runs out. I hope you’ll watch!…

Home Almost Alone and Pondering What to Do

Here in Australia, the new school year has just begun, and for the first time in nearly 30 years, our family doesn’t have any registered homeschoolers. I don’t need to create a new homeschool records notebook labelled 2021, Term 1. This year, I won’t have to gather lots of notes of all the fabulous learning that my kids are experiencing because we no longer have any school-aged children. One person who hasn’t finished with school is my knowledge transmitting husband…

Unschooling: Are We Willing to Give Up Our Own Ideas?

Educating our kids can sometimes feel like a huge responsibility, can’t it? There are so many choices. We have to make lots of decisions. What is the best way to homeschool? We read books and blogs, listen to the experts, ponder different ideas, think about our own experiences and preferences. Then we find a method that excites us, we buy the associated resources, and put it into action. And everything goes well, at least for a short while. But then…

Directing Our Lives Instead of Letting Life Direct Us

‘ve always wondered about the connection between freedom and not wasting time. We have a limited number of hours, so we should make the most of them, shouldn’t we? But we don’t want to live on a tight schedule, slotting activities into every minute of our days ahead of time. We need to be free to make our own choices about the things we do and when we do them. But what if we end up drifting through our days without…

Giggling in the Cemetery

Three little stories to celebrate our son Thomas’ birthday. he worst day of my life could have been the day that Thomas died. Or maybe it was the day we buried him because it was then that I knew I’d never see my son again. But perhaps, it could have been the day after the funeral when all the busyness was over, and I was alone with my sorrow. Would I survive? Could I move forward and live the rest…

Motivated to Learn

Did you ever hear my physics story? When I was in grade 11, we moved house, and so I had to go to a new school. On my first day, I turned up at a physics class. The teacher who’d never had girls in his class before said, “What are you doing here?” And I told him I’d come to learn physics. He replied, “We’ll see about that!” I was told that I’d have to prove that I was worthy…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

Trying to Be a Fun Mum

When my first two children were very small I had a best friend called Mellie. We got on extremely well despite being very different.…

The Ladies Fixing the World

How Unschoolers Can Deal with Questions and Sceptics

My mother-in-law visited us for the birth of our son, Thomas. After he died and we’d buried him in his tiny white casket, Andy’s mother asked me if we wanted more children. As I replied, “Oh, yes!”, my mother-in-law’s face dropped into a disapproving frown. “She thinks we already have enough kids,” I thought as my defence hackles rose. But…

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…

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!…

Christian unschooling

When Mothering Is Not Enough

Should our kids be our whole world? Should we dedicate all our time and effort to raising the most precious people in our lives? Or is it okay to combine motherhood with our own interests? Could there be advantages in using our gifts and pursuing the things that bring us joy not only for us but also for our kids?…
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