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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…

Some Real Life Covid English

The other morning, while we were driving to town, my daughter Gemma-Rose did something that’s socially unacceptable: she sneezed! “It’s okay,” I said. “We belong to the same bubble.” Then we had a very interesting conversation about words. Since covid-19 appeared, how many words have gained additional meanings? Bubble used to conjure up images of filmy spheres that delight children (and adults), and now when we hear that word we think of the people who share their everyday lives with…
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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: 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…

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…

Christian unschooling

Is It Okay if Parents Want to Influence Their Unschooling Kids?

Is it okay if we try to influence our unschooling kids? What if we’d like them to acquire particular values? Can we expose them to our beliefs? Or should we stand back and try to keep quiet about the things we base our lives on and let our kids work out everything for themselves? Let’s say we decide it’s…
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