Strengthening Family Bonds
My wonderful super computer won’t boot up. I turned it off the other evening and now it refuses to operate. It’s rather difficult to blog and podcast without a computer. Actually, it’s impossible. That’s why I didn’t have a new podcast episode to post yesterday. But today I found a way around my computer problem and I do have…
Chores and Our Typical Unschooling Day
The other morning, after we’d done the morning chores and said prayers together, I asked my girls what they wanted to do. “Can we go to the post office?” asked Gemma-Rose. “I want to post my letters.” My eleven-year-old daughter has been writing a lot of letters recently. They’ve all been written in cursive handwriting, Gemma-Rose’s latest interest. There was…
Perhaps I Shouldn’t Have Told You about Our Typical Unschooling Day
In my last podcast, I spoke about our typical unschooling day. Every day we get up early, do our chores as a team, and then say prayers together before getting on with the work of the day. We eat regular meals, sitting around the same table at the same time. At the end of the day, none of us is…
A Bit of Murder in Our Typical Unschooling Day
“Miss Scarlett did it in the conservatory with the dagger,” Gemma-Rose announces to her older sisters. Miss Scarlett, the conservatory and the dagger: Those words belong to my childhood. Many years ago, I loved playing Cluedo with my own sisters. I hoped I’d be the first person to discover the identity of the murderer. Could I work out how the murder…
How I Made a ‘Huge’ Mistake and Was Forgiven
Some days are difficult. Unexpected things happen, and mistakes are made. Clouds blow in and blot out the usual sunshine of our days, and we feel miserable. We let those mistakes overwhelm us. We get bogged down in woe, unable to move on, not because others fail to forgive us, but because we can’t forgive ourselves. Last week I wrote…
Is Unschooling Just Living Life?
Sometimes life gets busy. Too busy. I like empty weeks: five days waiting to be filled with whatever we like. I thought last week was going to be an empty week. But unexpected things happened. We ended up having lots of appointments to attend and errands to do. In the course of last week, I walked to and from our…
Of Spiders and Saints and So-Much-Kindness
A Guest Blog Post by Suzie Andres My family and I are visiting my husband’s family in Florida. Yesterday my husband surprised me by getting up early (this is vacation!) and asking if I’d like to go with him to Mass (it was a weekday morning; the feast of St. Sixtus the Second and of St. Cajetan, as it turned…
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 would sit in front of an old manual typewriter and hammer on the keys and his tale would appear on the paper. While he worked, his face was lit up with a huge smile. His whole…
Popularity, Learning to Read and Shakespeare
Is there such a thing as a typical unschooling day? What about a typical unschooling week? Do my children spend equal time on all the key learning areas? The answer is no! We tend to get immersed in a few things at a time. This isn’t so good for my record-keeping, but it’s a very enjoyable and effective way of…
Acquiring Bucketfuls of Unschooling Trust
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Why Some Kids Are Willing to Help with the Chores
I said that I have to be a good example if I want my children to help me get the house organised each morning… I have to jump out of bed and go out there and dive into the chores. I have to be willing…
Unschooling Teenagers: What They Think and What They Do
Have you ever wondered what unschooling teenagers are like? What kind of people are they? What do they think? What do they do? Have you ever googled the words ‘unschooling teenager’ to find out more? If you have done a search using those words, you might…
Making Children Learn What They Don’t Want to Know
We can’t force knowledge into children if they aren’t interested, though it might appear we can. For, of course, children learn things they don’t…
How Unschooled Kids Charge Off On Their Own Learning Adventures
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Aiming for Love, Not Perfection
I had a vision… By the age of 18 all my children were going to be perfectly brought up and perfectly educated. I wanted…
Unschooling: Elephant Education
The last time we went to the zoo, we stood shoulder to shoulder along the fence of the elephant enclosure, waiting for an educational…
Unschooling During a Crisis
Are there some things you hate doing? We don’t like gardening. Usually, we let our garden take care of itself. That’s why our hedges…
Learning During a Crisis
In this week’s podcast, episode 115, I’m sharing and discussing two stories: Learning From Life and Homeschooling in a Crisis I’m talking about those times when…
Imposing Rules on Children: Is There a Better Way?
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Social Media, Internet Addiction, and Screen Time
A week ago, I signed into Facebook for the last time. After a quick glance at my timeline and blog page, I headed to…
Focusing on the Smaller But More Important Things in Life
In my last post I said: What am I going to do next? What are my plans? What’s ahead for me? Someone at the…
A Real Science Education
The other day I was writing about our experiences unschooling high school science. I mentioned a couple of books I thought my chemistry-loving-daughter, Charlotte,…
Real Life Maths: Designing a Dream Home
“Anyone want to watch Grand Designs?” I shout. My family appears. “We do!” We turn on the TV, slip a disc into the DVD…