The Saturday Unschool Examen
Every Saturday, while my husband, youngest daughter and dogs are still in bed, I sit on the living room sofa, journal on my knee, scrawny cat by my side, and by the light of a lamp in the pre-dawn dark,…
Encouraging Kids to Say Thank You
How do we encourage our younger children to say thank you? Do they need only our good example to copy? Is learning good manners enough? Our kids could just repeat the polite words. But is it better if their response…
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…
Dreams, Talents, Working and Unworking
In a few months’ time, my daughter Imogen will finish her university degree. She’s started thinking about what she would like to do next. “I have three lofty dreams,” she says. One of them involves a piano, a microphone and…
Pi and Tea, and Our Dog’s Tea Bag Collection
Our puppy Nora has a tea bag collection. She keeps it under the conifer tree at the bottom of our garden. Every day she pushes her long doggy nose between the wooden slats of the compost bin, in search of…
How an Unschooling Life isn’t Perfect and Why That’s Okay
I take a look at my drafts file. I have SEVENTY half-written blog posts! Can I finish any of them? How about this one? I began writing this post some time ago when I was enthusiastically working on my unschooling book. If I publish it, will I feel motivated to continue writing my book? I’m writing an unschooling book. I’ve been thinking about the main message I want to share. What do I really want to say? Of course, I want…
Turning Unschool Learning into Homeschool Records Notes
Why would I want to turn something as unique and wonderful as unschooling into routine homeschool records notes? I wish I could take delight in my daughters’ learning without ever thinking about homeschool records. Unfortunately, that’s not possible. I always have to keep one eye on the records book so that my unschoolers can fulfil the necessary homeschool registration requirements . While my girls are busy learning, I have to do a lot of behind-the-scenes work. I have to translate all their…
Unschooling Siblings and Other Stories
I started writing this blog post last Friday. This is all I managed to write before I was interrupted: I didn’t make a podcast last week. Some unexpected things happened and so I didn’t find time to sit in front of my mic and record one. I felt a little frustrated because I’d promised to get back on track and podcast more regularly. But perhaps we just have to accept what life brings, go with the flow, just do our best…
What Do Unschoolers Do All Day?
Years ago, when we first started homeschooling, I used to wonder, “What do unschoolers do all day?” Even though I’d read a few books, I couldn’t find a satisfactory answer to my question. I needed a fly-on-the wall view into the unschooling life. This is why I decided to tell stories about our unschooling life when I began this blog. Turn unschooling theory into stories about real children. Perhaps it’s helpful to see unschooling in action? In this week’s podcast,…
Our Unschooling Story
Imagine if you visited us. You’d knock at our front door. We’d invite you in. We’d sit around our kitchen table. Sip coffee. Eat chocolate muffins. What would we talk about? Lots of things! You’d tell me about your family. I’d tell you about mine. We’d probably chat about unschooling. Maybe you’d ask about our unschooling story. In this week’s podcast, episode 93, I tell you about our unschooling story. I share stories about how we started as unschoolers but drifted…
Does My Trust in Unschooling Ever Waver?
A friend asked if I’ve ever been unsure about unschooling. And I replied: Yes, there have been times when I’ve questioned what I’m doing. Even now I have an odd day when I wonder if I should be doing something different. Hard to admit because this is probably not what everyone wants to hear. But I think that it’s quite okay to have low days when we question things. Unschooling isn’t a magic solution. It’s life and life can be…
How Unschooling is About Being Connected With Our Kids
Some parenting ideas seem to make a lot of sense. For example, children have far less life experience than parents, so we are in a better position than them when it comes to decision making. If we give our kids too much freedom, they might make poor choices. Some mistakes might not be significant, but what about those that affect their futures? Surely, a responsible parent will tell her kids what they should be doing? And many parents do exactly…
Imogen and Andy Elvis Presley
My husband Andy and my daughter Imogen both have singing lessons on Saturday mornings. Andy has the first lesson, and while he is busy, Imogen sits in the car, drinks coffee, and works on her computer until it’s time for her own lesson. But yesterday, Imogen did something different: She recorded a vlog for her Facebook page. In the video, Imogen mentions that someone has asked her to sing an Elvis song. Imogen Elvis singing Elvis. Wouldn’t that be fun?…
Are You a Proper Unschooler?
I used to worry about labelling our family as unschoolers. What if someone came along and said, “You’re not proper unschoolers”? Some people don’t…
An Interview with a Teenage Radical Unschooler
Last week, in episode 109 of my unschooling podcast, I was chatting about radical unschooling. This week, I’m interviewing Sophie (16) who is a radical…
Old and New Stories, a Book Club and Other Unschooling Things
A few weeks ago, I received a letter from Fr James Tierney who is the author of the Bush Boys children’s books. Fr and…
How Unschooling Doesn’t Guarantee a Fairytale Life
Yesterday evening, like all Sunday evenings, my kids who live locally came to dinner. Six of us gathered around our dining room table, savouring a meal cooked by my husband while enjoying the usual end-of-the-week lively catch-up conversation. There was a time when we dreamed that all our children would buy houses on the same street as our family home.…
The Math Myth: How Do Unschooled Kids Learn Math?
There are many unschool maths questions. Here are just a few of them: Can kids really learn maths without formal instruction? What does unschooling maths look like? Can we strew unschool maths? Is it possible for registered homeschoolers to unschool maths? How can we provide evidence kids are learning maths when we don’t have formal records like workbooks and test…
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…
Shall We Talk About Christian Unschooling?
I often get to the point where I feel I haven’t got anything more to say about unschooling. I wonder: is it time to move on? At the beginning of last year, I reached such a point. However, instead of thinking about moving away from unschooling, I proposed the idea of exploring unschooling from a different angle. Should we discuss…
Could Ebooks Save My Unschool Blog?
The other day, I logged into my blog hosting account to find out when my next payment is due and how much it will be. When I saw the bill due later this year, I gulped and said to my husband, “Do we want to spend so much money on a site that’s often slow or offline because of a…