Are You a Daring and Adventurous Parent?

Last week, my husband Andy and I took our four youngest girls away on holiday. We spent a few days at a salt water lake, swimming, kayaking and making sandcastles. Two of my girls are young adults, but they were…

How to Turn Movies into Homeschool Records Notes

Our kids are watching movies. Of course, they’re not wasting time. They’re busy learning. But will the education authorities agree when it comes to homeschool registration time? How do we turn movies into acceptable homeschool records notes? This is how I…

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How We Can Trust Kids and Dogs

We look up from our cameras to see two lean and muscular dogs racing towards us. They grin and circle around us before disappearing along the bush track.  A tall man appears. He pushes his long curly hair behind his ears as he says, “Good morning! You’re up early.” We nod. “It’s a beautiful morning,” we say as we look out over the river. “It was worth getting up early to see the sunrise.” There’s a mist hovering above the…

Of Babies and Bombs

You will enjoy this post, I’m sure. It’s the first in a new series of guest posts and was written by Hamilton Carter from the blog Copasetic Flow. If you need a good giggle, keep reading! We’re a baby-wearing family. It’s mostly because I’m just not cut out for strollers. I get that they have a certain convenience, and a certain traditional flair, but long before we had kids, I was ruined by the baby-bearers of Boulder. I watched mom…

Parenting Teenagers: Why I Don’t Make Rules

Every now and then, I stumble across a blog post containing a long list of rules for keeping teenagers safe from the dangers of the world. Teenagers may not be happy to abide by some of these rules, but does that matter? Parents might say: “We have to lay down the rules even if our children protest. Parenting isn’t about being popular.”…

A New Series of Unschooling Videos

Have you subscribed to my Youtube channel? Perhaps you’re one of my recent subscribers? (If you are, thank you!) Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a few good news emails: Frodo has subscribed to you on Youtube! These emails made me realise that it’s been rather a long time since I last made a video. “New subscribers will be expecting new videos,” I told my daughter Sophie. “Perhaps I should make one. I might even make a few…

Would You Like to Be My Guest?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could say, “Come over for coffee!” We’d sit around my kitchen table, sipping and chatting. We’d talk about all kinds of things. We’d share our stories, ponder questions, encourage each other, deepen our friendship. Maybe, one day, that will happen. But even if we never meet, you can still be my guest. What if you wrote a guest post for my blog? You could share your thoughts and experiences. You could tell your story.…

Grateful

It’s Father’s Day. We head to the car with a picnic basket. We’re going to the river. “I hope we get a picnic table,” I say. “Maybe everyone will be celebrating Father’s Day at the river.” But they’re not. When we arrive at the riverside park, it’s almost deserted. Two families and us. We look at the seven empty picnic tables. Which one shall we claim? “The one in the sun,” someone says. The spring sunshine is warm, but the…

How Sharing Interests Strengthens Family Bonds

The other evening, I scrolled through my Youtube feed looking for something to watch. I clicked a link, a video loaded, and I heard these words: “Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, I went to the weir,  to record a Youtube clip.” I listened as my husband Andy sang his made-up song in a strange broad accent. My family looked at me when they heard my giggles. “What are you watching, Mum?” asked my daughter Imogen. I removed…

Radical Unschooling

Are you thinking about radical unschooling? Maybe you see the benefits of educational unschooling and now you’re thinking about letting unschooling spill over into all aspects of life. What do you do next? Perhaps you say to your kids, “We’re going to try radical unschooling. From now on you’re free to choose when you go to bed, what you eat, if you help with the chores… You can do whatever you like.” But will this work? Surely letting go in…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

Unschooling Isn’t Freedom Gone Wild: Why Choices Matter More Than Ideals

My husband Andy returned to work today after two weeks at home. Holiday time is over. We’ve now moved into term time. A whole term of possibility days stretches before me. I’m free to do whatever I like with my time while Andy is at school. My eyes light up with delight. But then I remember there are many…

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 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…

Christian unschooling

Losing Time

I’ve been reading a book called A Time to Die by Nicholas Diat, who visited eight monasteries to talk to the monks about the experience of death. Here’s something that caught my attention: One monk described how he cares for the old and sick, and how he has to guard against doing things in a routine way, trying to complete…
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