Younger Unschoolers: Our Learning Adventure Rules

If we’re willing to seize the moment, we can have some fabulous spur-of-the-moment learning adventures. We could find ourselves unexpectedly sitting on a beach watching breaching whales. But can we also have planned adventures with our unschooling kids? Oh yes!…

Stories from My Closet

Yesterday, I sat inside my walk-in-wardrobe (closet) for an hour. Do you know what I was doing in there? I wasn’t sorting out my clothes. I was recording a podcast! Why was I podcasting in my closet?  Well, in podcast…

Is Our Unschooling Life Rich Enough?

Some unschooling families seem to live very adventurous lives that make ours look rather ordinary. And I wonder: Is our life rich enough for our children? Are they getting all the opportunities they need to learn so that they grow…

Unschooling: A Slow but Productive Way of Life

My beautician and I have thought-provoking conversations. Yesterday, while Bonnie was taming and tinting my ageing eyebrows, making them look fierce, we chatted about time. We started with photography and how phones have simplified the process of capturing images. After…

Love or Fear? What Guides Our Lives?

There are so many things we could fear. We might be too afraid to send our kids to school if we listen to the loud voices telling us how bad traditional education is. We might choose homeschooling because of that…

Latest

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 to help so that my children are willing to help me. Sometimes when I go to the kitchen and see the dishes (waiting to be washed), I don’t want to do them. I think: Somebody…

Our Unschooling Morning Routine

Just before Christmas, Karen asked me if I could write about our typical unschooling days.  I spoke about this topic in a podcast a few months ago, so I thought I’d share some of what I said in a short series of posts. Today, I’m starting with our morning routine. Routine? That doesn’t sound very unschooly, does it? We all get up early in the morning. If it’s one of the warmer months of the year, we might go for…

Who’s on Your Team?

The other day I went for a walk with my daughter Imogen. As we were heading along a bush track, I noticed she was fumbling with her iPod. “Are you listening to something?” I asked. “No,” she replied. “I just had an idea about a blog post, and I’m making a note of it before I forget.” I understand about note making. I scribble down ideas all the time. If I didn’t, I’d soon forget them. And then some ‘brilliant’…

Evernote Homeschool Records: How Many Notebooks Do We Need?

How many Evernote notebooks do we need for recording our unschooling? Here are three options:  1. We could create only one notebook for the whole year eg: 2015 We can easily sort our notes if we tag them with the term and the week eg: term 1 week 1 If we want to see all the notes for week 1 of term 1, 2015, we search the 2015 notebook for the tags week 1 and term 1. 2. We could create…

Encouraging Kids’ Ideas

The other day, I was telling you about my plans to transcribe parts of my podcasts. I want to make them into blog posts. I found some software called Transcribe to help me, and this afternoon, I tried it out. I transcribed a segment from podcast episode 52, Getting Older, Unschooling, and Moving On. It’s about encouraging children’s ideas (and not being afraid to try out our own ideas). I’ve used this segment before. If you’ve watched my short video,…

One-on-One Times: Are They Important?

I got up early this morning. The house was quiet until our three cats, and one dog saw me. Meows and pitiful whines accompanied me to the kitchen. Apparently, our animals were on the edge of starvation. It’s just as well, I appeared. Once I’d tossed food into each pet bowl, I filled the kettle. As I stood waiting for the water to boil, I heard a sound. My daughter Sophie was up. I placed her cup next to mine and…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

When a Child Can’t Cope

A few months ago, a family story made big news in a city newspaper. One Sunday, a married couple decided to take their small…

The Ladies Fixing the World

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…

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…

Christian unschooling

The ‘Risky’ Business of Trusting Children

Trusting children to make their own choices sounds risky enough when it applies only to education, but what if you extend this trust to other areas of life? Will children decide they don’t want to go to Mass or eat healthy food? Perhaps they will want to watch inappropriate movies or play computer games all day. Some parents decide they…
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