The Inflated Can of Baked Beans

“Do you know what inflation is?” I ask. My youngest daughters Sophie and Gemma-Rose look at me with blank faces. “I could tell you a story about inflation. Do you want to hear it?” The girls aren’t sure but I…

What I Discovered When I Became a Video Gamer

Discover how video games helped one person cope with difficult times and how finding the right game can offer a chance for success. Explore the benefits of playing puzzle games and how they can improve thinking skills and creativity. Read…

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…

Latest

Lacking Inspiration

My writing life goes round in circles. At times, I feel excited. I have lots of things I want to write about. My words flow onto the computer screen, no problem at all. And then one day I wake up and I feel flat. When I write, my words are two-dimensional. No amount of effort will pump them up and make them exciting. A few times in the past, when I’ve been in one of these phases, I’ve written a…

Letting Our Writing Imaginations Go Wild

The day before yesterday, while we were driving down the back road to town, we saw a tractor. “I’m glad it’s not going our way,” I remarked as it crawled along the road in the opposite direction. Yesterday, we were out on the road again. And again we came face-to-face with another slowly chugging tractor. This morning, as we were driving out of our village… “Look another tractor!” “The third this week!” Now tractors aren’t an uncommon sight in our…

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 player and settle back to enjoy. In every episode of the TV lifestyle program, Grand Designs, a couple or family builds their dream home in their dream location. In every episode, something goes wrong: “The house will go over-budget,” someone predicts. “The windows won’t arrive on time.” “They’ll find an underground river just where they want…

Stolen Paintings and Real Life Maths

Last week was a hunting week… My daughters and I watched as the FBI tried to hunt down a number of stolen masterpieces. And then I went on a hunt for some real life maths experiences. (Where’s all that maths everyone says the world is full of?) Did the FBI recover the paintings? Were the criminals apprehended? And did I find some maths notes to add to my rather empty looking homeschool records book? All will be revealed in this week’s…

If You Think Computer Games Are a Waste of Time…

Does your child like to play computer games? Maybe you wish he’d do something else because you think he’s wasting his time, doing nothing much at all. If you do, I have a story for you! The other day, my girls were playing computer games at the Coolmath Games website. “What game are you playing?” I asked. “Run!” said Gemma-Rose. “It’s great. Run 2 is even better.” “Can I have a go?” I asked. “Oh yes!” A moment later, I…

Is it Necessary We Agree with Each Other’s Ideas?

A reader once linked one of my posts to her blog and added the words: “I don’t agree with all her ideas, but I like this one.” Someone liked my post! I smiled. But a small part of me thought, “What’s wrong with some of my other ideas?” I wanted the reader to agree with everything I have to say. Is that just a natural reaction? Have you ever felt that way? Maybe most of us want our opinions to…

How to Live Radically

Radical unschooling children don’t necessarily brush their teeth, or shower and if they want to exist on an exclusive diet of coca cola and donuts, well, that’s up to them. Or so the stories go. And for some people that might not sound a very attractive way of life at all. But what if we forget about teeth and showers and junk food?  Perhaps there’s something far more important at the heart of a radical way of life… What if…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Curiosity, Flexibility, and Trust

I’m a Lady Fixing the World! Cecilie Conrad kindly invited me to join her and Sandra Dodd for Season 2 of her podcastThe Ladies Fixing the World. We recorded our first unschooling conversation together in November 2024 before life got extra-busy with Christmas, and it has just gone live! The audio version. Here’s the audio version: You can also listen…

How Unschoolers Can Deal with Questions and Sceptics

My mother-in-law visited us for the birth of our son, Thomas. After he died and we’d buried him in his tiny white casket, Andy’s mother asked me if we wanted more children. As I replied, “Oh, yes!”, my mother-in-law’s face dropped into a disapproving frown. “She thinks we already have enough kids,” I thought as my defence hackles rose. But…

Unschooling: Coping With the Unexpected

I used to think I could control my life. To achieve a perfect life, all I had to do was organise everything well, including my kids. What is a perfect life? My perfect life vision included a graduated row of good-looking and well-behaved children. I wanted people to admire my family and home, saying, “Sue is such a good mother!…

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…

Respecting Kids and Christmas Presents

Does having a simple Christmas sound good? It does to me. This year, like last year and the one before, I wanted to announce that I’m not buying a lot of Christmas presents. I thought about saying that I’m not buying any at all. I didn’t want to think and think until the perfect gift ideas came to mind. I…
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