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.…
Christian Unschooling: Letting God into Our Kids’ Lives
I used to tick off my spiritual boxes religiously every day. I said a lot of prayers and read my Bible. And I got extra ticks whenever I was able to get to daily Mass, so I made the effort…
Confident to Be Me
8Love and acceptance are so very important. They give our kids the confidence to go out into the world and be themselves. This post was written by my daughter Imogen. It’s easy to recognize the Elvis Gang when we’re on…
Interviewing My Children and Other Family Movies
I have this brilliant (?) idea. I might have to learn a few new skills to put it into action. “Girls, do you want to learn how to make videos? We could make some and post them on our blogs.”…
Our Typical Unschooling Mornings
This post follows on from Why Some Kids Are Willing to Help With the Chores. I’ve been thinking about how our life does look rather conventional. What makes our life… different from any structured homeschoolers’ life? Is it any different?…
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 (in my notebook) a list of my top ten tips for joyful unschooling. I added ‘forgive instantly’ to this list,…
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 village a number of times as I posted and shopped and visited and attended… And as I walked, I chatted…
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 out). As we got into his parent’s car, we noticed something on the driver’s side mirror, just a few inches…
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 body vibrated with sheer delight. “Would you like to see my story, Mum?” Duncan would ask when the final word…
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 learning. Recently I’ve had a lot of English and Creative Arts learning experiences to record in my records notebook, but…
Acquiring Bucketfuls of Unschooling Trust
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.…
Can We Say We’re Unschoolers if We Require Maths?
Some people will tell you if you unschool everything except maths, you’re not really an unschooler. For how can we say to our kids, “I trust you will learn everything you need to know… but not maths”? We either trust or we don’t. Nothing else makes much sense. So yes, I do understand that point of view. But before I upset anyone with my opinions, I want to say I also understand how difficult it is to let go of…
Learning from My Daughter and Other Unschool Stories
Once upon a time, I knew more than Sophie when it came to our shared passions. But I have to admit, these days, her knowledge far exceeds mine. Now I’m learning from my daughter. “How did you make that blog post graphic?” I ask. “I’ll show you,” offers Sophie. Then she adds, “I could make a screencast tutorial video about it for you. It might help if you forget what you have to do.” So she does and I watch…
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…
Unconditional Love: the Glue that Sticks Us Together
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.…
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…
Is It Working? Wrestling with Doubt in Unschooling
A grey day arrives that completely blots out the memory of all the preceding good days. We feel overwhelmed, tired, worried and lost. We wonder why we ever decided to unschool. A puddle of doubt about unschooling forms around us. What do we do? Cecilie, Sandra and I are discussing unschooling doubts and sharing our experiences in episode 10 of…
Unschooling: Trusting the Process and Letting Go of Control
“I kind of love my title for this podcast. It’s very ambitious. Let’s fix it all!” And so begins another Ladies Fixing the World conversation in which Cecilie Conrad, Sandra Dodd and I dive deep into unschooling, sharing our thoughts and experiences. In S2E4, we discuss Unschooling: Trusting the Process and Letting Go. Want to know more…
Christian Unschooling: Are Desires Important?
Do you have great desires? Are there things you want to do with your life? Maybe you know in a vague kind of way that you need to do something, but you don’t know what you should do. Or perhaps your desires don’t feel important. When I was a child, I had desires, but they came to nothing. Other people…
Christian Unschooling: Disciplining With Unconditional Love
If our children misbehave, what do we do? Make them sit on the time-out chair? Punish them? Perhaps we should withdraw our love. Be cold and distant. Make things unpleasant for our kids because they need to know how upset we are, don’t they? We want them to feel bad because then, maybe, they’ll remember to act in the right…