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…

An Adult Learning Unschooling Challenge

I have an adult learning unschooling challenge for you! It’s part of a series of challenges that I’ve written that, hopefully, will help turn unschooling principles and ideas into something real in your lives.  Years ago, I used to think…

Small Steps Towards Unschooling: A Challenge

For the past year and a half or so, I’ve been writing unschooling challenges for our Stories of an Unschooling Family community. Each challenge is designed to stimulate thought and discussion about a particular aspect of unschooling. Hopefully, the challenges…

Unschooling: Haircut Courage

When I asked the hairdresser to cut my hair short, I had a definite idea of what I wanted. ”I like Andrea’s hairstyle,” I said, mentioning the name of a well-known TV presenter. “Could you cut my hair like hers?”…

Latest

An Elvis Family Tradition

On Easter Sunday I say, “It’s time to sing By Your Kingly Power O Risen Lord!” Gemma-Rose finds the hymn books, I set up my camera on the tripod, and everyone lines up. They know the routine. We’ve been singing our favourite hymn on Easter Sunday morning for years. It’s an Elvis family tradition. “Are you ready?” I ask. A moment later I hit the ‘record’ button. And everyone opens their mouths and sings. Several minutes later, I have my…

Changing People’s Minds about Unschooling

Sometimes when I’m hopping around the unschooling blogosphere I stumble across places where I don’t feel I belong. As I read the posts, I can feel the high emotions: “No one can tell us what to do with our own children. Society is wrong and we’re going to fight the system.” And although I agree, I don’t really see myself as a person who’s willing to put on my tough boots, arm myself with strong language, and head into battle.…

Funny How Things Change

Last Friday, I was ready to swing into a new season of our unschooling year. “No more record keeping for this term,” I announced to my girls. No more looking out for educational experiences to turn into Evernote notes. No more strewing. No more reading aloud. No more… “Would you like to…?” “Shall we…?” “This looks interesting…” “Did you know…?” Time to take a break, relax, spend more time on my own projects, and look forward to Easter. But on Monday morning,…

Using Evernote to Record Unschool Maths

Proving a child is learning maths, for homechool registration purposes, could be rather tricky for unschoolers. We don’t have any maths workbooks or exercise books to show an Authorised Person (AP) when she comes to visit us. We don’t have any printouts or achievement certificates or other records from online maths courses either. Actually we don’t have any paperwork at all. So what did I present to our AP at our recent registration visit? I showed our AP our Evernote…

Registering as Homeschoolers Using Evernote Unschool Records

The other day I promised to tell you more about our recent homeschool registration visit. An Authorised Person (AP), from the education department (NSW), came to our home to see our children, and look at our records and education plans for the future. And we were hoping everything would be in order and she’d grant us another two years of registration. We’ve had many homeschool registration visits over the years, but this one was a little bit different. For the…

A Successful Evernote Homeschool Registration Visit

 If you listened to last week’s podcast you’ll know I recently had to apply for another period of homeschool registration for my girls. You’ll also know I promised to report back when the visit was over.  Yesterday Sophie asked, “What if we fail our homeschool visit? What if the AP (Authorised Person) doesn’t like your Evernote records? What will you tell everyone?”  “I suppose it could be embarrassing if we fail,” I said. “I might have to confess I led…

Forcing Kids to Learn and to Eat, and Should We Test Them?

“What shall I speak about in this week’s podcast?” I ask my daughters. “What are you thinking about at the moment?” asks Imogen. “Next week’s homeschool registration visit. Perhaps I’ll start with that and see where it leads.” And this is where it led… What kind of records will I be presenting for next week’s homeschool registration visit? I have to make a plan for the next period of registration. How can I do that when we are unschoolers who…
1 … 76 77 78 79 80 … 109

My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

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…

The Ladies Fixing the World

Resources for Unschoolers

Strolling towards the shopping centre, I spy an older man with three hand-reared brightly coloured parrots. A few wide-eyed kids are gathered around him, and as I watch, he transfers a parrot to one of their shoulders, where it bounces lightly upon its feet, nuzzling a little ear. The child grins, hardly daring to move. The children have questions which…

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!…

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…

Christian unschooling

Christian Unschooling: the Foremost Task of a Parent

A few days ago, in my Stories of an Unschooling Family community, I posted these thoughts: A parent does her best to give her child a good education but should concentrating on academic success be her main focus? Perhaps a parent’s most important task is to teach a child about love. Intelligence and academic achievements are highly regarded by the…

Christian Unschooling and Other Things

I made a new podcast episode! Yes, after an absence of a few weeks, I’m back. So where did I go? Nowhere in particular. I was just at home enjoying lots of slow summer days. Maybe I was feeling lazy. But yesterday, that changed. I suddenly felt like getting back to work. And so I thought I’d record a catch-up…
Go toTop