Do You Need to Follow an Older Unschooler? (Part 2)

I choose the photos I share online with care, looking for ones with good, flattering light. I also need my photo smile to be just right. Sometimes, my smile looks a bit goofy because of my overbite. I reject these…

Unschooling, University and More: An Interview

How do unschoolers get into university? Does unschooling prepare kids for the university experience? How do they get on studying in an educational institution for the first time? When my son Callum was 22, we discussed these questions in a…

In the Kitchen with a TV Chef Dad

Can I talk about food? First, I will have to start with a story that happened about ten years ago. My husband Andy was playing touch footy with a group of homeschooling fathers and children. It was a cold and damp…

Unschooling: Making the Right Choices

Years ago, when life was overwhelming, and I was looking for yet another way to homeschool my kids, I was tempted to unschool. I thought if we were unschoolers, we could do whatever we liked, and if we didn’t want…

Why We Have to Accept Ourselves as We Are

Sophie points her camera at me and says, “Smile, my beautiful mother!” I reply, “I’m not beautiful. Look at all my wrinkles!” Sophie pushes my words away. I may have wrinkles, but they’re not important to her. They’re a blur.…

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Enjoying an Unexpected Little Adventure

The kids pile into the car. I settle myself into the passenger seat and bang the door shut. My eldest-at-home daughter, Imogen makes sure her ‘L’ plates are attached to the front and back of the vehicle, before sliding into the driver’s place. We are off to town. Charlotte has a piano lesson and Imogen is going to drive us. When we get to the end of our street, Imogen pulls onto the road leading out of our village. She…

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.” “What will we film?” my daughters ask. “We could film our everyday lives, our outings, things we do… I could interview you, ask you questions. I’m sure you’ll think of some entertaining answers.” The girls roll their eyes. “Not only…

Giving Up My Perfect Start-of-the-Year Plans

On the other side of the world from us, homeschoolers are ‘going back to school’. Catalogues have been browsed, curricula, resources and books have been bought, plans have been drawn up, and hope and excitement are in the air. When I was a fairly new homeschooling mother, I had similar feelings of excitement and anticipation at the start of the new school year. After weeks of preparation, I was ready. I had a stack of perfect must-have resources. I’d written…

Live Life to the Full, Have No Regrets

Today we are going on an adventure.  The girls giggle. “We’re going on a ‘school excursion’!” they say. We imagine a long straggly crocodile of paired off and name-tagged children, walking hand-in-hand. Where are they off to? The museum? The zoo? The fire station?  No crocodiles for us. No museum or fire station. We pack a picnic, pull on our track pants and running shoes, and grab our cameras. We are off to the lake.  We thump our water bottles…

Memories of an Inexperienced Mother

When our first child was five days old, I was discharged from the hospital. A nurse carried our brand new daughter to the door, where my husband Andy was waiting to drive me home. The nurse turned to me and gently placed our baby in my arms before smiling and wishing us well. And I thought: She is going to let me walk out the door with this baby. She is going to let me, a mother with absolutely no…

When Worry Gets in the Way of Love

Sometimes life can feel very overwhelming. Parenting is not always easy. There are so many concerns and worries.  It starts very early:  Do I have enough milk for my baby? When will my child sleep through the night? Will she ever wean? How long will it be before she’s out of nappies?  Then when a child gets to school age it gets worse, especially if we decide to homeschool: Will my child learn to read? Will she ever learn to…

What do Children Need for a Happy Childhood?

Sometimes my children’s words warm my heart. “Don’t you just love being us?” asked my daughter Imogen, turning to me with a huge smile. I was surprised. Why did she suddenly feel like a big ball of happiness*? It wasn’t as if we were doing anything special right at that moment. “You don’t wish you belonged to another family?” I asked. “No! We have a good life. I’ve been writing. We have our singing lessons later. But before that, we’re…

How the Girls and I Take a Weekly Trip Overseas

Every week the girls and I take an overseas trip. The week before last we went to Vietnam. We flew into Hanoi, the city of rickshaws and mopeds and many people. We stood, rather bewildered, as streams of two-wheeled vehicles surged past us. Before long, we’d mounted our own bikes and were puttering out of the busy city headed for the quiet and peace of the delta.  “Rice paddies!” someone shouted.  The Vietnamese farmers smiled and waved at us. We…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

How Unschooling Doesn’t Guarantee a Fairytale Life

Yesterday evening, like all Sunday evenings, my kids who live locally came to dinner. Six of us gathered around our dining room table, savouring a meal cooked by my husband while enjoying the usual end-of-the-week lively catch-up conversation. There was a time when we dreamed that all our children would buy houses on the same street as our family home.…

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…

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

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…

Pondering Trust

I never wanted to be in a position where I had to trust God. I preferred to rely on my own resources. I wanted to be totally in control of my own life. That seemed easier to do because trusting is so very difficult. Or so it can seem. Then one day, at a time when I was feeling rather…
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