Unschooling Siblings Working Together

My daughter Imogen’s latest music video features her three younger siblings, Charlotte, Sophie, and Gemma-Rose. The four girls sing the Enya song, Wild Child. When I watch this video, it’s not the singing that I enjoy the most. I’m not…

Beautiful Faces

Last night, I ordered our groceries online for the third week in a row. I shouted, “What do we need?” My daughter Imogen looked in the pantry and fridge and told me what things were running low. Then I clicked…

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…

Helping a Child Discover Her Talents

If a child has a talent won’t it just appear without any encouragement? If you’re meant to be an artist, it will be very evident. The same with being a writer or a musician or even a fireman. Surely, a…

Getting Older, Unschooling, and Moving On

My unschooling blog has a limited life. One day, in the not too distant future, I will no longer have anything to write about. My youngest child will have grown up and moved onto a new stage of her life.…

Latest

What to Do When Strewing is Rejected

Recently I found all kinds of things to strew in front of Charlotte.  I came across a website and DVD series that has an episode about a man who settled on the uninhabited Cocos Islands, later making himself king over the workers of his coconut plantation. His family ruled for 150 years before Australia brought that rule to an end. Doesn’t that sound interesting?p  I discovered a TV program about Mao’s Last Dancer, Li Cunxin, and told Charlotte about it.…

Encouraging Kids to Become Independent Learners

Many years ago, at a homeschooling picnic, I met a family who had a baby a little less than a year old. I watched her as we sat on a picnic rug together, eating our sandwiches. The little girl reached for a knife. It was rather big and sharp. I looked at the mother and father, expecting them to take it off their child. But they didn’t make a move. I felt obliged to do something, so I smiled at…

A Real Maths Learning Moment

Sometimes real life maths turns up when I least expect it. Maths learning moments suddenly appear. And if I take advantage of these moments, some wonderful real maths learning can happen… Yesterday the girls and I were watching art history videos on the Kahn Academy website. Before we moved off the site, I did a bit of exploring and found something else that looked very interesting: computer science. There were tutorials for using JavaScript codes to produce drawings and animations.…

How Much Is Enough?

Once upon a time I used to worry about how much learning my children were doing each day. “Can we go now, Mum? Have we done enough school work for today?” How much is ‘enough’? I used to look at my records book. Did it have enough written in it? I used to look at the clock? Was there time to fit something else into the day? I rarely looked at my children. How much was enough? Would my children…

Some Bits and Pieces…

The other day I was looking at a letter Gemma-Rose had written to a friend. It was long and detailed and her spelling was almost perfect. “When did you learn to spell so well?” I asked. Gemma-Rose shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I do read a lot, you know. Maybe I remember what the words look like.” Well, she must have read many ‘ought’ and ‘aught’ words because I have never introduced her to those phonic sounds. Gemma-Rose once told…

Nurturing Independent Learners

To me, unschoolers are independent learners. At least mine are. What further can I say? Because one sentence isn’t much of an article, I decided to do a little research to see what other people have to say about this topic.  I did some Googling, but before I found what I was looking for, I got side-tracked by an article written by an author who believes it is irresponsible for parents to allow their children the freedom to learn in…

Suzie Andres Chats about Unschooling

Last week, Suzie Andres emailed: “Just wanted to let you know that tomorrow…  I’ll be on Judy Dudich’s blog/talk radio show to speak about unschooling…”  So I tuned in, eager to hear what Suzie had to say. I was also eager to hear Suzie’s voice. Although we are friends, we have never met. I soon realised I am pronouncing Suzie’s surname all wrong and, although we Aussies have two different ways of saying St Therese, my friends in the US…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

Unschooling: Doing What Is Right

Unschooling is the right thing to do. That’s a bold claim that you might challenge if your ideas about what’s right are different from…

The Ladies Fixing the World

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: 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…

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

A Genuine Invitation for Christian Unschoolers

Sometimes, invitations aren’t genuine invitations. They might sound like proper invitations. We say the right words, “Would you like to…?” but expect a particular response that doesn’t include the right to decline. Then, some invitations are issued without a personal touch. We wonder, “Does it matter if I accept? Will anyone notice if I’m there or not?” This happened to…
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