Lemonade

Let’s get schooly for a moment. Not that I think spending your life comparing yourself to others is a great plan, but when you’re living alternatively, occasionally getting schooly has its benefits. It can help to validate one’s own choices, and help others to understand said choices, by speaking their language. I come in peace. […]

The Lesson by the Lake

When we moved here to Brooks, one thing I was excited about was the location of our rental. It overlooked the biggest of the town’s manmade lakes; very picturesque, and it has a well maintained paved path going all around. It’s about 2.5 km, with a nice play structure 1/3 of the way around. In the […]

Hypocrisy and All of It

Here’s a thing about unschoolers: we are an incredibly amorphous group. You can’t even fairly call us a group–we have no leader, no rule book; we’re all over the map. All we have are ideas. Sure, those ideas started with one man, who put them into some great books, but there’s still about a million ways to […]

My Day

The sun is bright, the weather warm, the snow melted, and every day life feels amazing. For one thing, it has been reaffirmed to me that my family and I aren’t a bunch of no good lumps of lazy. It’s just that winter got a bit…long. And we got a bit…bored. But now everything has changed! […]

Year End Visit [in April]

Today was my end of year home visit with my school board facilitator…or learning advisor or whatever technical educationese they’re calling them nowadays. Debbie. Debbie came for a visit. And I didn’t know she was coming. Not that I shouldn’t have known she was coming (double negative. Sorry, I know–confusing. Just read it a couple times I’m […]

The “Down” Months

I’ve felt a little AWOL lately, but with good reason: we bought a house. And we didn’t just buy a house, we bought a house that needed a few (what seemed like a few when I listed them in my mind before actually doing them) upgrades before we moved in. Our possession date was February […]

Everything is Going to be Alright

In all of my love for the unschooling philosophy and lifestyle, I will admit that I have harboured one main anxiety: math. If I’m being honest, it stems from the classic problem of parents wanting to share all their greatest passions with their children—the same root, I’m sure, as my need for my children to know […]

Screen Time

I don’t know. Honestly, I’m just going to start with that. Maybe let out a hearty bewildered sigh. Shake my head. Shrug my shoulders. Seriously. Idk. I’ve seen all the philosophies. I’ve read all the articles; the blog posts; the studies (ok no I haven’t. I’ve read articles about studies though. So); I’ve discussed with other parents, […]

Interest-Based Learning

Sometimes unschoolers will describe what they do as “interest-based learning”. It’s a quick, easy to understand phrase that satisfies the casually curious without triggering shock and confusion. It’s not the totality of what makes unschooling…well, unschooling, but it’s accurate that interest-based learning is a key component to the philosophy. I have learned, though, that while […]

Distilled Priorities

So the thing, for me, about unschooling, is that it doesn’t mean applying the same applicator brush to every child. I thought for a while that it did, and maybe I’ll change my mind again on that down the line. But in my current experience, unschooling offers the opportunity to really distill priorities into what […]