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 […]

Unschool Win

On Monday E had a really “unschooling win” kind of day. And by that I mean, as much as we unschool parents may appear to be all chill and confident and laid back about our life choices, like any parent worth their salt we, too, spend the occasional moment panicking that we are ruining our […]

The Busy Week Part Two

As mentioned in my previous post, last week was abnormally busy because of this homeschool drama camp E and G participated in. It was a great experience in so many ways! G, who has always been my shy kid; who used to refuse to even stand in front of people; who one time was asked to […]

How will they learn to read?

If you don’t teach your kids to read, will they be illiterate for life? There has been a lot written by other unschoolers addressing this topic. Sandra Dodd has a good little collection of anecdotes here. And Dr. Peter Gray wrote this article on the subject. Here’s how it worked for us: My oldest is […]