Unschooling parents don’t set out to teach academics. But that doesn’t mean academics is missing in action. It shows up in some pretty unusual places. At our house, it recently put in an appearance at a birthday party. When Thomas, my oldest, turned one I planned a fabulous duckie party. For my twins, it was […]
Real Life Learning: Project Tie-Dye
If you’ve read my post about contagious enthusiasm, you already know that my family had a bit of a tie-dye adventure a while back. What began as a simple activity grew into a major project. This is where following a child’s passion can take you! After a morning of tie-dying their own stuff, my kids […]
Unschooling: Contagious Enthusiasm
I love when a seemingly ordinary activity takes a serendipitous turn. Last week, it turned out to be tie-dye. I’ve had a tie-dye kit in our bin of activities for over a year. Now and again we toss around the idea of trying it out, but have never actually gotten to it. That’s partly my […]
Cooking: Finding the Academics in Everyday Activities
Unschoolers are learning all the time. They learn because they are hard-wired to do so. Whenever they are engaged in an activity, you can be sure learning is happening. It’s a natural side-effect of doing something we’re interested in. The longer I practice unschooling, the easier it gets to see the academics my kids are […]
Let’s Build A Wagon!
As an unschooling dad who works in a corporate environment everyday, I miss a lot of the amazing moments of unschooling. Recently, however, I had one of those eye-opening experiences that illustrated the power of an unschooling environment. Here’s what happened. I was throwing away some wood scraps from some recent construction. My twin girls […]
Unschooling: Respecting Negative Emotions
My friend stopped over yesterday – and she was pissed. After a knock startling in its violence, she whipped open the door, removed each shoe and threw it down, slammed her purse on the nearest surface and flung herself onto my couch, launching into a loud, nearly incoherent tirade peppered liberally with expletives. “Whoa!” I […]
Unschooling: Constantly Learning
My son has a good friend who attends public school. As you can imagine, Paul and Thomas have many lively discussions about the differences in their days. Paul still can’t quite wrap his head around the unschooling philosophy. He’s not alone. Lots of people -children and adults alike – struggle to make sense of something […]
Unschooling: Recognizing Passion
Remember the movie Dirty Dancing? It’s one of my favorites. There’s a line in it that has often popped into my mind since having my twins. Near the beginning of the movie, Baby’s father says of her, “Our Baby here is going to save the world, ” after which Baby snidely remarks about her sister, […]
Unschooling: Saying Goodbye to “MY”
“Mine!” It’s a staple in my two-year old’s vocabulary these days. My dolly. My car. My puzzle. All true. In true two-year old fashion, however, she has expanded this word’s meaning to include not only what is, in fact, hers, but also what she is using at the moment, would like to possess at the […]
Unschooling Thought for the Day: Common Genius
After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We supress genius because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves. -John Taylor Gatto, […]