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 […]
Unschooling Blog
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: 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: Unmaking Stereotypes
Recently I connected with an old school acquaintance via Facebook. We hadn’t been in touch since graduating high school, and it was cool to catch up and to read his posts. But it was also kind of shocking. Why? Because as I read over his posts, I was amazed to discover the guy was a really good writer -when, […]
Confessions of an Academic Imposter
In his book How Children Fail, John Holt discusses the damaging messages that schools and teachers send to children. There are a lot of them, but one really resonated with me, because it described my own experience. Here’s what Holt has to say: What teachers most reward is not knowledge and understanding but the appearance […]
A Typical Day of Unschooling
When I was brand new to unschooling, I really wanted examples. I had researched the philosophy, but wanted to know what it looked like in action. I wished I could follow an unschooling family around for a week or so, and just watch. I thought it might be helpful to newcomers to read about a […]
Unschooling: saying yes when you’re tempted to say no
My six year old daughter Katy enjoys cooking with me. She’s a great little assistant; dumping in the flour, mixing in the sugar, cracking the occasional egg when she’s in a daring kind of mood. But today, Katy announced that she was relinquishing the role of assistant, and moving up in the world.
Unprepared! How the Push-Down Effect is Stressing our Children
It’s bedtime, and Katy is pouring out her troubles to me as we lay snuggled together. She mentions the usual: the baby still gets too much attention, her brother always gets to stay up later, when can she have a playdate with Jennifer? But then she brings up something new. Something that bothers me as […]