Thanksgiving and Christmas and other holidays are just around the corner. It’s often a time when we look for ways to volunteer and give to others in need. Young children usually love to volunteer. They love being active and helping others. If you think closely about what they love to do and tap into those…
10 Great Catalogs for Unschoolers
As interest-led, passion-driven learners, we don’t follow a prescribed curriculum. We go out and explore and discover those things around us, through travel, the internet, libraries, people we meet and many other ways. Our tastes are very eclectic. We dabble in many different subjects and topics, staying with some for months at a time,…
10 Spooky Halloween Homeschooling Activities
For the past two weeks my son has tried on his skeleton costume. He plays in it for hours. My daughter hasn’t touched hers, but it’s hanging up in her room, and she loves to look at it. Every night we light up our jack-o-lanterns right before bed and sing spooky songs together. During the…
Pros & Cons of Classes for Young Children
Every Tuesday morning I drive my kids to their swimming lesson. I watch through the glass as they make their way across the pool, clutching their floating boards and tentatively letting go once in a while. A half hour later they walk, shivering, into the towels I hold open to them, talking about how they…
How to Become a Local Tourist
My family loves to travel. This year we’ve traveled to Nevada, San Diego, St. Louis, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, and Saugatuck, Michigan plus we have two more trips planned before the end of the year. But as much as I love to travel to new places, some of my best memories of this year have…
Tips for Learning When Mom’s Sick
On Monday, I woke up to a house that was messy, laundry needed to be done and the kids were begging to play with me. Little by little that gnawing feeling of tension started to well up inside; how was I going to get it all done today? Of course, I already knew the answer….
Bartering for Knowledge & Giving it Away
I wrote last Wednesday about how to mine your home school community for rich resources. But what about people outside the homeschooling community? Is there a trend towards freely sharing our knowledge with each other in ways that will benefit everyone? I’m happy to say, yes, there is. Maybe not a big trend, but it’s…
Interest-Led Sharing: Mining the Rich Resources of Your Homeschooling Community
A few weeks ago my children and I were privileged to take a tour of a local farm. Almost always when you sign up to take a tour, you’re required to pay a field trip fee. Then you’re usually restricted what you can do on the tour, either because the group is too large for…
Living & Learning – Tips for Including Your Young Child in Your Daily Life Part 2
Last Saturday I started a post where I shared tips for including your young child in your daily life. To read the first part CLICK HERE Now on to Part 2 3. Task – Doing the laundry. * Categorizing and separating clothes into separate piles *working together to load the washer and dryer *folding…
Interest-led Learning in the Mainstream-September 2011
I believe in the power of interest-led learning to transform the face of education. I believe it’s the only way that children learn naturally, the way they were born to learn. When children’s interests and imagination are captured, it provides the intrinsic motivation for them to learn more, create meaningful, personal goals and retain a…