I knew before my kids were born that I didn’t want them to attend school. While I was pregnant I worked in a public school, and I had been reading books by John Holt and John Taylor Gatto. I could see with the 12 and 13 year-olds I worked with that when their interest was…
Tag: Interests
Why It’s Important to Bring Your Child to Someone Else’s Job
In a few weeks my kids and I will be going to the hospital. Thankfully, it’s not because anyone is sick. My sister is an RN and we’ll be following her around at work for a few hours. My son and daughter will be able to check out the stethoscope and other equipment, watch her…
The Essential Qualifications of an Interest-Led Learning Parent
Unschooling and Interest-Led Learning often receives a bad rap both in the media and the larger homeschooling circles. The belief that children learn best when they follow their own curiosity and passions is often dismissed as something utopian or unrealistic. There’s also the belief that unschooling is somehow easier and more hands-off than traditional homeschooling…
20 Ways to Volunteer With Your Young Child
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…
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…