Can you believe it’s the first day in February? Each month I think we can’t have more fun than we did last month – and almost every month I’m wrong! Now there definitely were some not so fun parts of this month for my family. Both kids caught pink eye, my husband had a car…
Tag: pursuing passion
My Year Without Goals
Last year I sat down with my notebook and took several hours to plot out my goals for the coming year. I wrote down some big goals in major areas of my life, broke them down into sub-goals, and then made monthly goals. I was so proud of myself and felt that it was…
A Simple Everyday Dreams List
Travel around Europe for a year. Sell a screenplay. Learn a new language. Write a novel. Those are some big dreams I have. Dreams that will take a lot of hard work and dedication. Big dreams are nice to have. They’re fun. It makes you feel good thinking about them. But the problem with big…
The Key to Your Child’s Heart
*Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Krista @ Redeeming the Love of Learning. As the New Year passed, I asked my 13-year-old what he’d like to focus on more this coming year, and he responded that he’d like to become more disciplined in his learning. That was sweet news to my ears as…
Creating a System for Adventure: Monthly & Weekly Planning
Over the past week I’ve written about how I plan for mini-adventures and trips throughout the year. I first talked about how I created a Master List. Then I talked about how I incorporate my master list into a dedicated Google Calendar. If you haven’t read those posts, I’d suggest going back and reading them…
50 Awesome Posts About Interest-Led Learning & Unschooling From 2011
Happy New Year’s Eve! Now is the time of year when lots of bloggers, newspapers, and magazines put out their top 10 or 50 or 100 lists. It’s the time when they highlight the best of the best from throughout the year. So, I thought, why not jump on the bandwagon? Here a…
My Top Ten Lists of our Favorite Unschooling Fun in 2011
Frequent readers of this site know that I love lists. I guess it’s just the way my mind works, but I love the way lists summarize things and present them in a simple, easy way to read. I’ve spent some time thinking about our past year. I feel blessed beyond anything I could have hoped…
A Short Guide to Effortless Learning
I’ve recently finished reading Leo Babauta’s The Effortless Life (not an affiliate link). For those of you who haven’t heard of Leo, he writes on his blog Zen Habits about living a simple, mindful life and by creating positive habits by taking small steps one at a time. The Effortless Life speaks about having a…
How Children Can Invite Opportunities into Their Lives
In my last post, The Secrets of Expertise, I discussed Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success. In that book, he points to two main reasons why many people have become super successful – putting in an enormous amount of practice in their area of expertise- 10,000 hours- and being born into extraordinary circumstance….
An Inteview with an Interest-Led Learning Dad
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…