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…
Tag: pursuing passion
The Gift Schoolchildren Will Never Receive
Christmas is only 39 days away. I don’t know why it always seems to sneak up on me so fast, but it does. There’s always a hundred different things I want to do each year; I always have grand plans, but most of them never take place. The one thing I always find time for…
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…
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…
15 Interest-Led Learning Families You Should Get to Know
Unschooling blogs usually read like a diary. A peek into other people’s lives. It’s not that you don’t get that peek in more traditional homeschooling blogs, but unschoolers tend to live unusual lives….and I like unusual! You get to see what resources and materials they use in the context of their lives. You get to…
Instead – An Unschooling Poem
I thought I ‘d do something a little different today. Since I was in a creative mood I wrote a poem. INSTEAD Instead of waking up in a flurried frenzy of speed dressing, food gobbling and “Can you hurry, up please?” we’re eating breakfast in our p.j.s, rubbing sleep from our eyes, and…
The Difference Between Pushing & Challenging
Do you push or challenge your children? Sometimes I think there’s a fine line to walk when we want to encourage our children to succeed. We might see that they have gifts, talents or skills they are not using, or we know that with just a little more effort they could reach their goals. But…
Why is Self-Directed Learning a Difficult Concept to Grasp?
I’ve been thinking more and more lately why the concept of self-directed learning is so hard for many people to grasp and why five (or sadly, three) is the magical age when humans need to sit down and listen in order to learn things. Up until then little children observe, communicate, participate and contribute to…
5 Websites to Help You Better Explore Your Interests
So let’s say your daughter loves cooking. Lately she’s into making all chocolate desserts. Maybe she watches some YouTube videos or experiments on her own with some cooking books from the library. You find out there’s a local chocolate factory that gives tours. While she’s at the factory, she asks lots of questions. The tour…