As I continue to revisit my old issues of Growing Without Schooling, I share another piece I wrote for Issue #123, on the theme of When Kids Resist Writing. As I re-read these precious old magazines, I remember again why they meant so much. The piece below was written when my son was 10, about… Read More Writing for the joy of it
Recently I spent some time going through copies of my old Growing Without Schooling magazines, and rediscovered this article I wrote for Issue #141, in which I describe one of my favorite things about homeschooling. Four years ago, when my third child was born, our family was given a great gift from our homeschooling community.… Read More Homeschooling in community
I was delighted when I saw a recent New York Times article touting ‘Reading Aloud to Young Children Has Benefits for Behavior and Attention.’ Reading aloud was a huge part of our lives as our kids were growing up, and it still is. My husband and I read to each other every night, and we… Read More Reading for the joy of it
My youngest is in college now. Although she took several community college classes as a younger teenager, she was never in school full time and was able to self-select courses based on their content and professors. As a result, most of her experiences with teachers were positive. Now, she’s learning that not all teachers are… Read More Leaving kids alone to learn
This week the Harvard Gazette published a piece called Homeschooled en route to Harvard. It profiled three current Harvard students, including my daughter. I enjoyed reading what they had to say, and was particularly struck by one commonality. All three students spoke about the significance of being in charge of their own learning. “If I… Read More Unschooling in the now
Recently I heard a parent casually remark that in her experience, homeschooling one child costs about eight grand a year. That certainly hasn’t been my experience. During the first ten years of my kids’ lives, the amount we spent was negligible. As teens the kids had interests they wanted to pursue but we still curbed… Read More Homeschooling on a shoestring
Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with Pam Laricchia on her Living Joyfully With Unschooling podcast. Pam is a longtime unschooler who’s written a few excellent books on the topic herself. As you can guess from the title of the podcast episode, we talked about time as a major benefit of unschooling, along with… Read More Talking about ‘The Gift of Time’ with Pam Laricchia
I recently read an essay by someone who temporarily homeschooled her kids. It didn’t work for her. While the author and I differ on our experiences with homeschooling, I do relate to her list of things that she wants for her kids. In her mind, homeschooling was an obstacle to those ends. In my experience,… Read More Perceived homeschooling pitfalls, and how to avoid them
The other day I heard about a bill to mandate recess in my state. The proposed law would require elementary school students to have at least 20 minutes a day of “supervised, safe and unstructured free-play recess.” 20 minutes? That floored me. Elementary school kids are approximately 6-11 years old. When my kids were that age, their… Read More I homeschooled my kids and recess was our curriculum
Yesterday I read a nice essay about a homeschooling mom’s experience testing her kid. In her state, annual testing is required for homeschoolers. Since they’d taken an unschooling approach with their son, where he’d land was anyone’s guess. My guess would have been that he’d do just fine, and that’s exactly what happened. Even while… Read More Testing, testing, testing
A Potluck Life 