Tag: play
-
Let the play times roll
Imagination is a key component of being human. It enhances creativity, empathy, and happiness. As anyone who’s observed children knows, pretending and imagining are activities kids engage in naturally and with gusto. Unfortunately, adults sometimes come along and squash it. I was reminded of this by a new article by Dakota Antelman titled “A Young…
-
Why I’m giving up on ‘self-directed’
self-directed: making your own decisions and organizing your own work rather than being told what to do by managers, teachers, etc. — Cambridge Dictionary Language is like a living organism, growing, changing, and evolving over time. Sometimes I feel like these days, that process of language shifting happens all the more rapidly, reflecting the ultra-fast…
-
How to spend your summer vacation
Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about summer. As a spate of articles and advertisements for “self-directed” summer programs has recently found its way into my orbit, I got to thinking about it again. More and more institutions, centers, and structured environments that promote “self-directed learning” are seeing the light of day. The…
-
Homeschooling: what if people stopped asking what if?
Recently I heard a national radio show host trying to wrap her head around homeschooling during an hour-long program on the topic. Many of her questions were of the “what if” variety. You know the type of questions I’m talking about. What if the kid doesn’t learn to read, what if the kid plays video…
-
A commercial-free childhood
A friend of mine volunteers for an organization called Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. In a time when marketers have unprecedented access to children, I think it’s a worthy cause. I had occasion to think about this last night after running into a fellow homeschooling mom I hadn’t seen in a long time. Our kids…
-
The misguided goal of trying to get kids to pay attention
Less than two weeks after NPR’s How to Raise a Human series addressed the issue of chores, they focused on the same Maya children to talk about paying attention, and once again they contradicted many of the messages of their piece with the headline: A Lost Secret: How to Get Kids To Pay Attention. First…
-
Don’t try to get your kids to do chores, just let them
I loved this NPR article on kids lending a helping hand around the house. I also hated it. The title, for example: How to Get Your Kids to Do Chores (Without Resenting It). I understand about click bait, but still, there’s so much implied in that title that I dislike, including trickery and veiled coercion,…
-
Homeschooling in community
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.…
-
Reading for the joy of it
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…
-
Unschooling in the now
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…
A Potluck Life 