Do Life Right

I’ll say it from the start: I’m anti-chores, but I’m pro-clean.
How better to make our children resent cleaning and organizing than to force them to do it against their will? Think about which household tasks you dislike the most. Are they they ones you did with fun with your parents, or the ones [...]

For the most part, the “Back to School” season (which I read recently is second in consumer money spent only to Christmas) doesn’t affect me. But, this year I’ve been more aware of it than usual. You see, my children (ages 12 and almost 8 ) have never been to school. We [...]

Straight from the Books Arts Bash website:
The Book Arts Bash is a brand new writing contest for homeschoolers, unschoolers, and everyone learning and teaching outside of school! Our goal is to have fun writing and illustrating, and to stretch book arts across the curriculum.
The deadline is October 1, so get scribbling! Explore 20 categories, and [...]

My daughter, now 12, has written some more haiku poems for Do Life Right. Click here to read her first ones.
Saguaro Fruit Picking Part One

The bent saguaro
All the birds fly to the top
To get the best fruit

Saguaro Fruit Picking Part Two

While we pick the fruit
Baby birds echo inside
Of the saguaro

Saguaro Fruit Picking Part Three

Saguaro [...]

I always find the above question regarding our children’s Unschooling lives to be proof of the poor job modern public education is doing in regards to actually helping our children learn. Adults today are often fearful of mathematics, believing that it is hard, boring, and impossible for a person to learn unless forced upon [...]

My oldest daughter turned 12 yesterday! Happy Birthday to Zoë! Since she was born in the Chinese Year of the Rat and it is currently the Year of the Rat again, she decided to have a Chinese New Year’s themed Birthday party. Here are some of the details of her party.
For starters, my [...]

My oldest child turns twelve today.  As birthdays and anniversaries often do, I’ve been contemplating the years and what they’ve meant to me.  It’s true what they say about a parent with young children: The days are long, but the years are short.
There are full days that felt like years, and lately, the years have [...]

I’ve had many people tell me that they’d be interested in Unschooling “if only it weren’t so isolating for the children”.  I find this interesting since Unschooling opens the WHOLE WIDE WORLD up for our children and us alike!  It is the exact opposite of isolating.
Want a community of like-minded people in your area?  Check [...]

There is something about the “new school year” that seems to bring out the worst in schooled parent-child relationships. Everywhere I go, I’m hearing really mean comments to kids. Sure I haven’t seen or heard the whole story, but I often have seen the set-up to the rude comments and in almost every [...]

The little girl’s alarm rang and she immediately slammed her book closed. Her 25 minutes of required reading for the day was up and she wasn’t about to read a second longer - she didn’t care if she was in the middle of a sentence, let alone a chapter. As the alarm rang, [...]