Homeschool Fiction

My family was recently interviewed about our unschooling lifestyle. While I didn’t answer all the questions exactly like I do below, nor were the same questions asked, I thought you might enjoy reading some answers to questions that have been asked of me and my family lately.

Q: What is Unschooling?
A: Unschooling is a type [...]

The above question was recently asked of my always unschooled (homeschooled without curriculum) 12 year old daughter by an adult we’d never met before once her homeschooling status (and lack of an assigned grade level) became known.
Zoë didn’t hesitate in her response. “Why would you ever want to be done learning?”
Exactly!  I’ve completed my mission [...]

A week or so ago, my local Unschooling group had the opportunity to have Darleen from Forever Wild come and talk to our group. She met us at a local park and brought a rehabilitated barn owl named Elmira for us to meet.  Her talk was interesting and informative and the perfect thing for us [...]

Before I first became a parent, I was fully aware that my child would take up most of my time.  As she even demanded to be with me during my sleeping and showering minutes, I quickly researched if that was normal — IT IS! — and I learned about Attachment Parenting.
Time went by and our [...]

It’s interesting to me how many adults ask me that question when they find out that not only do my kids not go to school, but they also don’t “do school” at home.  For some reason, they seemed shocked that not only did I go to public school, but I also went to college long [...]

This is similar to my “Top 10: Reasons Why I’m THANKFUL We Discovered Unschooling“, but different and current.  In no particular order:

SMILES; Happy children learn more than unhappy children.  When was the last time your child declared that something was “the best ever” or “I love my life” or “this is so cool” or similar?  [...]

The tail end of my daughter’s dance classes (when other parents arrive to pick up their kids) are always interesting for me from an Unschooling mother’s perspective.  Granted, I’m almost always the ONLY parent who stays at my daughter’s classes (unless my husband takes her, in which case he is the only parent there), so [...]

A big part of my children’s lives are movies. We’ve met many homeschooling families who either don’t allow movies at all into their children’s lives, restrict movies to only “educational ones”, allow only one movie per week (or other predetermined timeframe), or at a minimum restrict the content of the movies the children watch [...]

I actually received the above insult in a sort-of obscure way. The person saying it honestly and truly believes that the only way a person can learn something — ANYTHING — is to go to school. They don’t believe it is possible to learn outside of a classroom environment about anything “important”. [...]

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 [...]