the network for radical unschooling families

Introduce yourself!

Feel free to jump in and introduce yourselves!

I'm Dana, in Bellingham. I'm a coffee roaster and mom to *3* now! Just had a baby 2 months ago today! My kids are Lauren, 16 in a couple of weeks, Otto, 10 1/2, and little Miranda Grace. I've always unschooled, after having gone to college to be a teacher and realizing I *never* wanted to put my kids into school!

I am getting married to Paul, the love of my life, in September, so I'm busy making wedding plans right now...besides that, what takes up my time is roasting and drinking coffee, hanging out at the farmers market, reading, cooking, taking gobs of pictures of my new baby...you know, that sort of thing!

Lauren enjoys reading, writing, musical theater, ancient history, cryptozoology, and selling tie-dyes at the farmers market.

Otto enjoys drawing, deviant art, video games, listening to music, hanging out with friends, swimming, and spending the money he makes at the farmers market (the selling is just a means to an end for him!). He also designed the wizard picture on our list.

Miranda enjoys pooping, sticking out her tongue, nursing, looking in the mirror, and does NOT like the car seat.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kasey Frazier on August 31, 2011 at 9:25pm

Hello Frank and Ronnie, I am also in Everett. I have 2 boys Asher 10.5 yrs and Morgan who will be 12 in November..

Kasey

Frank Maier said:

I'm Frank - plus my wife, Ronnie (aka Dragonfly on many discussion groups), and our two dds (MJ, almost 16, and Chloe, 14), who are currently at Not Back To School Camp. We live in Everett. Info about our family life and unschooling can be found on Ronnie's blog. Info about me is on my blog which is linked from my personal page here. Warning: my blog is my psychological dumping ground and usually contains profanity and insanity.

Happy unschooling!

P. S. I don't even drink coffee, so that should even out the group statistics in the coffee realm. Anybody here make wine or distill liquor? (grin)

Permalink Reply by Kasey Frazier on August 31, 2011 at 9:35pm

My name is Kasey (32) and I am marrried to Matt (34) we have two boys, Morgan 11yrs to be 12 in November and Asher who is 10.5 yrs old. We are in the S. Everett area and have 1 cat, 1 dog and a bird..

Morgan enjoys the Halo games on the XBOX, Minecraft, and just hanging with friends. He has been experimenting with swimming lessons and figuring out what he wants to do.

Asher is also into Halo, Minecraft and hanging with friends. He was with Studio-East theater group last year and loved it.. hoping to return later this year. He is also trying swimming out this year.

We are huge fans of Great Wold Lodge!!! We are planning on going again this year in or around Oct./ Nov. If anyone would like to come let me know..

Kasey

Permalink Reply by Frank Maier on August 31, 2011 at 10:27pm

Hi, Kasey. My intro is a coupla years old now but we're still in Everett. Welcome!

Permalink Reply by Kristin on September 13, 2011 at 12:41am

I'm new to the world of unschooling but it feels like a home I never knew I had.

My children are Kenzie (turning 6 in 2 weeks), Hazel (2), and Zazen who was born on June 29th this year. I started out a single mom in NYC, moved back to Seattle to find a better job to support us (it was just me and Kenzie at this point) and from age 1-kindergarten she has been in full time daycare or preschool...in 2009 her sister Hazel was born, and a month before that I lost my job. Hazel then has always been with me, though times have been ROUGH over those years financially. This year she turned 2 in April (Kenzie was in Kindergarten) and we were getting notices about losing our house, Zazen was born in June, We had to be out of the house in July (foreclosure) and here we are...still spinning.

After getting a taste of being with my kids at home I'm hooked...I do some contract work but don't really have much luck getting decent pay doing small jobs though yet. I'm working on a lot of "do-gooder" type jobs and not really being compensated at all for most (biggest is the http://www.MomsWithMS.org )

My reason for mentioning the hard times, are that they are the reason we have held back from pulling her out of school. Keeping her in school has allowed us to "apply" to jobs and try and get funding, but I just want to pull her out. My husband thinks it's irrational since even now, we dont' know how we are paying rent month to month...we've been lucky to have generous friends and family, but who knows how long that will last.

I am in an agonizingly indecisive place regarding the right time and way to pull her out...this summer was wonderful, lots of challenges but I loved having my girls around (my son too but he's less impacting presence-wise being 2mo and all).

It was my sister in law that pointed me toward unschooling as she said it seemed I was going that direction anyway and it does feel so right...for all the time to be summertime sounds like a dream come true, but I feel like crying when I realize that I don't have the money to do the things like gymnastics and rock climbing that she is so interested in, and when she is in school she gets to do a lot of that. I want to give her the experiences she wants but they so often cost money that I haven't figured out how to obtain since losing my job...

It's agonizing. We are big dreamers with big goals, and the smaller steps haven't paid off yet...

Oh yeah, and we are in Pinehurst, close to Northgate.