the network for radical unschooling families

April 2010 Blog Posts (16)

Unschooling Easy Lesson in Photography

Kids love taking photographs and, if given a camera of their own, will usually have it filled twice a day on a regular basis with all kinds of interesting shots, mostly blurry, cloudy, or useless. A child may wish to take a really stunning photograph of something that they find interesting, but unless they understand a few basic concepts of high fashion photography, they are more likely to end up with pictures that are ruined or cannot be used.… Continue

Added by Kevin James B. Elsner on April 29, 2010 at 9:20pm — No Comments

Unschooler's Freedom from Mental Slavery

I am truly inspired by my daughter. She will dance, hop, skip, sing, hum through stores as we shop without a care in the world, definitely not concerned what anyone thinks. She's totally committed to being free and natural and making everyone around her laugh. It's moments like those that I am especially grateful to be homeschooling her, and to be working from home to make it happen.

I feel like I am reschooling myself, continually undoing my…

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Added by Katherine Vyn on April 26, 2010 at 2:17pm — 1 Comment

Influences Part IV — Programmed Curriculum

One of the truly great teachers I had was in sixth grade. He had managed to buy two computers and brought them into school and set them up in the resources room. This was in the late 1970s, when computers in classrooms were completely unheard of. No one was doing this. Educational software wasn't even available.

He made up a sheet with times on it and every student was scheduled to spend an hour a week in front of the computer.

Doing…

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Added by Scott on April 26, 2010 at 1:18am — 2 Comments

Why did it take so long

Oh why did it take so long to find this group? I've been on the net since 1998. I've read about home schooling for about that long. I've read many blogs, websites and books about home school and unschool.

I ended up registering my child home school through the district.

However after a year, I I finally discovered Florida Unschoolers website. It had taken too long to find. I had anxiety just being registered with the district and worried about evaluations or testing. The kids… Continue

Added by Fawn Klein on April 25, 2010 at 2:30pm — 2 Comments

Most Hygienic Places

Usually, I get so pissed off whenever I go to the market or department store because of the awful smell they produce and the way they taint my clothes with the smell. So, I started listing places that I would rather go for their comfortably hygienic aura and justifiable cleanliness.

Flower Shop

We all know that a flower shop do smell… Continue

Added by Heidi G. McLaughlin on April 25, 2010 at 9:11am — No Comments

A great day on the NZ coast

Well, what a great day!

After an animated discussion by all this morning, we decided to go for a beach mission. Finn was reluctant to leave his new game (Age of Empires) but when he realized he could play it anytime but we could not go on this weekend mission with Dad anytime, he was happy to come. We drove to the coast of Golden Bay not far from… Continue

Added by Miriam Skipworth on April 25, 2010 at 3:32am — 2 Comments

Born Unto Genius - The Unschooled School Of Thoughts And Feelings - pg 8 - www.theagoranational.ca

Born Unto Genius - The Unschooled School Of Thought and Feelings

"Imagination is more important than education." - Eisntein.

Each and every one of is born perfect. We laugh, cry and… Continue

Added by Katherine Marion on April 24, 2010 at 2:55am — 1 Comment

Influences Part III - Skipping School

This is the third entry in my series on educational influences.

When I was young my dad was dying. He wanted to sell our house and have a boat built with the proceeds and go sailing. The house wasn't worth enough to buy a boat, but he found out about a disreputable boat builder in the far east who was responsible for many deaths due to the poor quality of his cheap work. My dad felt that by personally overseeing the work he would be able to get a quality boat… Continue

Added by Scott on April 23, 2010 at 5:00am — 4 Comments

Influences Part II - My friend Patrick

Continuing my series of posts about influences to my perspective on education.

In secondary school I had a friend Patrick (not his real name). He was a smart and interesting guy, very friendly. He knew lots of people and could find his way around any situation. Women were crazy about him.

After I had known him for many years, after he was graduated, one day he asked me to read something to him. Inquiring about this, he admitted,…

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Added by Scott on April 23, 2010 at 5:00am — 1 Comment

Influences I - The Migrant Family

By way of an introduction for my first post here I'll discuss an experience that influenced my views on education.

Many years ago I came to know a large migrant laborer family. They had 13 children in the primary family, plus other relatives all living together in an old rat infested trailer. None of the parents, aunts or uncles spoke any english. The children were raised in the US but were not allowed to go to school at all. Instead, they were forced to work hard…

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Added by Scott on April 23, 2010 at 3:00am — No Comments

Living Lightly ... our daughter leads the way

After the earth hour hoopla (couple of weeks ago there was a national call to turn everything off for 1 hour in the evening) our daughter has been very particular about saving electricity, not even using the fan! Summer is already quite hot - 35 degrees and expected to cross 40 soon and that is milder than much of India where it is already 40 and climbing.

Yet, it is surprising how many ways there are to stay cool without using a lot of

electricity (though you do need to have…

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Added by Aravinda Pillalamarri on April 14, 2010 at 7:00am — 5 Comments

Abney Park

The girls had their very first concert experience this weekend. I was doing henna for the concert and DD15 was helping out. The man was suppose to take DD8 but ended up having to stay home. I was really worried I would not be able to work and accomidate her needs at the same time but it ended up not being an issue.

I have had the pleasure of doing henna for Kristina the keyboardist and her husband Robert the main singer since October. Before then I had no idea what steampunk was and I… Continue

Added by Slinky on April 13, 2010 at 12:08am — 1 Comment

Say No to Plastic Bags

Bombay (partly) outlawed plastic bags (again - remember 2005 2001, and before?).

10 years…

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Added by Aravinda Pillalamarri on April 9, 2010 at 1:00am — No Comments

Life is about learning to relate to others

Life is about relationships. That's what humans do. If there isn't harmony, love or trust all the rules in the world won't help stop the feeling of suffocation or sense of panic.

Rules are like a house of cards--remove one and everything seems to tumble

down. When this happens you can choose to rebuild the

house--re-establish the rules or do something different with that same deck of cards.

Unparenting is taking the deck and playing…

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Added by Marina DeLuca-Howard on April 8, 2010 at 8:00pm — 1 Comment

Free thinkers or Dull Clones?

I've been wondering about chaos/ spontaneity and flexibility in life as opposed to structure/ routine and rigidity.

I'm reading 'Little House on the Prairie' aloud to my kids: "You do as you're told, no matter what happens." Mary and Laura are told by their Pa. This instruction seems so rigid and inflexible as to be possibly dangerous, definitely not encouraging independent thought. I wondered about that style of parenting and the type of adults it would generate. Would this… Continue

Added by Miriam Skipworth on April 7, 2010 at 2:55am — 5 Comments

"Unschooling" In Homeschooling

Unschooling is considered a subset of Homeschooling. The ‘unschoolers’ vary from the ‘homeschoolers’ by the fact that they create and manage their own learning. With regards to the history and the origin of the idea of unschooling, John Holt almost certainly coined the term. He is considered the father of unschooling. He believed that modern concepts of a grading system, fixed curriculum, and the competition that is generated as a result is counterproductive to the learning process by a…

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Added by Bill on April 6, 2010 at 10:00pm — No Comments