Sister says: “Ahh, I love the smell of rain. I’m going to bring some raindrops inside so our house is sweet smelling too.”
A Good Weekend*
by Toni*obviously from May … not certain why I’m only now getting around to posting it.
Because I will probably not want to travel after this month and because Memorial Day adds an extra bit to the weekend, we drove across the state to spend some time with the in-laws. As usual we weren’t the only ones and, as usual, I met at least one relative whom I’d never met before. After 10 years you’d think I’d be getting to the end of them, but no.
There was much thoughtful (and not so thoughtful) conversation.
Smiles galore.
And my 7 yr old daughter turned 16 … except for her knees which remained 7.
Random dog that I like.
After we left Grandma Mary’s to travel back east we stopped here. Because there is nothing better to do when you are 30 some weeks pregnant than “mountain” climbing.
A little FYI – there are no potties at the top of these mountains so maybe not the wisest destination choice for a pregnant woman. ….. I’m just sayin’.
After the mountains and another 2+ hours of driving we arrived home where more than one of us looked like this.
.
Unschooling Resources
by ToniThis is a list I pulled from the TulsaKids website. There is an article as well that I highly recommend. The author did an outstanding job of not only exploring the lives of two unschooling families but also in keeping an open mind about her topic.
************* BOOKS *************
Learning All the Time
by John Caldwell Holt
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0201550911
How Children Learn
by John Caldwell Holt
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0201484048
How Children Fail
by John Caldwell Holt
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0201484021
Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling
by John Holt and Patrick Farenga
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0738206946
Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better
by John Caldwell Holt
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0525134379
Moving a Puddle and Other Essays
by Sandra Dodd
http://sandradodd.com/puddlebook
Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves: Transforming Parent-child Relationships from Reaction And Struggle to Freedom, Power And Joy by Naomi Aldort
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1887542329
The Relaxed Home School: A Family Production
by Mary Hood
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0963974009
The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How To Quit School and Get a Real Life & Education
by Grace Llewellyn
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0962959170
Real Lives: Eleven Teenagers Who Don’t Go To School
by Grace Llewellyn
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0962959138
The Homeschooling Handbook
by Mary Griffith
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0761501924
The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World as Your Child’s Classroom
by Mary Griffith
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0761512764
The Art of Education: Reclaiming Your Family, Community and Self
by Linda Dobson
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0913677140
The Homeschooling Book of Answers: The 101 Most Important Questions Answered by Homeschooling’s Most Respected Voices
by Linda Dobson
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0761535705
Homeschooling Our Children; Unschooling Ourselves
by Alison McKee
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0965780627
Deschooling Our Lives
by Matt Hern
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0865713421
Parenting a Free Child: An Unschooled Life
by Rue Kream
http://www.freechild.info/
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
by John Taylor Gatto
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0865714487
A Sense of Self: Listening to Homeschooled Adolescent Girls
by Susanna Sheffer
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0867094052
In Their Own Way: Discovering and Encouraging Your Child’s Multiple Intelligences
by Thomas Armstrong
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1585420514
Seven Kinds of Smart: Identifying and Developing Your Multiple Intelligences
by Thomas Armstrong
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0452281377
You’re Smarter Than You Think: A Kid’s Guide to Multiple Intelligences
by Thomas Armstrong
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1575421135
For the Children’s Sake
by Susan Schaeffer MacAulay
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/089107290X
Learning At Home: A Mother’s Guide To Homeschooling
by Marty Layne
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0968293824
Have Fun. Learn Stuff. Grow.: Homeschooling and the Curriculum of Love
by David H. Albert
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1567513700
Homeschooling and the Voyage of Self-Discovery
by David Albert
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1567512321
Better Late Than Early
by Raymond & Dorothy Moore
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0883490498
School Can Wait
by Raymond & Dorothy Moore
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0842513140
Coloring Outside the Lines
by Roger Schank
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0060930772
(sort of anti-homeschooling, but its message was pro-homeschooling in my opinion!)
Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, As, Praise & Other Bribes
by Alfie Kohn
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0618001816
The Unprocessed Child: Living Without School
by Valerie Fitzenreiter
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0972941606
Growing Without Schooling: A Record of a Grassroots Movement
by John Holt, Susannah Sheffer
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0913677108
The Day I Became an Autodidact
by Kendall Hailey
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0440550130
The Book of Learning and Forgetting
by Frank Smith
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/080773750X
Better Than School: One Family’s Declaration of Independence
by Nancy Wallace
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0943914051
Child’s Work: Taking Children’s Choices Seriously
by Nancy Wallace
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/091367706X
And the Children Played
by Patricia Joudry
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0912766166
With Consent: Parenting for All to Win
by Jan Fortune-Wood
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1900219247
Deschooling Society
by Ivan Illich
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0714508799
************* PERIODICALS *************
Home Education Magazine: http://www.homeedmag.com/index.html
Live Free, Learn Free:
http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/
Life Learning: http://www.lifelearningmagazine.com
************* WEBSITES *************
Unschooling Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
Unschooling.com:
http://www.unschooling.com (See “Library” & “Message Boards”)
Car Talk Guys:
Education: The Learning of Skills We Will Never Need?
http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/ATC/
The Education Forum
http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/ATC/Education/
The New Theory of Learning
http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/ATC/Education/r-rlast15.html
The Education Forum II
http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/ATC/Education/index2.html
Autodidactic Press:
http://www.autodidactic.com
Libertarian Unschooling:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6529/index1.html
Unschooling Undefined:
http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/UnschoolingUndefined.html
Home’s Cool A to Z:
http://www.gomilpitas.com/homeschooling/methods/Unschooling.htm
Sandra Dodd:
http://sandradodd.com/unschooling.html
Child-led Natural Learning:
http://www.alternative-learning.org
Delight-Driven Learning:
http://home-educate.com/unschooling/index.shtml
Family Unschoolers Network:
http://www.fun-books.com
The Natural Child Project:
http://www.naturalchild.com/guest/earl_stevens.html
AHA Information Page:
http://www.americanhomeschoolassociation.org/info.html
Amy Bell’s Natural Learning:
http://home.rmci.net/abell/
Alfie Kohn:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/articles.htm
*******************************************************************************
“Is Unschooling Right for You and Your Family?”
Leslie Moyer offers the following list to help determine if unschooling is right for your family:
• Willingness to invest time in your child
•Willingness to research resources for learning experiences
•Cooperation from partner or spouse
•An appreciation of your child’s unique strengths
•Willingness to develop and explore your own passionate interests (be a role model of learning)
•Willingness to rely on direct observation for “proof” of learning
•Have respectful, two-way communication about learning
•Commitment to put your relationship with your child before any educational matter
•Willingness to let go of your own expectations about your child’s adult life
•Ability to let go of pre-conceived notions about what constitutes “education”
•Acceptance of the idea that we don’t have control over what happens in someone else’s brain
Homemade Homekeeping
by ToniCommercial products claim to be able to clean/disinfect/deodorize anything but rarely live up to their promises. Even when they do it’s usually with ingredients you can’t pronounce and aren’t supposed touch/swallow/inhale for fear of irreparable damage to your health. On top of that those snazzy bottles with the pretty labels and all that marketing behind them cost an arm and a leg. Enough is enough. Here are some recipes for homemade cleaning and personal care products that I really use because they really work (and they’re cheap!)
General Disinfectant
Mix 1/2 cup of Borax into a gallon of hot water. Best to use water you just boiled. Stir it until it dissolves, let it cool and pour into a spray bottle to use. Borax is a great disinfectant.
Mosquito Spray
Basic recipe: In a bottle, mix 4 drops of eucalyptus, 4 drops of lavender, 4 drops of rosemary, 4 drops of tea tree essential oils with 1 teaspoon of witch hazel and 4 teaspoons of water. Shake the mixture and apply directly to skin.
Bug spray variation: Add the same mixture of oils to 2 teaspoons of witch hazel and 8 oz of water. Put this in a spray bottle and shake. Spray this directly on the skin.
Oil rub down variation: Add the same mixture of oils to 5 teaspoons of olive oil. Rub the mixture into your skin.
Deodorant – Original source and more details can be found here.
Combine equal portions of baking soda & arrowroot powder (or cornstarch). Slowly add coconut oil until desired consistency is reached.
Foaming Hand Soap – 4:1 water and castile soap (see this post for details)
And of course no home should be without bulk quantities of baking soda and vinegar. The number of uses for these two products alone is outrageous.
Workin’ At The Car Wash
by ToniSad to say but until a few months ago my children had never been to a non-automatic car wash. The first time was a pretty big deal.
Now Dad takes them almost every week and it’s all “old hat”…. so much so that this week Brother opted to stay in the car and take pictures from that angle.
In retrospect it’s not such a great angle for pictures but he had fun anyway.
Something Fishy
by ToniIf you live in the general vicinity of this then you’ve got to check this out. Especially if you are only a casual fisherman (so casual you don’t even own any equipment) and your daughter pesters you constantly about, “when are you going to take me fishing?”
There was a short lesson on pole/hook safety and types of fish then each participant was handed an already baited rod and pointed in the direction of a fully stocked pond. And if you happened to be one of the lucky (unlucky?) ones to catch a catfish they even cleaned it for you. Will called it “full service fishing” and in my mind it’s the only way to go.
A Clay At The Beach
by Toni
Sister’s creation – complete with sunbather, surfer, fish & shark in the water.
Brother’s slightly more abstract creation.
Missing in Action
by ToniJust a note to let you know that if you sent me an email in the past year or so to which I did not reply and then you thought I was incredibly rude BECAUSE I did not reply … it’s not my fault. Some random portion of my mail has been routing to an unmonitored mailbox and I only just discovered it today. Aargh!
