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This is a book read by the 10 year old, one year after learning to read. Research Studies on the Correlation of  School Performance and Lifetime Social, Academic and Economic Trajectories Do Not Apply to Home Educated Children Worried about your late reader? So was I as the mom of 3 boys who didn’t learn to read until age 8 (grade 3), age 9 (grade 4) and gasp…age 10 (grade 5). All three boys…

…teachers are affected by the system too. My two oldest kids went to school for Kindergarten and grades 1 and 2. At times, all 5 kids wanted to try out school and went back to grade 3, grade 9, grade 10, grade 11, or grade 12 for two days to two months, before the system got to them and they decided to self-direct their learning at home again. In all their time at school, all five kids said that…

Missed concepts, knowledge and skills are going to happen whether your child is in a school or you are home educating or unschooling. Will your child be missing content this year? You bet! And research from unschooling shows that it will be just fine! Except for Math and English, which are skill building topics, every other topic in Social Studies, History, Geography, Civics, Science, Health,…

Subject: RE: Repeal Section 43 is the closest it has been to being passed, but your help is now critical. Fwd from Kathy Lynn Dear Parenting Friends: Section 43 (the law that allows the hitting of children) is winding its way through the House of Parliment for 3rd reading of it’s repeal. It is hitting a snag from the Canadian Teachers Federation in that they believe that they can’t restrain…

This video from Transformation to Parenting, discusses how the many parenting choices influence parent’s new lifestyle, friend choice, and decision-making. Experts such as Lolly de Jonge, Alisha Brignall, Judy Arnall, Kitty Raymond, Lisa Kathleen, and others discuss their different parenting viewpoints and the rationale behind them on touchy subjects such as crying-it-out, breastfeeding and more.

We teach children about giving consent over their bodies, and then force them into an education situation in which they have no consent over what happens to their minds. Then we become surprised when children push back. Children are not very vocal about disliking school, because they live in a world where school is on a pedestal. But that doesn’t mean that they are unhappy. Children react by…

One of the reasons I began unschooling was because I was homeschooling and diligently teaching my kids lessons that they didn’t remember the following week. After a few months, I questioned why I was wasting my time, voice, and energy planning activities, that were not “sticking.” Sure, I was checking off that I “covered” them on my homeschool facilitator’s outcome checklist, but the concepts…

By Mike Johnson It’s not nice to think about someone else raising your child in your place, but life can be unpredictable, and it’s always important to plan ahead and prepare for every eventuality. Appointing a guardian for your child can provide you with peace of mind, while also ensuring that your little one is with the right person, just in case the unthinkable occurs. However, choosing a…

Are homeschooled kids sheltered? No. Not at all. It is a question I hear all the time and it makes me roll my eyeballs. It is impossible to keep a child away from society their whole childhood. Kids are naturally curious and will seek out information, any way they can, made much more handy by the internet. Especially as teenagers, children want to learn about their world, and especially what is…

Children Will Learn Calculus When They Really Need It

Concepts of Grade 8 Math that the Brain is Ready to Apply to Paper Calculations in the Teen Years “How will they learn the things they need to learn like Calculus?,” was a question posed to me the other day when I was explaining unschooling to a person at a BBQ. It was a good question, because we have a child who at the age of twenty, actually needed a mandatory high school Calculus course to…

Children Learn Grammar, Spelling and Vocabulary Without Being Taught

Let Kids Write Whenever They Want and Don’t Correct Them! Curriculum can be so darn intimidating! All those workbooks on grammar, sentence structure and punctuation seem to be calling on your guilt if you don’t buy them. Will unschooled kids learn grammar even if you don’t directly teach it? You bet! Are workbooks the best way to learn it? For most kids, a big NO! Kids learn to write by…

Terminology Matters: It’s Education, Not Schooling

“I will never let school interfere with my education.” -Mark Twain Definition: “School”  – an institution for educating children.  -Wikipedia.org Words matter in our society and the time has come where we all need to respect the uniqueness of parents teaching and their children learning in other environments apart from the institution we call “school.” Parents do not homeschool. They home…

Home Education Only Takes 1/10th the Time of Classroom and Online School

Home Education is Best Delivered to Young Children Through Interactive Activities Am I doing enough? That is the question I would ask myself and it’s the question many new and perspective home education parents worry about. They have experienced fighting with their kids to do school homework up to 3 hours a night and can’t imagine themselves fighting with their kids to do 6 hours of home-school…

No “Summer-slide” Learning Loss Because Unschooling Education is Year Round

Children who are empowered to read what they want never lose reading skills over the summer Summer learning loss occurs only when kids are forced to absorb the system’s agenda and curriculum. Research shows that students regress and lose about one month of school instruction during a long summer holiday, and a study from Ohio State University found that test scores were no different for students…

When Kids Want to Try School

Every homeschooler or unschooler parent has it happen to them. Their child wants to try out this mystery thing called “school.” My daughter wanted to try school in grades 3, 7, 9, 10 and 12. She went. I had to fight to get her in, but she registered. For a certain amount of time, she loved it. At 8 years old, she wanted to go to school so bad, that she got up on her own alarm, got dressed, made…

Does More Funding Yield More Quality in Education? No!

Whenever major events such as COVID occur, the first cry of battle is “more funding!,” by various interest groups in education. But does more funding translate into measurable results? Let us look at statistics from the education ministry in the Government of Alberta, Canada. The priciest school in Alberta is an independent school titled Strathcona Tweedsmuir School, which charges about $24,000…

Deschooling Ourselves and Growing Trust in Unschooling

Building our trust in the unschooling method of education delivery is a big issue and one that we just have to accept as something we all go through when wading into this new lifestyle, that is so different from what we have been programmed to know. Just like we have to accept sleepness nights when we bring our babies home, we have to accept distrust when we have those days when “nothing looks…