Fiona has reached the end of the first term of the first semester of her first year fully enrolled in school. She has a part-time course load, with just three out of four time-slots filled. She is taking Art 11,
HazMat Adventures
Our Nelson place is the eyesore on the block. We bought it because of that. It was affordable and well situated, and that created the possibility of bringing it up to neighbourhood standards and eventually reselling it for a price more
My friend in Nairobi
Almost a year ago I attended a meeting of local New Denverites who were interested in the idea of sponsoring a refugee family. Out of that meeting, the Slocan Valley Refugee Coalition formed. We opened a bank account and started fund-raising
Physics is hard
Fiona has now been in high school for two weeks. It feels like a month! In both a bad way and a good way. Her life has been so crazy full that it feels like a month must have passed for all
A new year: school
It’s been not entirely smooth, Fiona’s entry into mainstream bricks-and-mortar schooling. For those who have been keeping track, Fiona got her first tastes of regular schooling at our tiny local K-12 school. By tiny, I mean tiny. The high school
A New School Year
First we drove Erin to Spokane. She flew out of the airport there with two giant suitcases (weighing 49.5 and 50.0 lbs respectively), her heavy messenger bag (carrying all the stuff that she unpacked from her suitcases to get them down
Licensed!
Sophie did it, she powered through the “L” (learner’s) phase of getting a driver’s license, and got to the “N” (new driver) stage. As I wrote a year and a half ago, things are not exactly set up well, nor
Hughes Reunion
We rented an island. We were looking for a cottage that slept at least 14 comfortably, somewhere within half a day’s drive of both Toronto and Ottawa. And the island was what we found. Actually, my mom rented it, as
Atop Idaho Peak
Idaho Peak is the mountain that overlooks our property. It’s unique in the area in that despite being one of the highest peaks around, it has well-serviced forestry roads that allow the trail to the peak to be accessible to
SVI 2016
SVI has come and gone for another year. Registration filled extremely early this year (third week of March) and that allowed me to get a jump on the scheduling. We had most of the basics fleshed out by mid-April, which
Distributed learning: the exit
Fiona took some online Grade 10 courses this semester: PE and Personal & Career Planning. She took them partly because she wanted these required credits out of the way so that she can focus next year on the academic courses that
Web Development
I’ve been working on a couple of Udemy courses for the past month or so. I signed up for one in April but I didn’t really dig in for a while. Once I did I decided I needed more so
Conventional wisdom and unschooled teens
All four of my children grew up unschooling through their primary-school-aged years. Their learning was wide open, uncoerced, simultaneously lagging in some areas and massively precocious in others. It was typically highly efficient, mastery-oriented and interest-led. And then they all chose to attend school starting sometime
Upgrading the trail
I began working on a connecting trail from our property to the linear park below almost three years ago. I hacked in a goat-path of sorts: narrow and full of switchbacks. It changed my life, in that it made one of
Distributed Learning: The Final Episode
We are now nearing the end of what will be our last year of home-based learning. And the last part of the ride has been a bit bumpy. We started the year with Fiona (12 at the time, and officially “in Grade 9”)