This isn’t about my own, current, 12-year-old, or about any of my former 12-year-olds. Maybe it’s a bit about the 12-year-old I used to be, and about who that has made me as a parent. It’s a copy and paste
Unschooled adolescents
Fiona’s primary enrolment this year is with SelfDesign, an independent umbrella program that supports home-based learners from Kindergarten through Grade 9 and their families, including loads of unschoolers. The support is primarily moral support, though there’s a little money available
Building Rat Park
At a recent unschooling workshop, the issue of technology use came up. Some parents expressed concern over the potential addictive nature of technology. With unschoolers having far more autonomy over their lives, the risk of excess use seems much higher,
A time and place
Fiona started coding club this week. It was held at the Nelson Tech Club’s hackerspace. Three kids, all about 12, two of them on the autism spectrum and with their workers along for support, the others being boys. There may be a few
How to know if your unschooler is learning
Q. How do you know if an unschooled child is learning? A. He’s alive. The point being that children are hard-wired to learn. You can’t stop them. Give them a reasonably rich environment, loving support and relative freedom and you really
Between the subjects
One of the things I love about homeschooling is the way the boundaries between subjects don’t need to exist at all. I know that many schools pride themselves on making “cross-curricular connections,” but those are more like threads connecting otherwise
Fiona’s Schedule
The older kids now have timetables for school. Fiona wanted one too. So she sat down with me and we came up with something. First we put in the out-of-home things she has to attend. Summit Strings and the trip
Fiona’s Learning Plan 2011-2012
She’s my only full-time homeschooler this year, and gosh, is she every loving that! She would also love to attend school in the flexible part-time way that Erin did for three years, and that Noah is doing this year, but
Children and computer use
Written in response to a mom of a 5-month-old who was asking for advice on how much and how early to encourage computer use by her child as she grows up: I love what technology does for us, but here’s
The drive to learn
“Help me understand about unschooling. I know kids learn to talk and walk with no overt teaching but they learn by example, I think these are more of a biological drive in the human being. I am not sure learning
Show your work
On the way to Calgary last week Noah was doing some math work. He was in a good mood and things were going well. He finds his current textbook (MathPower9) to be okay for the most part. It’s rife with
Of back burners
It was gone. Now it has returned. The interest in math. She is barrelling ahead in her Singapore book again, easily internalizing things that I expected a child so young would really struggle with. The efficiency of her learning still
Adolescence rant
Copied & pasted from a discussion board where it was being argued that young adults from 18-25 ought to be cut a little slack by the justice system when they do stupid things like engage in credit card fraud —
Extending patterns
Fiona and I were waiting for Sophie’s Aikido class to finish. We were hanging out in the van. She had brought along her math but after a couple of minutes decided she didn’t want to do any more of that,
Schools and rules
A Grade 6 class is expected to read a book of their choice per week at home independently and submit a book report for each. They should read a range of genres. Multiple books from the same series are not