![]() | "Kindness, grace, and generosity go a lot further toward creating warm relationships and a joyfully harmonious home than measuring out equality." —Meredith Novak |
photo by Chrissy Florence
![]() | "Kindness, grace, and generosity go a lot further toward creating warm relationships and a joyfully harmonious home than measuring out equality." —Meredith Novak |
If a person wants to live in the light of his goals and intentions, then the "better choices" need to be made in that light. The clearer you are about where you intend to go, the easier your decisions are. | ![]() |
![]() | Go for ways to be kind, be a partner, say yes more than no, don't label children, HOPE that they will be better able to tolerate lots more things as they get older. Choices are the way to go. Moms can practice them first, and help children have and make them as years go by. |
![]() | "I just never separated what I knew and was doing from what my kids were doing, and that helped. So it was fairly seamless for me. My whole life had been about learning and about education. That's what I always wanted to do from the time I was six— to be a teacher. My other backup plans were to be a missionary or a journalist. Pretty much I cover those three every day." —Sandra Dodd |
"It's my goal to help my son get what he wants. That's my focus and the foundation of our unschooling adventure together. I see myself as his facilitator, someone to make his progress easier. I could have told him there was nothing we could do about this particular problem, but I don't want him to simply accept what comes along. I want him to have examples of hope and attainment. It's an important skill to be able to find creative solutions to problems." —Deb Lewis | ![]() |
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![]() | Visual dictionaries, books of birds, mammals, local flora, the dictionary, encyclopedia, atlas, almanac—these books can be used by the hour or by the half minute. There is no time wasted when children are thinking, asking questions, fitting new information with what they already have, and all the while smiling and laughing. Have fun! |
Being with our children in direct and mindful ways made us kinder, gentler and more accepting. We were more playful and full of wonder, as we saw the world through their eyes. | ![]() |
![]() | "The best thing that any parent can do is to make their life with and their relationship with their children as good and as happy and as stress-free as possible." —Schuyler Waynforth |
![]() | "It's not because unschooled children are superior that they won't exhibit the behaviors that parents fear. It's that their lives lack the factors that cause children to use TV in unhealthy ways." —Joyce Fetteroll |
About "academic things": If the parents are really involved and busy, and inspiring and inspired, and interested and interesting, then I trust it will happen. I know it will NOT happen if the parents are cynical, negative, critical, shaming. Parents, if they're considering homeschooling, need to make it better than school or not do it. | ![]() |
![]() | Whole individual learning is the ONLY way anyone can learn. Each child builds his own internal model of the universe. School tries to insert one but it can't. It just can't be done. |
![]() | I see my children living full, real lives today, right now. I don't see them as students in preparation for life, who after a number of years and lessons might be considered "completed" or "graduated." It was a long way to come, and I never even had to move. I just had to look at what I considered to be real. |
![]() | "If learning were a river, a question might be a tributary. Answering the question will add to the river. The more tributaries, the larger the river, and the farther it will flow. As long as the questions come, we answer them, and the learning continues to flow." —Nina, of "Amor y Risa" |
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Don't spend money at first. Read, meet other families, let your children have time to do what they're interested in, or what they weren't allowed to do before because of school.
Whatever you do, make it fun, interesting, comforting, memorable, unusual, familiar, nourishing, productive, or restful. If it can be three or four of those things at the same time, good job! | ![]() |
Being comfortable is part of being at peace. Perhaps they are the same thing. Learning can't happen well without peace, so provide the elements of a peaceful life as often as you can, in all sorts of ways. Become comfortable with peace. | ![]() |
![]() | "When you give, give as happily as you honestly can, and give with the receiver in mind more than yourself. That spirit shows, and is meaningful." —Karen James |