Just Add Light and Stir

Holidays can be stressful, and often involve hard work. Look for joy and sparkles out of the corner of your eye. Spot beauty and lo...

Sandra Dodd to Pam Sorooshian, in a sort of group interview: You've been communicating closely with all kinds of homeschoolers, ...

Sandra Dodd, response in 2000 to: Can anyone explain to me "unschooling"? It's like "just say no." Just s...

Jen Keefe wrote: I fought motherhood for a long time. What helped me settle in and fall in love with this life and in practical love...

Patti Schmidt wrote: It seems to me that "phonics" essentially serves the purpose of "teaching" a child to rea...

Trying a little and waiting and watching will give you a chance to see the effects of these ideas. Don't just read until you'r...

If people can come to understand why it matters whether they use "teach" or "learn," they can start to get other s...

"How do you know they're learning?" The people who ask that question are looking at the world through school-colored glasse...

A mom named Tracey wrote: I am finding that it is when I can most fully let go of what 'should be' and most fully embrace 'w...

Whatever is treated as an interesting portal to the universe can become one. While you're living your life, open as many doors as yo...

Elevators, subways, trains, airplanes—all seem like transporters to me in a way that automobiles don't. You get in, a door closes, yo...

Deschooling is not just the child recovering from school damage. It's also the parents exploring their own school and childhood damag...

Laying "have to" on our kids, or on ourselves or on outsiders is less useful and healthy than looking at rights and choices and...

Abundance in one person provides benefits for others. A child with all the trust he needs can trust others. A child with all the time he n...

Read some, do some. Think. Rest. Watch your child directly and as clearly as you can, without the filters and overlays you mi...

Today's Just Add Light works well at the blog Passageways and surprises but the photos don't show from e-mail. I hope that EVERY ...

Sometimes a litle door might be literal, or sometimes figurative, but little doors can lead to many wonderful things! All the doors you'...

In a discussion in which a very religious mom wrote that she would someday help her daughter navigate her beliefs, I responded: What s...

Here's a fairy door. That is clearly what it is. Are fairies real? We all know that word, and there's that door. ...

Sometimes doors are open, and sometimes they're not. Sometimes it costs money to go through a door, or it's private, or it...