Just Add Light and Stir

In early 2008, sharing some interesting connections that had happened at our house, I wrote: That all 'just happened,' but it ...

Look directly at your child. Practice watching your child without expectations. Try to see what he is really doing, rather than seeing...

Joyce Fetteroll wrote: It's important to observe radically unschooled kids rather than kids in general because kids in general ar...

Karen James wrote: Look for moments in the day that are good—especially the ordinary moments. Pause and appreciate them when you see ...

Sandra, in 2003: I don't use the word "unschooling" except when I'm talking to homeschoolers. When I'm talking ...

One of the filmmakers sent this to me in 2009, with this note: I have recently made a film showing autonomous home ed in action. M...

Sylvia Woodman wrote: I think people confuse "Say yes more" with "Never say no." When you are moving toward un...

Response to this: I tend to err on the side of just spending time together. Don't think of it as erring. And don't think of it ...

Lyle Perry wrote: Playing is fun. Playing makes a person happy. Why on earth would anyone want to move from something that makes th...

Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch. Reading does nothing without action. Action does nothing without patience and observa...

Deb Lewis wrote: When you have snow, or can get to snow, snowshoeing is wonderful because you don't need any special skills to str...

Joyce Fetteroll wrote: Real learning looks very different from schoolish learning. Real learning looks like playing. Even when it matches...

Deb Lewis wrote (in 2007, so that's the "now"): Studies are now popping up suggesting laughter makes our brains work bett...

"School is to unschooling as foreign language class is to learning to talk. The first is orderly, thorough, hard and hardly works. T...

I love being able to see, and to share, pictures of things I have seen, or have NOT seen, in this blog. Jen Keefe's family went to N...

Alysia Berman wrote: I tell people that I'm amazed every day by what my kids know and learn. It seems miraculous. It's not, r...

Deb Lewis wrote: Someone once suggested that having a joyful life as one of my goals was potentially damaging to my son because he ...

De-sludging one's thoughts can be helped by noticing every little good thing one does, that others do, that happens by chance. Gathe...

The other day Emma, 6, asked me a series of questions to which all of the answers were yes. She stopped and stared at my head for a bit a...

There are some homeschoolers who are so obsessed with the evils of school, the unfairness of some bygone situation or other that th...