When you first step away from the school system, you leave behind all their built-in ways of measuring progress - the grades, the tests, the reading levels...In this week's mini-episode, I'm sharing the simple daily practice we use to record, track, and review progress in our family.
"I'm having a hard time striking the right balance between following my child's lead, and making sure they're also doing hard things and putting in effort."
You hear a lot about what you’ll need when you first choose to live life without school. The resources, curriculum options, books you should read, the local groups to join. But there's something else that matters more than any of that.
I've been thinking a lot about this line in my post from the other day: "We've created a world where a child's greatest achievement is being low maintenance."
With all the talk about following children's interests and nurturing their passions early, this is a common worry. But understanding what's really happening during this stage of childhood will completely change how you see your child's play.
‘Escaping the rat race’ is held up as the pinnacle of freedom for adults. No more strict daily schedules to set an alarm for, no more time spent on work that has no meaning to us, no more grinding ourselves into the dirt for hours on end every day, week,...
People tell us we’re overthinking life by choosing to home educate. That they have fond memories of their school years, and so do all their friends. They’ve turned out fine, and so will our children. We’re just complicating things. Of all the arguments against home education I...
They say that homeschooling shelters children. That it creates a view of the world that is narrow and insular. They say that homeschooling isolates children. That it takes away their opportunity to interact with other people and places. They say that a homeschooled child isn’t living in the real...
Real talk: as a parent of home educated children, I still find myself hoping they’ll outperform their schooled peers academically.
Educationally, we seem to have decided that children are almost entirely incompetent. Are they?
Somehow the four walls of a room within a school building have become our gold standard learning space. Really think about that for a second.
