Unconventional Learning;

We’re a geeky kind of family. With me being a mathematician and my DH an engineer, it would be hard to not be geeky. We’re also not going to score high on the ‘doing things conventionally’ test, if one of those existed. But sometimes, just sometimes, the paths my kids take to learn are so unconventional that they leave me with a feeling of stunned awe (and a little bit of ‘where in the sweet unicorns on a pegasus did that come from‘?).

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Unschooling Ain’t The Boogie Man

Unschooling Ain't The Boogie Man, yellowreadis.com Image: Kids lying on pier playing in water

Every now and then, usually when news is a little slow, prominent papers like to do little fluff pieces on the edges of the educational world. One week might be about lambasting ‘pushy parents,’. Another week an angry remonstrance on the horrors of alternative education.

Personally, I find it deeply amusing that, depending on the flavour of the month, our little family can be both academically pushing and overly restrictive tiger-parents, and laissez-faire, academically neglectful parents at the same time.

In July, it was Mamamia’s turn to have-a-go at the punch-the-alternative-education bandwagon.

The topic this time around? Unschooling.

So what is unschooling? And why does it raise so many hackles?
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Frugal Apartment 2e Homeschooling

There are many ways we have changed our lifestyle in order to be able to homeschool our children. Adjusting to the reality of a one-income family involved rethinking many of our assumptions about what we needed and what we could do without. It’s an ongoing process as our needs have changed over time. Some of our decisions have been lifestyle based, and some have been more focused on how we create an environment that is conductive to learning. So today I’d like to step through some of the things we do to try and keep us on the correct side of the ledger.

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Playing to the Positives

It’s very easy to fall into the habit of only thinking about the negatives. I do it. In fact, it runs in my family – anxiety is a fact of life for more than one generation. But today, I want to talk about the positives. It’s easy to talk about the positives and negatives of my family’s special needs, and it is also easy to talk about the negatives of giftedness. It’s even marginally socially acceptable. But today I’m breaking the mould. I am going to talk about the positives of being a gifted family. Because without talking about those ‘oh wow!‘ moments, it’s hard to understand why being gifted is so different from the norm. Today I’m being brave. So here we go. Continue reading “Playing to the Positives”