Robin
Robin considers herself a budding naturalist and conservationist and a spiritual eclectic who enjoys celebrating the wheel of the year with her own unique blend of earth-centered world traditions.
I’m a liberally minded mom with a strong independent libertarian streak who decided with my husband not to send our children, currently ages 5 and 8, to school. I’ve lived my life as a public school teacher, addictions counselor, career counselor, adult literacy teacher and administrative assistant for a fund raising organization. Today, I am a homeschool mom....
When You Give an Unschooler a Cookie
There is no choice you've ever made nor any you will ever make, that will limit you as much as you may fear. Nor even limit you at all. How cool is that? ~ TUT
When you don't follow a curriculum
You make your own learning path...
There once was a boy who couldn’t write. He was seven and a half years old and would have been in first grade in school, but he was not in school. He was homeschooled....
My Autodidacts and Me: Unschooling with a Curriculum
I never thought I would see the day that my eldest would be using a curriculum and liking it, but she is. When we began our homeschool journey, I attempted to bring in a curriculum and was met by a brick wall of resistance in my daughter, then five....
My Autodidacts and Me: Book Learning
My children and I had a routine that lasted for years. We had a working rhythm that manifested in the way we interacted with each other and the way we worked with each other. We had a synchronistic flow....
I've often heard the advice, "let go of your expectations," and I've just as often had trouble with the idea....
How My Daughter Learned to Read
I have “lesson” resistant children. It seems they were born that way....
I copied The Magic School Bus TV series a few years ago. The shows are still taking up valuable space on my TIVO. I can’t let them go. My kids loved them, and they learned so much from them! I can’t find them on TV any more; well, I’ve been informed that they come on before we get up in the morning…
Life With Out A Formal Education: Living Teachable Moments
While the public schools are preparing children for NCLB testing by teaching to pre-determined learning objectives and benchmarking progress at pre-set intervals with carefully calculated pacing guides (did I get that right?), we are…..not....
A friend of mine gave me a copy of the book, Unplug the Christmas Machine, maybe 3 years ago, and I’ve been reassessing and down-sizing Christmas obligations each year since. Ironically, around the same time, I began adding a litany of December winter holiday observances and festivals to my list of traditions to explore and experience: Hanukkah, a UU Advent ceremony, Santa Lucia Day, the Solstice, Las Posadas, Kwanzaa, and a Waldorf winter garden spiral. I love the Universal themes that run through them all, and my children and I have truly enjoyed reading about and experiencing a variety of traditions over the last few years. But, this is just too much for me!...
A Letter to Family & Friends: Socialization
Forward: This is part of a letter that I began to write after repeated frustrating encounters with a family member. This part is my attempt to share how my children live out their “socialization” as we homeschool. This letter reflects our family ways and values, what my children need today, and how we accomplish “socialization.” I may never send this letter to my family member....
My Sister Who Unschooled And Didn't Know It
My sister is a Master Reiki Teacher, a minister and counselor. She performs intuitive body work and can sometimes identify disease as well as medical scans, and such have verified her detailed intuitive findings several times. She’s good at what she does. She helps others help themselves....
This summer has kept us close to home. We’ve had a lot of rain here, and the humidity and heat have been intense. This summer in particular has been less about going and more about being slowly, surely in the moment. I am learning, yet again, to relax into life and the riches that exist around us, overhead, beneath our feet....
As I have moved further and further away from school in mind, we have moved further and further into our passions and interests with abandon. Good abandon, the kind that brings pleasure in life and the living of it. I should clarify before I move further into this writing excursion. I should tell you that my children have only known life without school, and I have been the one in need of leaving school behind in mind, in spirit even, one could say. I have been the one in need of learning to let go of “expert” endorsed and created shoulds, time tables, rules of learning, and of the waiting to be directed and approved in order to move forward with life and experience the natural organic flow of interests more fully....
I am not in a hurry for my children to grow up. I am not in a hurry for the day to end or the week to grow old. I am not in a hurry for the sun to set or rise. I am not in a hurry. I don't need to make our lives part of the rat race called “life” as others would created it, as I could create it--the self imposed crunch that inevitably restricts who I am, who they are, how they grow up, how they experience each day of their lives. I am not in a hurry....
Once we crossed the social construct into the realm of life without school, we began to operate and navigate our lives differently than most people we know. We are not right or wrong, just right for us. It seems we come from a different view, a different place of perceiving the world of living and learning than most people. We began to ask questions (as many people do) perhaps in different ways or from different vantage points, based on the needs of different children. Who knows? Whatever the case, we, as a family, are creating “a life” together out of our individual lives and a life-style that begs different answers to the questions that many of us ask and perhaps even begs different questions to be asked. We are path finders, trail blazers, explorers, travelers....
Synchronicity The Full Moon Experience
The less I plan and the more I just tune into life, the more I seem to encounter and appreciate the work of synchronicity. Would I bank our lives on it? Not at this point, but I can be aware of its magic and embrace it if and how I choose and allow that for my children. For me, synchronicity is an element of life, an inlet stream that connects us to the fluid nature of natural life learning. Synchronicity works for us when I can let go more and trust the living and the learning that can evolve from the act of just being involved in life....
People don't understand that the concept of grades is personally foreign to my children. We do not do grades. My children are growing up just fine and learning all the time, really they are. All is well here, and we do not do grades....
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