Natural Learning and Unschooling - Home Education Network

May 18, 2018

Capturing Natural Learning as it Happens

By Gnat Atherden My father recently asked me to describe how my children learn. I hate getting caught up in validating natural learning by comparing it to formal learning, so I ended up telling him that ‘lessons for us never begin and never stop’ and ‘natural learning happens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week’. I think that whilst these statements are true, […]

November 6, 2017

Unschooling is not Unparenting

By Sue Wight Something odd is happening in the world of unschooling. Sarah has heard that if her children want chocolate biscuits for breakfast, they will eat a balanced diet over time without well-meaning interference from her. Meanwhile, she’s struggling to buy enough chocolate biscuits to keep up with them and is torn between her concerns about nutrition and a reluctance to impose restrictions […]

October 14, 2017

Learning by Immersion

By Sue Wight We all learnt to speak via the immersion method. Babies become aware of vocal patterns and connect them with visual cues from facial expressions and body language and are on their way to cracking the code of their mother tongue. The process is driven by the desire to understand, to communicate, to be part of the group. Watching babies and toddlers […]

May 7, 2017

Jump, Fall, Fly

From schooling to homeschooling to unschooling by Lehla Eldridge and Anthony Eldridge-Rogers Available at http://unschoolingthekids.com/unschooling-the-kids-the-book/ ebook £7.99 Reviewed by Susan Wills, Lorinna, Tasmania in Otherways issue 152 I jumped at the chance to read this book. The title spoke to me as a parent who, over the past 3 years, has moved from schooling to homeschooling and now unschooling – a journey containing moments […]

July 25, 2016

Learning Maths Naturally

By Sue Wight Our family follow a natural learning style of home education and feel quite comfortable that the children are learning all the time but, like many home educators, we have the occasional doubts about maths. Recently these doubts led me to persuade one of my sons, Matthew, to do some maths on paper. As a small child he loved maths, in fact […]

June 1, 2016

Mr Micawber’s Lesson

Financial Education at Home By Rob Wight If teaching your children about money has been on your “to do” list for some time, don’t delay any more – now is the time to act, no matter how old they are Given we spend so much time with our children, I believe home educators often have the best opportunity to lead the discussion about […]

May 10, 2016

Just Playing

By Susan Wight Play is children’s work and yet it is curiously undervalued in our society. Many adults fervently believe that there can be no ‘educational value’ in something that children choose to do. Their concern about home educating without a curriculum is that children might ‘just play’. Adults are sceptical that play, which looks to them like merely a pleasant pastime, can really […]

April 4, 2016

Soul Schooling

By Carolyn Franzke (Otherways Magazine, issue 140) I used to be a teacher. I taught maths and science, and sometimes other subjects too. I was on the curriculum committee, attended lots of conferences and ran staff meetings about the value of a quality curriculum. I studied for my Masters in Education and wrote a thesis about the value of digital portfolios in improving the […]

March 7, 2016

Home educating teenagers is not that hard

By Sue Wight Home educating primary-aged children was easy as far as I was concerned. I spent time with them, read to them, played games with them, talked lots, encouraged their interests, took them to interesting places, and stood back and watched the learning happen. But home educating teenagers? I knew nothing about that! That would be hard – what about the Maths, what […]

September 2, 2015

Home ed on a budget

By Sue Wight It doesn’t have to cost an arm and leg So you’ve decided to home educate, but now you are worried about how you will ever afford all of those flashy curriculum resources, especially if home education means living on one income as it does for most families. The good news is that home education does not have to be expensive. You […]

September 2, 2015

Life’s Greatest Adventure

By Lyn Saint ‘How can I give my child a high level of education when I didn’t do very well at school myself?” is not only one of the most asked questions, but many adults today assume that, just because they failed or dropped out of school themselves, that they are uneducated. As a notorious school failure and drop-out, these were also my thoughts […]

September 2, 2015

Unschooling With ADD

By Kathy Ward In recent years there’s been a strong trend for parents to remove their children from school and bring them home to learn because many schools have been failing to provide a positive learning experience for their children. These kids have been bright, personable, competent in many realms, and yet they’ve found themselves existing on the outskirts of the learning experiences that […]