quote of the day and more on unschooling

"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life."  - John Lennon


Unschooling is not just a different method of homeschooling for us, it is a way of life. We do not say, "Okay, today we will be unschooling from 9 am to 3 pm." We live unschooling and have since the day Jude was born, we just didn't know there was a name for it back then! Unschooling for us is about being mindful of everything around us, whether it be nature or other people's feelings. It's about living with meaningful principles instead of arbitrary rules. It's about an honest desire for natural, organic, life learning. It's about respecting one another, and not just demanding respect from children but giving it to them.


For me as a parent, unschooling is about finding ways to say yes instead of no. It's a about being a resource instead of a teacher. It's about trusting that my children are smart enough and capable enough to learn what they need to know when they are ready. It's about being there to answer questions about the world with truthful, intelligent explanations. It's about letting my kids make their own choices. It's about helping my kids find their own happiness in this world.  

This is Jimmy and Jude reading bedtime stories last night. Every night Jimmy asks Jude what he wants to read about and Jude chooses. Last night he picked out one of our old solar system books. Jude got his Iron Man Halloween costume yesterday and he wore it all day and all night!