Table of Contents

If You Bake with Boys
by Jennifer L.W. Fink
"If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk. And if you bake with boys, they’ll blow muffin cups across the floor."

An Unschooling Approach to Road Tripping
by Laurie Goodman
"Yes, it would be nineteen hours in the van to get to our first destination, but we could handle it. We had no concrete plans or expectations except for the direction we were headed – a way of being well practiced as an unschooling family."

Learning Through Play
by Jan Hunt
"Jason has learned everything through play and has the same love of learning he was born with. He learned abut money by playing Monopoly; about spelling by playing Scrabble; about strategies by playing chess, Clue and video games; about our culture by watching classic and modern TV shows and films; about grammar by playing Mad Libs; about fractions by cooking; about words by playing Dictionary; and about writing skills by reading P. G. Wodehouse. He learned about life through living it."

The Value of "Multiple Intelligence"
by Karen Ridd
"Unlike a classroom, which will be filled with a variety of learning styles, at home learning will naturally happen in the individual learning styles of the children. Unschooled children will also find ways to harness areas of strength to support their learning in areas where they might struggle."

Why Doesn't Unschooling Come Naturally?
by Dayna Martin
"If I lived on a deserted island and had no cultural influence telling me what to do, would unschooling come completely natural to me as a parent? Why do we need to learn how to unschool in our culture? If it is such a natural way that humans learn, why do so many people think that learning has to be forced? "

Starbucks Worthy
by Heather Woodward
"I have come to realize that I cannot be a facilitator helping my children find their passions in “educational” pursuits, while not acknowledging the fact that they are real people with real preferences, whether gumballs or Starbucks Chai Lattes."

Instead of Respect
by Flo Gascon
"I am now realizing that respect has become confused with the notion of having manners. Saying please and thank you, Mr. and Mrs., and sitting still and nodding politely. This is what we mean when we use the phrases, “Respect your elders,” or “Respect me.” Behave. Do what I say. But is this really what we want?"

An Unschooling Perspective on Screentime
by Ann Vetter
"I have witnessed movies spark a child’s imagination, inspire their writing, motivate them to read a book on a subject, and encourage them to act out their own version of the plot in an imaginative, lets-pretend sort of game. I have explained complex math concepts because my children needed them to get to the next level in a computer game they enjoy. I have watched their vocabulary expand as they ask me the meaning of words they see and hear on screen. Best of all, I spend time doing these things with them."

Balanced?
by Shana Ronayne Hickman
"Suddenly, it seems, there are a lot of articles on unschooling floating around. More often than not, they’re not purely positive, not purely negative, but what we’ve come to call 'balanced.' But, are they really?"

FAVORITE FASCINATIONS
Reviews of unschooling resources.

Lucy and Harold's Purple Crayon
by Elizabeth Browne
"I closed the book. There was a moment of silence in which I pondered what tasks I would try to accomplish when the kids were finally asleep. At seven, Lucy was a bit old for Harold, but her younger brother had received the book as a gift, and she had asked me to read it to her. 'Is Harold’s crayon real?' she asked me."