What is Unschooling?

Self-Directed Learning – Learning to Play the Guitar on a Road Trip Unschooling and homeschooling are often used interchangeably but are two very different methods of learning or “education”. According to Wikipedia: “Unschooling is an educational method and philosophy that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning.” While correct, this is a fairly weak definition because it…

Reading, Writing, and Texting

Homeschooling in our house looks more like unschooling so reading and writing, along with the learning of other subjects, is largely unstructured. As the kids get older though we are trying to add a little bit of structure in and hold them accountable for some work. Reading has been slow going for my oldest and although…

Toy Fair 2012

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending Toy Fair 2012 in New York, it was great. I was able to talk with the various companies and find out what’s new this summer, I also had a chance to explore all of the new educational options from some of my favorite companies like Haba, Elenco (the makers of…

Parents Can Use Reflection to Gauge Unschooling Progress

  It’s a common theme among homeschooling and unschooling parents to have this constant nagging feeling that we are somehow not doing for our children what we need to be doing. That we’re somehow experimenting on them with unschooling and the educational choices we have helped them make. I have discussed own issues with  this here several times before Over…

Ask The Educator – January Edition

I’m starting a new feature here at Harmonic Mama where you can “Ask the Educator” any burning questions you may have. In our first installment we have a question about how to encourage your child to read. The answers will appear here on Harmonic Mama on the last Thursday of every month. Our contributing educator this month is…

A place of their own, the reading nook.

Yesterday we put together a little reading nook in the unused space at the end of our daughter’s bed. This space often collected stuff and was never a very usable space but with the addition of a small chair and two book ledges made long ago from these plans we made a great little reading…

Guest Post – Educating our Children…and Ourselves

Educating children is one of the primary focuses of our family. As unschoolers education is ingrained in our every day and always on our minds. Today I’d like to share a different perspective with you all. We have a great guest post from Ellie Hirsch, The Mommy Master™ about her experience with the education system and quest for the…

Self Directed Math Learning with Base Ten Blocks

Can you unschool math? Sure you can, especially with base ten blocks and other manipulatives! My kids love math and love working with numbers, splitting up sets, multiplying (although I’m not sure if they understand what that word is), etc… A great deal of this enjoyment comes from unstructured work with base ten blocks. Base ten blocks are a…

Friday Finds – Writing Resources for Kids

Lately I’ve been encouraging my oldest to write more. We don’t follow any sort of curriculum but I do require her to write something every day whether it’s an email or writing in a journal. Lately she has been extremely responsive to writing in a journal. We use a numbered list of writing prompts. Every day…

Unschooling Success Stories

By kigaliwire   Ultimately as parents we want to do the best for our kids to put them on a path to success (whatever that’s defined as). This makes unschooling interesting because as much as I see its effects and I see my children learning sometimes there is a little voice deep deep back in…