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…
Tag: learning
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…
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…
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…
Learning on the Fly
Sometimes life presents to you great opportunities for learning, the goal is to be open to them. We had a great time camping last week but our last morning was rainy so we decided to pack up camp and have breakfast in a nearby town. While we were there our waitress showed us amazing…
Unschooling the Practical Arts
One great thing about unschooling is that life is learning and “school” is always in session. This weekend we attended an Arts and Crafts festival in town and it was great. There were all sorts of artist there, painter, sculptors, jewelers etc… The girls watched pottery demonstrations, talked with artists and saw various types of art for sale….
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…