To Fall or Not to Fall in the Fall, Y’all

To fall or not to fall in the fall y'all. Family off-road unicycling adventures

Their First Real MUni Ride (Mountain Unicycling) She’s been on one of these trails before, but very briefly, noobily, and quite uninterested in finding another trail – her unicycle passion was the asphalt paths and empty strip mall parking lots, so that’s what we did instead, with me learning all sorts of new riding skills […]

Our New Pigeon Family in the Making!

pigeons moved in and are nesting, what do you feed them

We’re so lucky a season of new unschooling classes just flew in! It’s quite interesting to watch what they are doing in their ‘unwatched and alone’ action…especially in watching how the nest gets built and pressed into shape while they go.

Teachers Don’t Need Training. They Can Even Be Five.

homeschool dinosaur teacher

“What I like the most about playing dino doctor is teaching her the dino names like you taught me ” – Aidan, 5

I wondered, very briefly, when we had our second kid, isn’t it going to be a lot harder trying to manage two kids learning at different ‘grade levels’? That was quickly replaced with, ‘well, I guess she’ll have two teachers, and he’ll be a teacher of things he learns.’

Pets Are So Important. RIP Willis :(

pets are so important, especially for homeschoolers

The cats have been so important to us for two decades. Now we have none. The kids were seemingly not affected by his passing, already wondering what new pet we would get. I think it might be a couple of hamsters next. (Their minds were blown when I told them unlike hamsters in the pet […]

Meeting a Sloth & Mommy Touching a Snake

burmese python ray's retile

We had a great time at the Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo Meet a Sloth event! The biggest downside was it was on March break and there was an ocean of school kids there. Man, they make for a crowded event 🙂

It doesn’t take long after getting in to see how much the staff loves doing what they are doing and are so good with the kids; whether it’s answering their questions ‘at their level’ or artfully avoiding questions in order to maintain the flow of the presentations.

Sweetwater : Our Trip to the Sugarbush

kinsmen fanshawe sugarbush

What a great time we had here, sorry if it’s too Canadian, eh?

I first thought, ‘well this will be neat for the kids’. I didn’t realize how interesting and fun it would be for them! A short informative tour showcasing modern-day sap collection with hoses and taps compared to the old fashioned way you may be more familiar with…buckets on a tree (I know that’s what I was picturing!)

First Time Randomly Bumping Into Unschoolers – Six Hours Away

mr burns turkey

Turns out the hens that came in through the treeline also lived with some unschoolers! We showed them about slacklines, they showed us turkeys!

Interesting fact about city kids: They’ll pick up an axe if they see one and you’ve never said ‘don’t pick up an axe’!

Bugs: No Need For Compassion

cricket

They hadn’t gotten to interact with so many of them before, they were quite impressed; hopping things have always seemed to hop away before we could investigate. They know exactly what a frog jumping into the swamp right before we get there looks and sounds like

Unschooling? Why You Should Pull Over

big curve acres farm

It would have been great for the kids to go in and get a tour of what they do there…but also there was a sideroad that we could pull over on and let the kids out. They were pretty impressed!!

LLamas, goats, alpacas, donkeys, reindeer, sheep, pigs, horses… There’s also GIANT DANDELIONS on that side road!

Surprise Spider Family

spider wasp

This was exciting a couple of times. At first, I showed them the dead wasp in the spider web. A whole ‘even the mighty wasp can get stuck in a tiny web’ kinda demonstration.

The five year old reached down to touch it, and a spider who we didn’t know was on it sprinted up the web way faster than any spider web travel I have seen.

There Are More Advantages to Pop Research than Pop Quizzes.

Here’s a nice little gem we found on our way to mom’s work, a lake surrounded by trees and a walking path, nestled near the industrial area of town.

A little section of nature that I had passed by countless times over the years. It wasn’t open to cycling, why would I ever pop in?

Because now I have kids!

Night Time Adventures

collecting pebbles at night

Kids tossing and turning? Just can’t get them to go to sleep? Go out and learn!

The world is a different place at night. I found a $20-$30 LED worklight, and brought it outside once when I couldn’t find one of their flashlights. It has a stand on it, and it has sparked many ‘can we do a night time adventure?’ long before they are tossing and turning!

When Things Don’t Go According To Plan

fanshawe dam snails

There were several great examples of unschooling here. We went to our local dam to check it out. What would they be interested I wondered; water levels? water pressure? lake/river transition? Height? Cement and steel? I figured I’d show it to them from the road up top, and then drive them down the road to see it from the bottom.

Raising Monarch Butterflies

magnifying glass monarch butterfly caterpillar

So it turns out we butterfly! Did you ever hear that as a verb before? Right now we have two little caterpillars (we can find out if they are male or female once they are butterflies) much smaller than a dime.

Graveyard Deer On Halloween

graveyard deer in london

Halloween was just the day we happened to go there. We were told there were lots of deer living in there who didn’t really care about people all that much. So we went. And it didn’t disappoint!

Are the deer still there in the winter? I don’t know. Let’s go see!

winter deer

She asked me, ‘do you think the deer are still there in the winter? I figured they probably were but didn’t know for sure. There was only one thing to do. Well, two things. Get the camera, and go to the graveyard. It was a beautiful winter day and we didn’t even need coats for […]

The Dandelion Games

Unschooled kids playing with dandelions while climbing on an outdoor banshee

Earlier in the day, some lady asked me about the kids not being in school. She said homeschooling sounded like a good idea because of bullying. I told her bullying was just another point on a long list of why schools aren’t an ideal place for kids to be.