Sharing with family

A question that often gets asked on our Unschooling Catholics email list is...what do I tell grandparents? Cousins? Relatives? How do I explain this to my parish priest when Father asks? What do we share about unschooling at family gatherings, especially if everyone seems a bit anti?


I have found that the best approach is just to share all the marvellous things we do...and then gradually ask questions about the other's life and the topic is safely steered. If someone is particularly interested, I will share our learning is life, life is learning approach.

Ultimately, I think the proof is in the pudding.


In the meantime, Julie from Bravewriter has shared  tips in her post on /When they don't get it ....

Learning at home in the school of life

What a great description of unschooling. "Learning at home in the school of life."

From a newspaper article in an Australian newspaper . “When you home-educate, especially using the natural learning method as we do, learning becomes so much part of your lifestyle, you don’t even realise you’re doing it. You’re just having conversations,” says Wight.

Homeschooling as Life

" My primary discovery in my relationship with Dotty was that homeschool is a LIFE lived—richly, fully, with crafts, activities, face paint, the arts, books, and lots of cozy eating times with the people you love."

So says Julie, from Bravewriter.

And so say I.

Homeschooling is living a rich life, wherever and however we live. As someone who has lived in small and large spaces, rural and city, and often on a limited time and money budget…this rich life is the one constant.

Go and read Julie's blog post.

Lenten Strewing

Lent is a forty-day period before Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday. We skip Sundays when we count the forty days, because Sundays commemorate the Resurrection. Lent is a season of soul-searching and repentance. It is a season for reflection and taking stock. Lent originated in the very earliest days of the Church as a preparatory time for Easter, when the faithful rededicated themselves and when converts were instructed in the faith and prepared for baptism. By observing the forty days of Lent, the individual Christian imitates Jesus’ withdrawal into the wilderness for forty days.

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To strew (str)
tr.v. strewed, strewn (strn) or strewed, strew·ing, strews
1. To spread here and there; scatter: strewing flowers down the aisle.
2. To cover (an area or a surface) with things scattered or sprinkled.
3. To be or become dispersed over (a surface).
4. To spread (something) over a wide area; disseminate.

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Strewing, in unschooling terminology, means leaving material of interest around for our children to discover.

Do Catholic Unschoolers force Lenten penances and practices onto our children?

I doubt it. Unschoolers tend to use a less didactic model of education and of homechooling and of life; Unschooling is trusting the learner to be in charge of his or her own learning.

This is also known as interest driven, child-led, natural, organic, eclectic, or self-directed learning. Lately, the term "unschooling" has come to be associated with the type of homeschooling that doesn't use a fixed curriculum. When pressed, I define unschooling as allowing children as much freedom to learn in the world, as their parents can comfortably bear. Pat Farenga

We try to inspire, to be role models ( Ack! This is my downfall...). .

We aim to create a family culture of Catholic practices - so that living the liturgical year is like breathing. It is part of what we do and part of who we are.

Another member of our list discussed her strewing of possible Lenten reading material. A great idea!

Here, in our house, we are discussing our Lenten penances and Lenten reading – what spiritual reading will we do, or will be read aloud as a family? What will we give up or what will we do extra? Even just the discussion is helpful.

Right now, as part of the things on our bulletin board, we have a cartoon explaining Lent, and an article on Ash Wednesday.

I have also strewn the Dhouy-Rheims Bible on the camphour wood chest – cum - coffee table in the sitting room. The Bible is open to Matthew 5 – the Beatitudes. Fr. mentioned at Mass that we could try to read these during Lent and try to emulate some of the virtues described….I've asked the kids to copy these into their notebooks ( perhaps I should copy this into my journal?).

I am also trying to find some nice Lenten artwork for the computer background, too, for visual strewing.

The reading of something more spiritual during Lent and Advent is a practice we began , as a family, many years ago - maybe a year or so after I became Catholic. I was received into the Church in January 1995 and confirmed in March 1997.

I have found that the spiritual reading together helps.

 For St Benedict, the principal way to meditate and the main way to be in silence is through reading. In fact, in the Rule whenever Benedict uses the word' meditate', he is always referring to reading or to the memorisation of a text for later use in prayer. For him, meditation is always rooted in Scripture. From : "Finding Sanctuary". Abbot Christopher Jamison

Finding the time for extra reading, or to read aloud to the kids, can be diffcult. I speak from my experience of failures in keeping up with such reading. We may not do this reading every day, but we aspire to read more days than not.

And when we undertake such spiritual reading, we find that we grow together, we talk, we laugh, we sometimes pray - and that certainly helps our unschooling.

St John Chrysostom wrote ~ " 'I am not,' you will say, 'one of the monks, but I have both a wife and children and the care of a household.' This is what has ruined everything, your thinking that the reading of scipture is for monks only, when you need it more than they do. Those who are placed in the world and who receive wounds every day, have the most need of medicine."

A View on Un-Parenting

the Christian Unschooling blog...Unschool myth...unschooling is unparenting 


Excerpt - One of the biggest misunderstandings I’ve found that people have with unschooling, particularly in Christian Unschooling, is the question of guidance.  People seem to jump to the conclusion that unschooling = unparenting.  It’s a BIG problem.  Frustratingly so.  Christians assume that if you’re unschooling it means you’re not guiding your children or “training them up”.

 So, for the record, let me very clearly state – the parenting philosophy behind unschooling typically involves a LOT of guidance, y’all!

 In my opinion, a large foundation of unschooling is based on guidance.  Being a guide for your child, sharing your experiences and interests, your opinions and your beliefs.  But not forcing a bunch of unnecessary baggage and schedules and lessons on them.

Blogging an unschooling morning..

Friday morning here.

I was set to work outside the home one to six in the afternoon so there popped up a free morning ....which is rare. 

My alarm was set for early so I could go to mass at Tyburn convent with the Benedictine nuns. Ah, peace..

Came home, kids were exercising, showering, Facebooking...

I did a few chores and chatted to my twenty year old about stoicism.

And then my sixteen year old started making pancakes for breakfast.

With that smell in the air I did a Taebo workout ..Cardio Scilpt. Go Billy Blanks!

And then made and had some pancakes myself. 

We talked about our plans for today and for the weekend ( youngest son and I taking a bus to Canberra to stay with an older son who works there in Parliament and going to the Renaissance Exhibition at the Art Gallery).

 Kids reading (those old Donna Parker books that I was addicted to as a girl, Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy INight, finishing off Dante's Divine Comedy, a book on Stoic Philosophy, a book on Catholic Bioethics by our Bishop, A Wrinkle in Time as its the 50th anniversary of that book!).

 I went into laundry, emails, talking, planning on doing banking for Kumon and taking whoever wants to come to the shops with me, reading Ten Habits of Happy Mothers.

And we  looked at the saint book for today.. Sts Fabian and Sebastian.

 And two sons started a game on Playstation 3.

That's our unschool  morning .

Anyone else?

No curriculum

A great read. On why you don't need a curriculum.

You don't, you know..

From Linda Dobson:

A curriculum is a course of study. It might help if you think of it as a highly planned tour through learning. If, in your exploration of do-it-yourself education reform, you feel more comfortable using such a tour guide, then by all means use a tour guide! There are many sources of lists and general outlines of what someone somewhere has deemed that children should know and in what order they should learn these things. You can use the information to see where your child is and where your child will go.

Traveling the Learning Path Independently

But what if, in your learning journey, you begin with no particular place to go? What if, instead of being a professionally planned excursion complete with an itinerary some travel agency thought would be worthwhile, your family’s trip becomes more like a jaunt on a beautiful spring afternoon, taken not to get anywhere in particular but only to enjoy being free to enjoy? Instead of getting on a bus with forty strangers, you might decide to walk, or ride a bike, horse, or four-wheeler, or drive around in circles stopping at inviting places along the way. You may not see every classic site that those on the guided tour witness, but if they are among the places that interest you, you will visit some. You will also have under your belt experiences of value to you personally. For example, let’s say you’ve tried fly fishing a time or two and enjoyed it, so for you, a visit to that funky little fly fishing museum is in order. While there you pick up ideas for new flies to make, talk with the proprietor about a few streams to try, and take home a couple of specialty books you’ve never seen elsewhere in order to learn even more at home. Had you traveled with that professional tour, you might not even know the museum exists because it wasn’t on the itinerary.

Learning Happens Within

You see, learning happens whether or not it is directed from without. I would say that more learning (and remembering) occurs when you follow your interest to a meaningful destination than happens among those strangers who take the much more traveled route. This is why curriculum is not the necessity that the educational bureaucracy makes it out to be. John Gatto said, “You can be trained from outside, but only educated from within; one is a habit of memory and reaction, the other a matter of seizing the initiative.” (emphasis added).

You don’t necessarily require a curriculum at home, because you’re addressing education instead of training.

I can’t prove it at this point, because it hasn’t yet been done, but I would bet that children who are guided by education mind, whose “learning time” was filled with activities like those in The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas: 500+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities, as well as the subsequent explorations these activities would engender because their time is their own, would wind up as educated people.

Adapted from The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas: 500+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities by Linda Dobson