My son told me he wrote a post for my blog. He’s written for this blog before, so I read his post with excitement. But then I had to tell him it wouldn’t work. I’m not sure it’s that nice,” I told him. “Or useful.” Read more

The top 25 jobs of the future don’t even exist yet. Of course we want education to prepare people for the future workplace. The problem is that history has proven that the top jobs of one decade were non-existent jobs just a few decades earlier. This makes sense; it’s the newest skills that are in the highest demand because the older sector of the workforce cannot provide the skills based on experience. Read more

When you look at this headline, the important thing appears to be unschoolers. But in fact, the important thing is “turn out.” That is, what does it mean to “turn out well?” Read more

This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2.

The goal of learning from being a kid to an adult is defined by every parent. My husband Andy and I set our homeschooling goals. We created a list, and steps on how to achieve everything on this list. Unfortunately the list did not include how to handle busy days. Nor did it include yelling at my kids. Being insanely angry at my kids was never on the list either. Read more

Scene at the Grocery Store:

Neighbor: I hear you’re not in school anymore!

Nine-year-old: Yah. My mom’s teaching me.

Neighbor: Oh really! That’s nice.

Nine-year-old: Not really. She’s not really teaching me anything. Read more

I always marvel at how much easier homeschooling is than sending my kids to school. For example, the only discipline problems I have are about manners and the boys fighting with each other, since they are in charge of what they do all day. Also, I control our schedule, and I don’t do anything I don’t want to do (like, stupid worksheets that a teacher sent home) so I am free to do what I want with my days as well. Read more

This is a guest post from Kim Bain. She  has three children.

I suck at budgeting and finances but I do know this: sending kids to school has costs. I’m not just talking about field trip money and new-Jordan’s-to-impress-the-ladies type costs.

Read more

There’s big talk about mindfulness. Maybe because is the era of distraction because we are struggling with multitasking, partial attention, and information overload. But probably because we know there are enormous benefits to mindfulness, but achieving mindfulness is something that does not seem to be natural to us. Time magazine has documented the struggle. Read more

My husband and I try really hard to understand the games my kids are playing. My ex-husband plays a lot of games with them, even incredibly absurd ones, and I watch a lot of the let’s play videos with them. Read more