I did not grow up on a farm, so I’m constantly marveling at how different my kids’ childhood is from mine. It’s like they are growing up in another country. Read more
In school the teachers get authority because they tell you they have authority. If the teacher tells you what to read, you read it. If the teacher tells you which sources are acceptable for your term paper, you use those sources. There is no room to question authority in the classroom because it would lead to chaos. And the number-one job of a teacher is to prevent the classroom from deteriorating into thirty kids overtaking one teacher. Read more
This is a guest post by Lehla Eldridge. Her blog is Unschooling the Kids, and that’s a photo of her three kids. They live in Italy.
Sugatra Mitra believes that children learn best when they are asked the big questions, like “Why does hair grow and not stop growing?’ or “Does a frog know it is a frog?” or “Why is the sky blue?” Read more
I’ve launched four startups, and my kids are well aware of the investors my life spins around, and the startup that has good days when my employees are at the farm and work feels like a party, and bad days where I pretend I don’t even work at my own company because I’m so sick of the pressure. Sometimes the kids have a hard time grasping, though, how I make money. They watch Sky Does Minecraft’s YouTube channel with his ten million subscribers and my kids say, “How do you make money when you don’t even have a million subscribers?!?!” Read more
We travel often so we have the opportunity to go to a lot of museums. And I have pictures. Because like all parents, kids in museums is part of my vision of an idyllic childhood. But I never use the photos in my posts because, to be honest, most visits to museums stink. Read more
The reason I write so much about entrepreneurship for kids is that I do career coaching for adults, and most of them wish they could start their own business. Or freelance. Or be more creative in their work. And the problem for most of the people I coach is that they never learned these skills.
It’s a Monday night and my younger son wants to go to a movie. We decide on the 7:30pm show of The Lego Movie. He says, “Buy tickets online so we know it won’t sell out.” Read more
In therapy the other week, I was with my younger son, who doesn’t love therapy per se, but he loves an audience and therefore loves a therapist. He said his life is so hard and it’s so hard to live on a farm and go to the city and the only good day of the week is Saturday. When he is in cello classes all day long. Read more
I was with my kids at Build-A-Bear, engulfed by toy-marketing genius, when I misplaced my iPhone and left the store without it.
My mom called to tell me. Read more
I just got an email from my local homeschool group announcing openings in the local homeschool football team. This is notable because as Jews, we were not allowed to be officially part of their group, but I guess football is different. It’s also notable because tackle football is so over-the-top dangerous that I can’t believe homeschoolers are participating. Read more