arun on Sep 02 2008 | Filed under: education, laugh, looking out
A very funny, albeit very sad article from the satirical online mag, the Onion:
6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling
CARPENTERSVILLE, IL—Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next […]
arun on Jun 27 2008 | Filed under: homeschooling, links, pit stops
Pit Stops are posts where i choose a theme and profile some sites. According to my web stats only about 30% of the people who visit the Pit are from Australia, so sorry to all you others for whom this is less interest. This month, homeschooling & unschooling online resources for Australians…
LIBERATED LEARNING This is […]
arun on Apr 22 2008 | Filed under: cartoons, dad stuff, homeschooling
Ive been uninspired about writing recently… so thought id draw instead. Hopefully this family will make a regular appearance in the pit…
click on the image below for a full size pic in a new window…
[note: you can reproduce any of these cartoons so long as you: 1) leave a comment or drop me a line […]
arun on Mar 27 2008 | Filed under: education, empowerment & trust, parenting, unschooling, work from home
Anne & I have recently been reading and implementing coaching techniques for our home business to great effect. We have been using a coaching approach called the GROW model popularised by John Whitmore in his book Coaching for Performance. Although I feel uncomfortable with describing parenting as coaching, I was struck by how this approach […]
arun on Feb 15 2008 | Filed under: 4 to 8 year old, education, homeschooling, looking out, mainstream media, unschooling
Two interesting articles doing the rounds recently caught my eye. The first was published by the BBC and asks in its headline, “Is five too soon to start school?”.
(btw – thanks to Scott Stantis for the cartoon).
The article compares England’s experience with countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Finland where school begins at seven years of […]
arun on Jan 25 2008 | Filed under: education, empowerment & trust, homeschooling, inspiration, looking out, natural learning, newbies, others wisdom, reviews & interviews, unschooling
Jan Hunt director of the Natural Child Project and her unschooled son Jason are coeditors of the soon to be released The Unschooling Unmanual. This compilation of eleven essays will be available in early Feb, 2008.
I managed to get my mitts on an advance digital copy of the book and have written an indepth review […]
arun on Jan 16 2008 | Filed under: *favourites*, homeschooling, laugh, unschooling
Here at the Parenting Pit we are working on a range of products to make your homeschooling/ unschooling journey a blissful haven (you know… like the ones you read about on all those egroups!). Take a sneak peak at some of the products soon available:
THE FREAK OUT FILE
For mild to medium freak outs, gather favourite […]
arun on Dec 28 2007 | Filed under: homeschooling
We have just helped to initiate a new Homeschool group for people based around Mullumbimby, Brunswick Heads, Byron Bay and Northern NSW (that’s in Australia in case you were wondering…).
Byron Homeschoolers involves unschoolers but is diverse and broad incorporating a variety of parenting & homeschooling approaches.
If you are in the area or planning […]
arun on Dec 07 2007 | Filed under: 2 to 4 year old, 4 to 8 year old, education, homeschooling, natural learning, newbies, unschooling
That is what I yelled out to my family as we drove down a street in Launceston, Tasmania and saw the creature pictured left. It seemed like all my family, even my 19 month old son, rolled their eyes as Anne politely pointed out, “It’s a llama.”
I still argue that the car was moving fast, […]
arun on Jun 06 2007 | Filed under: *favourites*, dad stuff, education, homeschooling, newbies, parenting, unschooling
I keep meeting and hearing of Mums who want to unschool & practice non coercive parenting but are having problems bringing their hubbys along for the ride. Originally I had planned to write a series of “letter to Dads”, in trying to communicate the great potential and benefits of these approaches.
I was half way through […]
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