One day the Hindu God Ganesha was arguing with his brother Kartikay about who was fastest. They decided to resolve the issue by having a race around the universe… as you do when you are a God I guess.
Their parents Shiva and Parvati watched them from the starting line. The race began and Kartikay got […]

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I have been encouraged by the recent debate on this site to put renewed energy into food and cooking. We do this every so often but then go through a “cyclical slackness” with food where we tend to ignore the whole issue for a while. But for now Im motivated so…
I wanted to ask you […]

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This site has been going since November 2006 and has grown steadilly – including some very wise words from the likes of Alfie Kohn, Jan Hunt, Naomi Aldort, Paddy Wipfler, Jon Kabat-Zinn and many more. Their articles and a few of mine are summarised on our new Article Index here.
Hope you enjoy them… tell […]

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Thanks to homeschool mums Wendy & Marion for telling us about Patty Wilpfer’s Hand in Hand site. Click here to read her article Being “In Control”– The Possible and Impossible in Parenting, which we have just added to our site.
Patty Wilpfler’s writing covers broad topics often pitched for a mainstream audience and has […]

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Just got permission from Naomi Aldort to reprint one of her articles that i really liked. Its themes are trust and meeting a child’s needs in the toddler context.
I particularly liked her “declaration of complete confidence in chlidren” which appears at the end of the article. The article Surviving the Toddler Years can be […]

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I secretly suspect that Eleanor Sparks is infact about six people.
If you have not come accross her yet – she is one of the most high profile proponents of homeschooling in Australia, she is a homeschool mum of five kids, she publishes Australia’s main homeschool magazine Education Choices and she is the key organiser […]

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My mum always says, “children are like the paparazzi… you can do no wrong for 99% of the time but if you make a mistake just 1% they will snap you with their photographic memory!”
Over the last 8 months or so i have consciously been applying many new parenting approaches marked by […]

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I have previously reviewed Rue Kream’s excellent book “Parenting A Free Child: An Unschooled Life” here. I wont go on about how good the book is again… read the review if you are curious.
It is available internationally direct from the States at www.freechild.info. The good news is that it is now also available in Australia […]

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I have found some egroups to be invaluable for advice, ideas, confidence and support. This is a quick description and my impressions of some of the unschooling and alternative parenting egroups out there…

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Thanks to Alan Thomson for allowing permission to reprint his article “What Home Educators can teach the world about Natural Learning” which you can read here…
Alan is an academic and his article describes an interesting journey into unfamiliar realms of education and “learning” over “teaching” for any academic to come to terms with…

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