Archive for the '4 to 8 year old' Category

Only Slightly, Slightly Scary Monsters Allowed

Some of my fondest memories of my youth was time spent with my family, our next door neighbours and a couple of my brother’s friends as we trawled through swamps, fought a huge array of monsters, raised armies, trapped dragons, fled from trolls and plundered treasure… oh… and we died on numerous occasions.
Of course we […]

Two Articles Question Mainstream Education

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 […]

Hey… Look at that Dog!

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, […]

Five Lessons From My Children

A SPECIAL POST BECAUSE THE PARENTING PIT IS ONE YEAR OLD TODAY!!!
Ironically if I stumbled upon a site like this just three year ago, I would have ignored it at best and written an abusive email at worst. Somewhere in between that three year and one year mark, I went through a […]

Maybe I Should Place an Advert?

Driving along yesterday and M who is 5yrs was having a shouting match over a fairy doll with Z who is 18months. Im the sort of person who needs to concentrate when I drive. Well actually the driving bit is fine… its the driving in the right direction that seems to consume every brain cell […]

No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition!

Conversations with M, our daughter sometime remind me of a river.
It flows – crashing and cascading at one moment, slowly sauntering the next. These discussions seem to meander in all sorts of directions driven by her insightful and often ecclectic waves of questions and observations.
That to me is one of the amazing things […]

Mendhi & Marriage Mayhem

We just returned home from 10 days staying with my mum interstate for a relation’s Indian wedding extravaganza.
Pictured is M after Mendhi night, a traditional ceremony where henna is put in intricate patterns on the hands of female participants, it lasts for about two weeks afterwards.
WHEN YOUR CHEEKS ARE NOT YOUR OWN
A big Indian get […]

DO NOT READ THIS POST!

So you’re reading it anyway right?
In fact more people will probably read this post because of that title. Me writing “Do NOT read this Post” is a limit that is unexplained, artificial and/ or you have no reason for believing… why wouldn’t you at best ignore it or more likely become even more curious by […]

So What is Unschooling Anyway?

When I started this site I wrote some Quick Definintions of a range a terms from unschooling to deschooling.
Since that time we have been living those terms more and more and as a result my children have been helping me understand them more. I am constantly learning new definitions, here are some that I learnt […]

Snapshots

I often think of children as “markers in time”.
(At the risk of sounding like a Bold & Beautiful intro) It’s like an hour glass with sand dripping from the top to the bottom… the second grain to fall literally doubles what is there, the change is so incredibly stark and obvious. By the time […]