arun on Apr 05 2008 | Filed under: unschooling
We are plotting & planning ways to attend the Live & Learn Unschooling Conference in the USA this September (we live in Australia). I am very motivated to be in an environment where unschooling and the like is the norm, even if it is just for a few days… and also keen to meet many [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
arun on Nov 21 2007 | Filed under: *favourites*, 0 to 2 year old, 2 to 4 year old, 4 to 8 year old, control & connection, empowerment & trust, mindfulness, others wisdom, parenting, unschooling
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 major parenting [...]
arun on Nov 17 2007 | Filed under: death & life, links, unschooling
Maybe it was because the kids spent 2 hours running around in circles hitting each other with balloons (best $3 we spent in ages), or because M was up until midnight the previous night when we had a friend visit and stay late… but for what ever reason they kids went to bed very early [...]
arun on Oct 10 2007 | Filed under: 2 to 4 year old, 4 to 8 year old, laugh, natural learning, unschooling
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 [...]
arun on Sep 30 2007 | Filed under: 4 to 8 year old, control & connection, empowerment & trust, family diary, parenting, unconditional
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 [...]
