When I tell people that kids are curious and they educate themselves if you just give them space, people can't imagine it. They can imagine it for themselves, as a adults, because they can think of tons of things they'd want to do and learn if they had unlimited time. But still, they don't trust…

You are lying to yourself if you think education is not for employment. Because if education were just for the love of learning, then definitely, you could leave your kid alone to learn whatever the kid loves to learn. Human beings are naturally curious and we naturally love to learn. Our brains are relatively huge….

I am an obsessive reader of tabloids. I know all the story lines, I know everyone's kid's name, and I google William and Kate when there's a week with no news of them in print.

What strikes me about the conversation on my post about Cave of the Mounds is how all conversations about homeschooling seem to lead back to the argument over the well-rounded kid.

Here's an email I received last week: I began homeschooling in the 8th grade. Right now, it's my junior year (I'm 15), and I realize that I'm doing something severely wrong. I'm doing the college shuffle now (I still want to go to college), and it's stressful and not how I want to learn. It's…

I hated school. And I often wonder if homeschoolers self-select because they wish they had not gone to school. So I want to tell you about the day in school that I would not have missed for any homeschooling agenda. Except it wasn't regular school. It was Hebrew school.

One of the most effective ways to show parents that they don't need to be teachers in order to homeschool is to show parents how completely ridiculous forced curricula is. I internalized this idea when my youngest son was learning to read. I didn't teach him. But I watched carefully to see how he learned.

If you homeschool and use workbooks, it's like you're recreating the homework scenario. In fact, 96% of parents say they help with homework, so doing fun, innovative learning in the morning and workbooks in the afternoon is similar to sending kids to school and doing homework after school. So the research about homework should be…

I take my kids to a psychiatrist because I don't trust myself. I had a terrible childhood and it makes me question my own judgment. He was surprised when I told him that I am not really teaching my kids any specific subject matter, but once I explained my rationale, I could see his brain…

The top private k-12 schools in the U.S. charge just under $40,000 per year in tuition. They are important to watch because they are not constrained by budget or standards in public schools or even typical private schools. Instead, they are geared toward getting students into top colleges.

Most of the time my ten-year-old son is reading and re-reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But lately he's reading The Hunger Games. We were wondering if it's appropriate for kids his age to read, deaths and all. I found this site called Library Thing. It tells you the reading level of books. Including Mocking…

My son grabs my hand to hold. I say, "I can't. I'm holding the cello. Let's just go. We're in a rush. Come on. Just grab the music." He says, "But I thought you said holding my cute little hand is your favorite thing in the world to do."

I'm done with math. I'm simply not teaching it. I am teaching what my kids ask to learn. Right now we are mastering jumping on the bed. Here is why I don't think I need to teach math. 1. Learning fundamental math is like reading – kids will take the lead. My son asked to…

In the curriculum world, I notice there is an obsession with good writing. The problem with the curriculum is that it tells you WHAT to write, which is exactly the problem with school, telling you what to learn. The best way to learn is to do what interests you. By the same token, the best…

When people ask me why my kids aren't learning math, I ask them why their kids aren't learning an instrument. Or why they aren't learning a language. Because math, music, and language all develop the brain in similar ways. They are all good for a similar type of learning. But the question that assumes that…

It turns out that test scores for US students are going down for science. And Steven Strauss, a leadership fellow at Harvard, says the US is approaching Third-World status because student math scores are so low. But you know what? Math scores are not the harbinger of developing society. Women entering the workforce and earning their…

We were in New York a few months ago, and of course we played with every animal we saw because my kids are, at this point, probably more farm than city.  And of course we had the violin and the cello because we travel with them everywhere because we practice every day, no matter what….

Our farm is magical right now. All the animals are having babies. My husband is giving the animals more and more freedom. This year he took the pigs out of farrowing crates and let them farrow in a big, open building full of sunlight and hay. He was worried that the moms would lie on the…

Before I was a homeschooler, before I even had kids, my friend, Lisa Nielsen was running literacy programs in the New York City public schools. The first time I can remember thinking that schools were really messed up was when she told me that teaching reading in school is controversial among reading specialists. Today Nielsen's…

Often, parents ask me how long my son has been skateboarding. This is parentspeak for, "I hope your kid is a lot older than he looks because I don't want to think my own kid is slow." I think the core parent worry is that their child is falling behind and the parent's job is…