Getting Started

I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive. --John W. Gardner

Initially, I suppose I should start with our philosophy, so this is it. We educate our children at home because we believe it is the best thing to do. We believe that generally, nobody could do a better job at showing children the world they live in than their parents. We don't educate them at home because we are frightened of certain ideologies and mean to keep our children cloistered. To the contrary, we educate them at home because being at home gives children a center and allows them more time to explore, and because we enjoy being around them!

Our methods are eclectic. Sometimes we use structured texts, sometimes we don't. We call ourselves unschoolers because we agree whole-heartedly with John Holt's gentle and holistic philosophy, but this doesn't mean that we are determined never to use a workbook. We do what feels right, and we foster and facilitate our children's natural curiosities. Of course, this requires being open to re-evaluation of our methods every single day.