unschoold.com a place for unschoolers

I felt the site design needed a refresh, mainly for better readability, so here's an attempt at that.  I'll probably keep tweaking it, but it is, for the most part clean & legible.

I'm also tinkering with the idea of having a menu only for members (if you're logged in you'll see a red bar at the top of the page).  This would be used for stuff that anonymous visitors don't need to see - like links to write blogs and stuff.  Comments would be appreciated :-)

I just noticed the plethora of Back to school sales last week.  It's friggin' July and the commercial world is saying 'OK - that's enough time together, don't get too attached.'  Ugh.

At least as an unschooler it's Back to unschooling every time I wake up :-)

The server the site is hosted on has had some issues over the past two weeks - enough that I will find a more reliable hosting company  before the end of the month.  The last straw was another issue this morning, with 2 resulting issues:  after you login, 1) the front page is blank, and 2) the main menu is missing.  I'm just sitting here going WTF and grousing about the general incompetence involved.  That's not exactly helpful, so here are some links to the basic site areas:  read more »

Thanks for dropping in and visiting my labor of love!  It's a bit like a field of dreams for me - Yahoo groups rock and I've used them for years but I wanted to create something to really help unschoolers connect and inspire.  Membership here has been growing steadily, especially over the past month.  In addition to blogs and groups, polls are also possible too.  I hope to add the ability to create galleries soon as well.  I'm always open to ideas - if I have the time to code it, it'll be here :-)  If you have any questions, feel free to comment.

Today was our monthly unschooling support group, and it's probably the day of the month I look forward to the most.  It's inspiring to spend a couple of hours talking to others who share the same values and can provide sensible, heartfelt insight into issues and ideas that we need to bounce off others.  I can definitely see the appeal of going to a conference where you're immersed in an unschooling community for days.  read more »

Our recent disagreement with neighbors regarding a trampoline and safety expedited involving our son in his first activity - gymnastics.  The idea had been tossed around for months and the trampoline issue made us act.

I admit that I had some concerns leading up to the first class.  M's used to doing his own thing and being himself - how would he respond to being in a more structured environment?  He's also quite shy AND very excitable.  I wasn't sure how it was going to go.  read more »

Ever since Annakiss started a little stampede here, I noticed a neat anomaly when checking the site statistics: this is the first site I've created where the majority of visitors use Firefox.  Since June 12, it's been 52%-42% in favor of Firefox.  Other sites I've built are usually heavily in favor of Internet Explorer, from 55-60% for IE vs. 30-35% Firefox.  read more »

Ah - the joy of other people's kids.  People who managed to make my son feel like he was punished because they are unable to give their son the tools he needs to deal with his anger productively.

These neighbors are relatively new - they're in the house behind ours, and our backyards meet.  They moved in about a year ago, but we only made contact a few months ago.  They seemed nice enough, but like other experiences with mainstream families, the differences eventually come to light.  read more »

I had a couple of ideas that might be cool to work on as 'community projects' - things that we could join together to work on.

Idea #1: a newsletter/magazine  read more »

I'd really like to go to an unschooling conference soon.  If a monthly support group is enough to recharge the batteries, what must being temporarily immersed in a total unschooling community be like?  The one conference that I'd REALLY like to go to is the Pura Vida Unschooling Conference, happening this December in Costa Rica.  Tropical weather, abundant wildlife, beaches & unschooling - what could be better?

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