I’ve been paper-folding most of the morning; first working through an origami bird kit with Morgan watching and playing with the birds and then folding one particular form over and over and over. I’ve had lots of thoughts in my head as I fold and refold, and most of them have had to do with learning [...]

Quiet, now. There’s a screech owl living in my back yard. Every evening and every dawn he sits on a branch and sings a soft voiced quavering song that makes him sound far-off and mysterious. This past spring he made camp for a time under our eaves and we’d gather in the bedroom window to [...]

While visiting family recently in New England, I came across fresh figs at the grocery store. I’ve never had a fig that wasn’t dried, or turned into paste. I was surprised at the color and intrigued by the shape and so bought a couple to try. Mo was intrigued too. She’s become more loquacious, lately, for [...]

I spent the morning looking through an online Pokedex with Morgan, pages and pages of Pokemon, lines of evolution, abilities, types, battle strategies… it was quite an endeavor, hours of one thing leading to another. I’ve done similar things for my own enjoyment, poured over a dictionary or thesaurus, an appendix or other reference work. [...]

What do you kids do to help out? That’s a question that came up recently on one of the email lists and people wrote lovely stories of gifts of housekeeping and organization, putting away groceries and laundry. They’re sweet stories, and I don’t want to diminish them, my kids do things like that too. But [...]

What does it mean to have an “atypical” child? I’ve been wondering that, lately, talking and writing and thinking about my kids as I do: Ray, 16, was surely atypical as a child, but now merely lives an atypical life, even for an unschooler; and my daughter, Mo, who is nearly nine… Uh, oh, here [...]