Week in the Life Without School: October
I'm doing a DITL/WITL a month!
Hello friends,
I’m (almost fully) back on Substack!
My plan is I’ll be doing two long posts a month: one DITL/WITL post where I also chat a bit about unschooling and education and partnership parenting and related topics, and one deep dive into whatever I’m obsessed with!
So without further ado, here is my October WITL.
(some of the post below is paywalled - all my DITL/WITL posts will be partially paywalled, and some of my deep dives will be half-paywalled, maybe!)
I started doing Days in the Life (DITLs) on instagram a few years ago, and I absolutely loved sharing a bit our life and peeking into other people’s too (it quickly became a group effort!).
I don’t do that anymore, because I’ve made the decision to keep my children mostly off of my social media. But.. I still love sharing what we do and reflecting on the ways we live without school, the ways we centre consent and partnership in our home.
Some new things we’re doing this Autumn
My children are now 10 and 13, and we are moving into a very different season of living and learning. They crave being around other people (adults and kids!), they want to learn more independently, and want to take part in more things. We are finally somewhere where we have access more options.
And on my part, I am so ready for them to branch out, ready to not feel quite so responsible for all of their activities. I love how my children are able to sort of gradually move out into the world in this way that is self-directed and self-chosen and not compulsory in any way.
WITL!
I’m going to share what our week looks like, in the hope that it might encourage/inspire/reassure people that yes, unschoolers can have a full life, and can learn without doing a whole lot of structured, table work (i know you know, but still!).
The background to this, as some of you know, is that the past two years have been really tough for us. We were living in Bangkok and had very little community and really struggled to lead the sort of life that could meet all of our needs.
Now that we’re back in Maine - it’s a different story. We are slowly tapping into groups and spaces and building more community for ourselves. I’m able to get involved in projects that I’ve wanted to get into but couldn’t from afar (this week I joined Maine Voices for Palestine, and a local book group!)
So here’s a recap of last week (edited to add: this is actually 2 weeks ago, it took me a while to hit publish!), which is as average a week as any.
Monday
Every two weeks we have a local homeschool group meetup. It is a mixed bunch of homeschoolers, and my children needed a little bit of nudging to turn up, but our first meet-up went well. L made some friends, and I managed to get P out of her shell a bit too. Meeting new people is tough and I feel like we’re ALWAYS doing it. Not since living in Dubai, have I felt like we have found people and can stop actively trying - and that’s exhausting, especially for this introvert!
This Monday, we skipped the meet-up. L found himself deep into designing a table game (or more like floor game, since it’s huge). We have agreed we will practice either handwriting or typing every day; the context to this is he really wants to get better, but struggles when it comes to the repetitiveness of practicing. Hence all the notes I get that say, “This is stupid!” instead of whatever I was hoping he’d write.