I’ve been wanting to put these experiences to words for a long time because they have been such a rich and interesting part of the week with M, S and friends for about three years now.

I heard the librarian announce over the speaker that the library was closing for the evening in fifteen minutes. Perfect. I needed to pick my daughter up from choir in ten minutes, they are rarely finished right on time to the minute anyway and it was about a five minute drive over. I’d head out to the car and have a few minutes to spare … except when I stepped outside, I realized the snow had begun again and I had some clearing to do.

I suddenly realized I was shifting my weight impatiently from foot to foot. Although my face was smiling, my body language was probably showing that I was ready to go. I was paying for my items at the small grocery store up the street from my house.

The young girl from next door suddenly went soaring by on her bicycle the other evening as I watered plants on my porch.

I think I first was really drawn to Usborne Books about 15 years ago when M was 3. He and I were perusing the children’s area of the library and came upon, The Big Bug Search and we just kind of sat there, hooked for a long time.

Over the years, we have done doodling books, origami, mazes, math puzzles, sticker books, jigsaw puzzles, joke books, knowledge quiz cards and wipe-clean cards …

Mentorships can be seriously rich for life- learning or homeschooling teens. They provide an opportunity for developing a skill or knowledge base from someone else with that specialized interest and the fun of spending time with someone who “gets” the passion or interest.

When my daughter was an infant, she would sit in her bright yellow Bumbo seat in the middle of the table while I made dinner beside her. Sometimes an older brother would have a dot-to-dot on the go or be drawing or writing one thing or another.

Most people who are involved in home education of any kind, whether it’s homeschooling or unschooling, are also familiar with the word “strew” in this other context. I believe it originally came from a wise, but fairly casual, reference that Sandra Dodd, an unschooling mother, made to strewing her children’s paths with interesting things. It made sense to people and became part of the language.

Home education is now a fairly well-known way of living and learning but there is a great deal of curiosity and almost mystery surrounding it. At the very least, there is a lot of misunderstanding. I often see online references to homeschooling as a “trend” or a “phenomenon” … wow! Lists abound debunking homeschool myths and there are no shortage of opinions on the subject.

Well, different people see unschooling as different things but I think the most common way of thinking of it in our current times involves respecting children’s right to own and determine their learning, with available guidance, support and wisdom from parents and others. It’s often listed as a particular form or style of homeschooling, although others think of it as a process or lifestyle in and of itself. Life learning/unschooling isn’t limited to children.

Even though my kids are technically significantly past “picture book age,” I almost always go through the children’s library on my way out of the building. It’s on its own floor so it’s not like I’m just passing by:). There is something wonderful about the bright colours, the different styles.