Tomorrow is Remembrance Day. As we seem to do every year, we will be going together with friends to an outdoor Remembrance Day Ceremony and then spending what sounds like it’s going to be a quite snowy day together afterward.

I carried two heavy bags of food toward the upstairs church kitchen with L close behind me, carrying three. We were setting up in a kitchen and Rec room area for her choir weekend workshop and were bringing the food and supplies in from the car. We were early and there was a Family Fun Night still happening at the church as we set up. Everyone, adults and kids alike, were in costume.

A thoughtful quote can say so much. Not surprisingly, writers often have wonderful quotes. Sometimes they give them directly and other times they come through the mouths of their beloved characters. Here are some of my favourites about learning, simple living and the wonder of the world:

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.

Fall is such a beautiful time of year. It’s also an interesting time of year. It is a time between the “awake” of summer and the “asleep” of winter. The relatively quick change for animals and plants and even for us people is kind of fascinating when you think about it. The majestic nature of autumn and good old fall fun has been captured in the picture books below!

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

Like with everything technological, I was slow out of the gate with online games. I have to say, though, that when my husband introduced these online word games to the kids, life took on a whole new level of fun.

We have just gotten back from a fantastic camping trip at Bon Echo Provincial Park, spending a fun-filled three days with cousins.

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 …

I know. There is a lot of conversation about screen time. From warnings about too much television and screens for young children to video game, cell phone and computer use for older kids and teens, it’s a big topic and I guess there are many different ways to look at it.

When I was maybe about six or seven years old, I drew and cut out a Santa Claus for the Christmas tree from construction paper.

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.

“I hope we don’t get shot tonight while we’re at the movies.” As I navigated a left-hand turn onto a busy street in early evening traffic, the unexpected words came suddenly, yet calmly, from my then 13 year old daughter’s mouth. Pardon ?!!!

When kids are young, everything is fresh and exciting for them! Going to the grocery store is an event, watching the clouds and imagining what they look like is a blast and well, who hasn’t had the experience of a young child sitting on one of those mall rides, unaware that that it moves if you put money in it – grinning and loving just being on it?

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.

Somebody at our house, who happens to be the youngest, had the original high score of 74970…

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.