About Us

Hello, and welcome! My name is Denise, and I share a life of free learning and intentional parenting with my husband Ely and our son Logan ('02). I also have three great kids who are all grown up--Zachary ('86), Cody ('90) and Chelsea ('92). Zach and Cody are working on making music together with at High and Mighty Entertainment and Chelsea is about to graduate high school and move on to Montclair State University in our home state of NJ.

I homeschooled Cody and Chelsea many years ago, when they were still in grade school. At that time, Cody had been struggling with grades and "attention issues" and had run the whole gauntlet of child study teams and pediatric neurologists and ADD meds. (20/20 Hindsight: There was never anything wrong with him!) So I bought a bunch of workbooks and curriculum and had the kids do certain assignments every day. We had "school days" that matched the public school schedule, and although I wasn't the strictest taskmaster in the world (really not my style) they still had to complete their daily "work" before they could do anything "fun". Oh, how misguided I was! Not surprisingly, after two years of this, they asked to go back to school. I thought our little foray into homeschooling was over.

Fast forward seven years, and it was deja vu all over again--this time Logan was the one having issues in school. After his second suspension--that's right folks, suspended twice at the age of 6--we didn't even have to deliberate. We pulled him out halfway through first grade.

This time around I knew I needed to do things differently. The school-at-home approach hadn't worked for our family, and it never really felt right anyway.. As I write this, it has been a little over a year since we embarked on this amazing journey. I can honestly say I'm not the same person I was a year ago. My entire worldview has changed, and with it, my approach to learning, parenting, partnering, and life in general has changed too. While Logan deschooled over the spring and summer, I immersed myself in reading and learning all I could about natural learning and unschooling.

Although this is ostensibly an unschooling blog, I plan to write about our current interests and passions as well, since unschooling is, at its heart, whole life learning--which never stops, no matter old you are.
 
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