Spring’s come early to Oregon and the chickens are laying again. At this moment I’m sitting on the back porch as I watch the kids creating animal farms in the yard. Yes, “animal farms” are as simple as they sound: tupperware containers filled with worms, spiders, centipedes, snails, and slugs.
Over to the left are the chickens.
We joke that we only raise the finest “free-range” chickens. Of course they are free-range, we leave the gate and let them roam around the yard during the day.
Achieving “free-range” is much easier than it sounds.
But “free-range” is a funny thing, right? It’s a label we attach that conjures up an image that’s probably far from reality. More and more we are becoming label-obsessed and label-dependent, and while I’m certainly not here to take issue with the food industry (I’m just happy to have food on my table!), I’ve noticed that the label-happy mentality sticks itself to our homeschooling habits as well.
Classical, TJED, unschool, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Waldorf, and there’s more … all of these have excellent elements, and one of them may be the perfect fit for your family.
2 thoughts on “Free-range kids and letting go of labels”
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Hey Kari, I clicked the link, but the article doesn’t seem to be on the SH blog?? Weird! Keen to read it, though, as we’re just taking our first steps into homeschooling (our oldest will be 6 in May–when kids in New Zealand legally must attend school). I’ve planned on hsing forever as I was partially homeschooled, but didn’t count on raising kids overseas, lol! And in between my own education and having kids I also became a credentialed teacher and have taught and tutored heaps–mostly homeschoolers interestingly! Through all of this, I’ve keenly followed the different trends, watching what others are doing, reading lots, talking lots… now that we’re finally on the threshold officially, I find that I’m kinda undecided–what is our flavor?! Guess we’ll find out as we go! Anyway, looking forward to reading the rest of your post here 🙂
Hey there! Sorry about that, it should be working now!