Living Joyfully

Helping parents cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in their family.

  • Start Here
  • Deschooling
  • Unschooling
  • Parenting
  • About
  • Contact
  • Podcast
    • Q&A Episodes
    • Ten Questions Episodes
    • Interviews I’ve done …
    • TUC Talks
  • Books
    • Book Clubs
  • Network
  • Summit
  • Questions?
  • Articles
    • Spanish Translations
  • Blog
  • Resources
You are here: Home / Unschooling / EU213: Unschooling and Math with Marcella O’Brien

EU213: Unschooling and Math with Marcella O’Brien

February 6, 2020 By Anna Brown Leave a Comment

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pamlaricchia.podcast/EU213.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

Marcella O’Brien joins me this week. Marcella is an unschooling mom of three boys. Her grown sons, Jack and Sean, joined me to share their experiences back in episode 181, so it was such a treat to hear Marcella’s journey. She was also a public school teacher and still tutors math which led to a fascinating conversation about her observations around math in school verses unschooling. With toes in both worlds, her unique perspective really lends some amazing insights to a subject that comes up a lot for new unschoolers. Her journey as a mom working together with her husband and boys to find the best path for their family is inspiring!

Questions for Marcella

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everyone into right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

You’re also a math tutor, so I’d love to dive into that topic with you! First, let’s talk about the conventional way math is taught in schools. You have a unique perspective as a tutor to see how that teaching process plays out for students trying to understand math concepts. What have you seen?

Now let’s dive into exploring math through unschooling. In unschooling circles, we talk about how kids can learn math concepts through everyday living. I’d love to know how you’ve seen that play out.  Has that been your experience as well?

Your two older sons, Jack and Sean were on the podcast last year and I really enjoyed hearing about their experiences growing up unschooling, especially through the teen years and college. I’d love to hear your perspective on those years! What strikes you as you look back on them now?

You’re still unschooling with your youngest. What’s your favourite thing about the flow of your days right now?

Things mentioned in the episode

EU181: Growing Up Unschooling with Jack & Sean O’Brien

Mary Griffith’s book, The Unschooling Handbook

Paul Lockhart’s essay, “A Mathematician’s Lament”

Episode Transcript

Read the transcript


Filed Under: Unschooling Tagged With: math

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The Living Joyfully Network community

The Living Joyfully Network

We bring together unschooling parents to support and learn from each other as we question and explore many of the conventional beliefs around learning and parenting so that we can more gracefully navigate our personal unschooling journeys, develop strong and connected relationships with our children, and cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in our families.

Learn more about the Network here!

free intro to unschooling ebook

Click the book cover to get the book from your favourite online retailer, or click the link below to join my mailing list and download the book directly!

What is Unschooling? A book about living and learning without school.

Exploring Unschooling podcast

click to listen to the archive of all Exploring Unschooling podcast episodes

Choosing to live and learn without school isn’t as intimidating as you might imagine!

The podcast archive is now home to more than 250 episodes, filled with unschooling goodness.

support the podcast on Patreon

Have you read my books?

Free-to-Learn-Cover Free-to-Live-Cover Life-Through-the-Lens-of-Unschooling-Cover Living-Joyfully-with-Unschooling-Box-Set-Cover The Unschooling Journey Libre d'Apprendre cover Libre para Aprender cover Szabadon Tanulni cover

Journey with us to a new way of seeing your child

icon-logo

Join Anne Ohman, Anna Brown, and I in our online Summit where we share the experiences, insights, and tools that we found most helpful on our unschooling journeys. We will walk with you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Looking for something?

I've been exploring unschooling for many years now and there's a lot of content here! I've been working to tag things to help you more easily find information about the questions you're curious about right now. I'll continue to work on this.

Click a topic to explore:

college

dads

deschooling

food

grown unschoolers

learning

life

math

reading

relationships

relatives

technology

teens

work

Welcome to Living Joyfully

Pam ... an online resource for parents wanting to live joyfully with their children through unschooling. If you're passionate about exploring the world with your children, this site is for you. I'm Pam Laricchia, the author and owner of this site. Thanks for inviting me along on your unschooling journey!

MEET A NEW UNSCHOOLING PARENT EVERY WEEK!

Pam Check out the Exploring Unschooling podcast, with more than 200 episodes in the archive.

SEARCH LIVING JOYFULLY

Living Joyfully participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the iTunes Affiliate Program. This allows me to earn a small commission, at no cost to you. I appreciate your support!

Read my Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

Copyright © 2022 · Living Joyfully Enterprises

I use cookies to ensure that I give you the best experience on this website. If you continue to use this site, I will assume that you are happy with this. Thank you. OK READ MORE
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT