My name is Alejandra Hernando from Mexico City and I have been on a high raw diet for more than 2 years and my daughter Moira is 5 years old and has been on a high raw diet all her life. This lifestyle has changed our life, our health and our beliefs in many ways. Homeschooling our daughter has been a challenge as well as our diet, but we prefered to unschool her after we had a severe reaction the first time we gave school a try. She has severe food allergies, but being on a high raw diet has prevented her from being hospitalized and homeschool has been a blessing for us.

We chose to homeschool and see if it could work out, and it has been very pleasant. To interact in many ways with my kid gives me more oportunities to learn and appreciate her in ways I would have never imagined possible.

I have learned more about her needs, her joys, her favorite things and games, her dislikes, the best time to do certain jobs, the best time to be outside just feeling the warm sun touching our skin. We have taken life a little bit more slowly and are giving ourselves the chance to appreciate the free gifts that the universe has for us to discover and enjoy.

We have seen that our child is growing up healthy, secure, happy, and that she is learning what other kids are learning too. Sometimes a little faster, sometimes a little slower, but at the end that doesn`t matter because what matters is if she is enjoying every step of the way. If she isn`t or if I am not having fun, we change direction and everything goes smoothly again.

We have learned to be kind and patient with each other and to respect the time each of us needs to be alone. We have also learned how to be more loving to each other because of all the time we are together. I am not saying we are happy all the time, we also get to be angry and sad and that is also the magic of learning. We don`t get scared of our feelings, we just make sure we know how we are feeling and it`s easier to let it go.

I have also been learning a lot and have been reading about communication skills so homeschooling my child has given me the opportunity to grow and learn together and I would not change it for anything.

Living with one budget is sometimes difficult, but the joy of making a little playhose out of the refrigerator box is extremely awesome. Here are some pictures to show how making something to have fun can be fun making too. We painted it, decorated it, and have been playing for years in it. So a thing that I thought would be only for a while has been useful, entertaining and full of memories my child and I will remember for many years to come.

The door from the outside.

The windows from the outside and the inside with cloth curtains that we use as a little puppet theatre.

Cabinets with boxes on the outside to have more space in the “house”. And this is how it looks when you open the little doors. Boxes of make believe food (most of which we don`t even consume but friends love to put the little boxes in the cabinets).

This is how it looks from the inside.

Last year some friends came to play and the little girl has been asking his daddy the whole year to change the fridge to have a little house like ours.