[GoddessDanu]

I just heard the term today and wondered if anyone does this? What has your experience been like?

[lucyjoy]

I don't strictly use unschooling but I do some. My son takes a math course and right now, and American Government course, but most the rest of his learning is more self directed.

Reading comprehension is a big issue for him. He likes to look at the paper in the morning and will tell me or dh about what he read(often misinterpreted) and we discuss and go back over it. He learns to understand what he reads and learns current events at the same time.

He likes to help dh with the computer and things that catch his attention he researches. He spent 2 hours one day researching dog training and has been using this info to train our dogs and is charting the progress. Dh and I had NO involvement in this-he just does it.

I read books to him, we play games, he's reading a funny kids book to me right now that teaches English grammer.

I had one son who would rage at the sight of school work. I use to leave non fiction books on different subjects in his room and he learned a great deal that way and it would bother him if he didn't understand so he would ask.

If I left my sons learning up to him entirely, he'd do nothing. I've found that all of my kid needed some push to get moving. I also have not found unschooling as a good math program. They can learn basic math but non of them wanted to explore further.

[DianeS]

I have a friend who did unschooling for her kids when they were younger, up to around second or third grade.

She loves to cook, so most of her math lessons were related to cooking. Like, if we have a brand new carton of a dozen eggs, and we use 6 for breakfast, how many will be left for tomorrow? How many eggshell pieces will we have if we break each one in half?

Helping her kids figure out how to measure the ingredients when some of the measuring cups went "missing" (she'd hidden them or dropped them, of course, so they'd have to figure it out.) Like how do you make 1 cup if you only have a third cup measure? Or how do you make 1 cup if you use the half-cup measure once, but then drop it on the floor - how much is left to be measured and can you do it with the remaining cups?

Addition of fractions - we have one recipe that uses 1 1/2 C flour, and one recipe that uses 2 1/4 C flour. We have 2 1/2 C flour in the house, can we make both recipies before going to the store?

Of course that's the teaching part - everyday conversations that teach the child the basics of, say, math, as part of living. The UNschooling part comes in when the child becomes curious about how many recipies for cookies there are in a whole package of flour. Or figures out that even though you're short of flour and can't make a whole recipe, you have enough for half a batch, and he does all the math to refigure the measurements. (Of course they do tend to be more invested in helping with cookies than meatloaf, but you get the idea.)

Her children were very into the thoughts. They helped do all sorts of things in real life that taught them the same things they'd learn in school. But without having a single book or worksheet on them.