When we studied France, as a family, we made several loaves of French bread, made salade nicoise and Beef Bourguignonne, and learned some common phrases in French.  We also watched our favorite DVDs in French to get a feel for the language.  I purchased a Power-Glide language course in case my children ever wanted to teach themselves this language. 

I started out teaching the way I had been taught.

I used curriculum and methods that mirrored those used in public and private schools. Texts and workbooks were boring and repetitive, for the most part, but it was what I was used to, and we were having fun "playing school."  I soon realized that my son was learning more from the things he enjoyed: collecting and labeling bugs, digging up grubs and earthworms, and playing educational games on the computer.  He was learning more on his own than he was from ‘school.’  My son taught me that children don’t need to be taught in order to learn.  They are learning all the time! 

As time went on, and a new baby was born, we spent less time with texts or workbooks and more time cuddled up on the couch reading our favorite Roald Dahl books like, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “The Great Glass Elevator”, and "James and the Giant Peach."  Literature began to lead us into educational conversations and trips to the library for more information. Believe it or not, reading "The Great Glass Elevator” sparked my son’s curiosity about outer space.  We looked closer into the moon’s orbit, satellites, and our solar system.  This curiosity couldn’t be pushed aside for our daily lessons; it had to be pursued. I decided to let his curiosities determine our ‘course of study.'

Depending more on researching his interests and curiosities freed him up to learn from life.   When my son found some tadpoles and wanted to keep them as his pets, we learned everything we could about tadpoles and frogs.  We found stories and poems about tadpoles and frogs, drew pictures of how they changed each day, and I wrote down the stories that my son dictated about his tadpoles. We watched them grow and eventually hop away!  

Experiences like these are more than educational; we are building great family memories!

Unschooling websites: A Conversation with John Holt   What is Unschooling? Growing Without Schooling Family Unschoolers Network Unschooling—Delight-driven Learning Radical Unschooling Home Sweet Home School