Unschooling: A Way of Life

Today I ran across an interesting article on CNN about unschooling. Since I homeschool (and I am on the fence, we do a mixture of unschooling and homeschooling), I try to pass on these types of articles to our readers to help you better understand the terms and how they work.

Currently we are spending time everyday on some reading/writing/arithmetic, and then the rest of our time is spent studying animals. My son and daughter both love animals. We have several different pets. The kids often set up exhibits with plastic animals for us to visit while they tell us about them. We have recently acquired several CDs on animals, habitats, endangered animals, ecosystems, and scientific classification. We are also avid watchers of Zooboomafoom (PBS), Animal Planet, and we are borrowing all the movies and books we can get our hands on at the local library! Learning is so much fun when the children are interested and I am learning right along with them. Jack informed me the other day that he believes the Florida Everglades would be a good place for his endangered animal zoo. And I smiled when the other night, I was headed for bed and he asked to stay up and work on typing up a list of endangered animals he was interested in while his dad was doing some computer work. Did I mention he is 9 and it was 11 pm when he asked to do this?

If you ever have any questions about homeschooling or unschooling, feel free to email me at melissamarkham@takethemat.com. I will do my best to help you find the answers.