The Beginner’s Guide to Unschooling
There’s nothing I get asked about more as a parent than unschooling, and nothing I recommend more to other parents.
It’s an educational philosophy that provides for more freedom than any other learning method, and prepares kids for an uncertain and rapidly changing future better than anything else I know. My wife and I unschool four of our kids, and have been for several years.
And yet, as powerful as I believe unschooling to be, I’ve never written about it, because the truth is, I certainly don’t have all the answers. No one does.
The beauty of unschooling is in the search for the answers. If anyone had all the answers, there would be no search. And so what I’d love to teach unschooling parents and kids is that the search is the joy of it all.
more - http://zenhabits.net/unschool/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
= new reply since forum marked as read
and was going to post. Thanks for putting it up.
Here's a very informative part:
While in school, learning happens in the classroom at certain times, in unschooling learning happens all the time, and there is no division between learning and life.
Let me emphasize that for a minute: in unschooling, life itself is learning. There is no “doing school” … you are learning all the time.
Here's my FAVORITE line: While school is structured, unschooling is like jazz. It’s done on the fly, changing as the student changes. - Let me repeat: UNSCHOOLING IS LIKE JAZZ.
I love it. Explains it perfectly in this musician's opinion! 
People are aghast that we have no "curriculum". We don't need one. Every single day and hour is working things out, thinking about things, writing, games. He's just soaking this up. He has started playing the piano to play songs he hears and likes (learning the musical scale, sharps, flats). He helps me cook (math, reading, planning, shopping, chemistry). He plays math games, can count change for a dollar, and can do a computer search about something that interests him. He is reading 3rd grade books on his own, and 4th with us to help (he's 6). His writing gets better every day, spelling not so much though He writes letters to his friends and family. We go to the children's museums, hiking, he's learned to ride his bike after years of resisting. We do yoga and swimming together. He teaches his brother.
We actually sit down and work (if he's game) for a couple hours each day. He is a late riser and gets to sleep until he wakes up and is well rested. He's stopped fighting with his brother and acting out (well, except for normal kid stuff).
Unschooling rocks. We have no idea where we are right now except we know our son and that he is progressing to learn about life.
