Homeschool Curriculum Packages: Unschooling

Some homeschooling familes educate their children following a process known as unschooling. This style of education is also known as natural, organic, interest-driven, child-led, or self-directed learning. There are probably as many methods of unschooling as there are children in families who practice the unschooling life style.

What ties the unschooling educational style together is its emphasis on process. The unschooling philosophy holds that learning is natural to human beings just as swimming is natural for fish or flying is natural for birds. The idea is that parent will provide an environment and the resources that their children need to learn, and then (figuratively) step back and provide their children the freedom to learn at their own pace. John Holt, the father of the unschooling movement, concludes his book How Children Learn with the following passage
"Birds fly, fish swim, man thinks and learns. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do, and all we need to do, is bring as much of the world as we can into the school and classroom (in our case, into their lives); give children as much help and guidance as they ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest."

The overall goal of unschooling is to capture your child's interest and use the item your child is passionate about as an entrance into teaching the student the academic skills they will need later in life. For example, if your child is excited about learning to sew, you would help them learn to sew. In order to sew a person need to be able to read a pattern, take measurements, and determine how much material is needed, which teach the academic skills of reading, science, and mathematics, respectively.

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