Are you interested in teaching your child in a way that creates energy and excitement for learning? The unschooling method encourages your child to learn without stress or artificially imposed deadlines and test-based standards. Even if circumstances prevent you from fully embracing an unschooling lifestyle, you can use many of the ideas from the unschool movement to greatly enhance your homeschool. Unschoolers have great ideas on how to inspire your child to love learning.
Whether you are ready to throw out the books and unschool or you are just looking for some fantastic ideas from the unschooling community to spice up your day and engage your kids in the learning process, check out the websites on this list.
Unschooling as a Method
What is Unschooling? from Unschooling.com – an overview of the methods and principles.
Setting Your Kids into the Wild by Ben Hewitt – perhaps one of the best descriptive pieces of a radical unschool I have ever seen.
Unschooling Defined from Unschoolery.com – a different way of defining the unschool.
Unschooling as a Lifestyle
Unschooling One Day at a Time from These Temporary Tents, an interesting description of a day-in-the-life.
Why We Homeschool by Racheous — this is really a fabulous description of what an eclectic unschool looks like in real life.
Debunking the Myths of Unschooling by Managing Your Blessings – a more balanced approach to unschooling than most, and more like the delight-directed learning we lean toward in our homeschool.
“Unschooling isn’t about letting your child run rampant and not teaching them anything. There is a movement of unschoolers who are completely hands off, allowing their children to 100% learn by osmosis. That type of unschooling is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about taking the idea of a traditional school method, throwing that out the window and experiencing life with your kids. Unschooling to me is about fostering a love of learning in your children.” (Managing Your Blessings — I love this quote! go read the whole article.)
Unschool Rules — a collection of fabulous articles like How We Unschool Language Arts. These articles will be perfect for you if you can’t or won’t become a radical unschooler but you want to introduce more fun and inspiration into your learning.
How to Learn All Subjects through Unschooling from Weed ‘Em and Reap — okay this one’s a bit edgy but the article is excellent in spite of the ad frequency and occasional cuss word.
Unschooling Resources
Homegrown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World by Ben Hewitt.
The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World as Your Child’s Classroom by Mary Griffith.
Free to Learn: Five Ideas for a Joyful Unschooling Life by Pam Laricchia.
Unschooling Rules: 55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education by Clark Aldrich.
Unschooling Pinterest Boards to Follow
Unschooling Homeschool – My collection of pins to help you introduce more freedom into your more formal homeschooling environment.
Lifetime Love of Learning – An excellent collection of pins for inspiration and ideas.
Except that unschooling isn’t about teaching! Good list, though. You might want to add Life Learning Magazine’s website, where there are dozens of articles for free that describe the spectrum of unschooling. We started in 2002 when Growing Without Schooling Magazine ceased publication. It was started by John Holt in the 1980s – Holt coined the term “unschooling.”
Thank you so much for including us in your post! Unschooling is definitely a journey and I wrote that early on in our journey but we haven’t looked back and love this life!
Wondering if maybe there could be a post about unschooling for high school! 🙂 How to get Biology, Algebra, etc.
Loved this though! Thank you!
Love children
wow thankyou for this. its really helpfull
So glad I stumbled upon you! We are an unschooling family of 9 and are saving to buy a farm. Excited to explore your content some more!