Skip to Content

What is Unschooling? Do You Want To Do It?

There are a lot of people, even homeschoolers that are confused by just what unschooling is though, and I thought I would share what it looks like for us, you can find the explanation for more of the different approaches to homeschooling here.

What is Unschooling

*This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.*

What is Unschooling and Do You Want To Do It?

We are eclectic homeschoolers, which means that we use workbooks/sheets, are hands-on with experiments, or really relaxed and do a little more unschooling. We bounce around as moods shift, as the seasons change, and so on.

What is Unschooling?

Unschooling is also known as interest-driven, child-led, natural, organic, eclectic, or self-directed learning.

Lately, the term “unschooling” has come to be associated with the type of homeschooling that doesn’t use a fixed curriculum. Unschooling is how we learn naturally, it’s part of why I knew I could homeschool because I realized that that is what we had been doing a long and my kids are smart, well-adjusted kids, that are social butterflies.

How Does Unschooling Work?

Because unschooling is interest-led, your child is allowed and encouraged to learn everything they can about what interests them. For example, we set up an aquarium and now are learning about pond ecosystems, and because of the aquarium, we are basically experimenting as we learn. You can see more about our aquarium on Instagram.

Books, videos/documentaries are all a part of the learning process as is talking to people. Instead of sitting in a class of children the same age as your child with one teacher, learning what is deemed necessary to learn, they are learning on a topic they chose, they will be introduced to new vocabulary and so much more.

What About Their Future?

We can’t predict the future and we can’t predict what the economy or technology will be like in 10-15 years. I think it’s best to prepare our children to be fast learners, with the ability to teach themselves anything. 

If you know how to teach yourself, you are prepared for any future job. If you only know how to learn from a teacher and a perfectly laid out curriculum, then you’ll always need that in order to learn.

Unschoolers can definitely seek secondary education. Recommendation letters, references, essays, and testing can make this possible.

How do you homeschool your child? We flip-flop here. There are subjects like math, that we do every day with a math curriculum but over the past year. We have taken a much more relaxed interested based learning approach to other subjects such as science and history.

More Routines for your Homeschool

How to Plan for Unschooling or Eclectic Learning

A Homeschool Morning Routine

Secular Homeschool Curriculum