To an extent we are...I hesitate to say we unschool as some people (some unschoolers) got upset that I labeled myself as such cause we use some textbooks/workbooks *gasp* and I'm not 100% unschool or radical unschooling.... So I have come to prefer the term child led...We are using Apologia zoology 1 this semester-yes it's a text book-but it's what my son WANTS to learn about. (we got it about a week before we started school and he brought me the book every day and asked me questions LOL) Now I am a bit less unschooling when it comes to the 3R's-but when I talked with hubby about unschooling he said fine-but he still has to do phonics, spelling and math-so for now that's what we're going with (though I have managed to sneak in a few totally unschooling days here and there) I've found an online phonics program makes my son WANT to do phonics. I have yet to find anything that makes him want to write-but I have found ways to make him complain less about writing LOL Like some of the other moms here-I feared if we unschooled, he'd be playing wii and playstation all day-but once he had a break from all the schedules and structure and forced work (he was in PS last year) and we took some time off-he's cut waaaaaaaay back on this video game time-some days he doesn't even touch a video game! I think he just had such overload with formal school that he needed that mindless fun time-now-he's getting back into books again (I set out to read one chapter of Stuart Little yesterday and he made me keep going until we finished 7 chapters!) and getting his love of learning back. But I def try to gear his work toward his interest and am almost always willing to change our course as his interests dictate.
We've been unschooling for a little over 6 months. Truly, when you let them go, children do NOT want to sit in front of a screen (computer or tv) all day. It does bother me a little, though, that my 11 year old does not want to read books and doesn't use any type of punctuation or capital letters when she writes. She hated reading and writing before we started unschooling, though, so maybe I should be happy that she's starting to write for fun now. I also freak out a little when I think about the math concepts she may be missing out on. Yesterday, my 14 year old told me that she was going to start learning Spanish, World Geography (she needed a textbook from Amazon), and she wanted to brush up on her Algebra. She's already completed Algebra II, through FLVS, and Geometry,through MUS, but wants to refresh her memory by reading our Life of Fred books. My husband is very pro-unschooling, and wanted me to do that with the kids before he even knew it was a "thing" people did. I'm not quite as brave or trusting as he is, and am looking around for a way to measure where the kids are, just so we can make sure that they aren't too behind. That way maybe we could spend just a few hours a week covering the basics that they haven't automatically learned on their own. I don't know.... I go back and forth between wanting to give them freedom and wanting to make sure they're not "missing out".
What I always did was to check the worldbook.com Typical Course of Study for their "grade level" (based on their age). By the end of each year the kids had always covered most of the list - and into the next grade. I admit I was shocked, since it was without even trying. That's one of the things that opened my eyes and my trust to unschooling. Sometimes I'd even print it out and use it for ideas. The kids enjoyed checking off what they already knew.
