You may find the term funny, but unschooling is actually a branch of homeschooling. Inspired by John Holt, the basis for this movement is to promote nonstructured, child-led learning. It includes no set curriculum or schedule. As one mother doing this program, Colleen Paeff, explained, “learning is not the main objective [of unschooling], it just happens as a side effect of living your life with passion and exploring our interests.”
One mother, Sandra Dodd, explained that “You can only learn things that you are interested in. My best definition of unschooling is creating and maintaining an environment in which natural learning can flourish.”
Unschoolers argue that children will learn on their own. They will learn to read when they want to decode a word or figure out instructions for a video game. They will learn math by counting the coins for their allowance and geometry with woodshop.
Unschoolers have a word called “deschooling” which is the process that children go through when they start to unschool. They have to get used to not having worksheets, school chairs, tests and other structured school requirements.