Traditional, Classical, Unschooling OH MY!!!

There are about 50,000 different ways to homeschool a child.
You think I'm kidding? Google it.
There are several "techniques" or "philosophies" on homeschooling.
There's the traditional method - you have a curriculum, you schedule your day like a school day, kids do work in workbooks, take tests, that kind of thing.
There's the classical method - which is primarily based on literature and philosphy.
There's the theme or unit based method - where your curriculum circulates through different themes and ideas.
Then there's unschooling - which is a child-lead learning/teaching philosophy.

Then within each of these methods there's FURTHER ideas like curriculum specifics, ways to do it, and when to do it.

Seriously. It's enough to make one's head spin.
Have you ever heard of getting information overload?
I have it.

I have printed out free curriculum, ordered books, read online articles, journals, magazines  message boards, facebook and yahoo groups . . . And that's just in the last month.

See, I want to make sure that I'm doing this RIGHT. I don't want Miss E to ever look at me one day and say, "Mom, why did you pull me out of school? You're an IDIOT."

Okay. She would never actually say THAT, but you get the point.

My largest amount of research has gone into a very radical method of homeschooling - unschooling. You'll hear me talk about this a LOT I imagine. In fact I just ordered Sandra Dodd's book "Big Book of Unschooling" and can't wait to learn more about it.

In a nutshell - unschooling is about letting your child take control of his or her own life and letting learning happen through life experiences on a daily basis. There is no schedule. There is no curriculum. There are no breaks or vacations. It is an organic learning process. Think there's no way a child can learn without a textbook?

We went outside and made discoveries of flowers and feathers which lead to a combined discussion on botany and ornithology.
We went shopping and Miss E counted her change which was a math lesson on both money and counting by fives.
We watched Scooby Doo which led to a conversation on the Tudor family (it was a renaissance fair episode) and Renaissance England.

Miss E has learned - AND RETAINED - more in the last two weeks of "doing nothing" than she did with textbooks and tests. And here's the fun part - I've learned a few things too. I've learned that "I don't know - let's go look that up" is a perfectly acceptable answer. I've learned that Mary Queen of Scots was NOT Elizabeth's sister ("Bloody Mary") like I thought (HOW did I not know that??). I've learned that bird feathers and flower stems have similar compositions, for different reasons. Every day I learn with my daughter, and sometimes I learn FROM her.

Am I certain that unschooling is going to be the right choice for us? Not one bit. But I have a few more months to figure that out. In the meantime, I'm going to continue to research different curriculum and different methods of homeschooling. And I am also going to enjoy spending time with my daughter and enjoying every moment I get with her.