Unschooling

Well after much consideration and a lot of reading, especially one moms' web site :) link to unschooling....we have decided to take a different approach to 'schooling' F. We have decided to give unschooling a try, it's a much more relaxed way and it's more child led than parent led type of learning. I think F will benefit more from us being more relaxed and letting him learn the things he'd like to learn in a given day, although we have done this a few times we always went back to 'I think we should do this today' he doesn't respond well to that some days and I don't see the point in trying if it really makes him upset. He will learn the things he needs to learn through every day experiences. I will continue to expose him to different things/activities and we will continue to have work books around as well as the print outs from my web sites, but he will get to choose what he would like to do. I think it's important to communicate with each other and to really try to listen to what he is saying about how he is feeling about things....
Yesterday we braved the cold (21 deg.) and went to the library and all 3 kids got their free books. F picked one about the Cherokee Indians. J picked a level 1 reader about Monkeys and A got a Dr.Seuss board book. We stayed there for about 45 minutes reading/ and soaking up the heat :). We also did some math word problems and some reading about Egypt and king tut.
Today we caught up with the Iditarod and read a little about the cities in Alaska that they are using as check points. He also did a few pages in his Bible story activity book. He also borrowed a Spanish language board book about animals on a farm yesterday that he and J are reading. He is really interested in Spanish..which is great... he has a natural curiosity and I think regular type of schooling was making him less curious because his energy was being taken up trying to remember stuff that he was expected to remember... that is some of why I took him out of school in the first place.
I think un schooling will be what we need to really get closer as family.