I read a great definition that suggested that unschooling done right is actually MORE work for the parent than school at home in many ways, since a the unschooler has to have an assortment of appropriate resources on hand at all times and must be ready to use them when the child chooses. <shrug>
I think this is true. I guess I consider us eclectic homeschoolers because I think to be 100% unschooling you'd need to be "on" and "ready" constantly to make everything a learning experience. I am actually doing this naturally the longer we homeschool, but I appreciate my down time! We certainly do follow the kid's lead in many areas. My DD5 is constantly doing crafts, drawing, working with yarn, writing, etc. My DS9 is often engineering or researching areas of interest. I consider the curriculum we do have as a guide and if we completely ignore it for a while, that's ok (with the exception of math, writing, and reading (and I'm not so picky what they are reading, as long as they read on a daily basis)). We cover the basis of subjects over the course of the week - and sometimes that might be going to a science museum, or learning about Santa Lucia at the Swedish American Institute, going to a workshop about Norse gods, or dissecting a disk drive, rather than following any curriculum.
I do know a couple people who are "real" unschoolers with varied success. I think with a motivated, and gifted learner unschooling could be a very natural way to go! I am fine with what my kids are doing as long as they are at least at grade level in everything. If we had to drop them at school on Monday, they'd be ok. Well, in our case, we'd have the opposite problem (way ahead of grade level). I wouldn't be comfortable with my child lingering below grade level for several years. I don't think your kid's life choices should be limited by decisions they made for themselves at an early age.
