I think what we did before my son started kindergarten could be considered unschooling. My son wanted to read a lot of different things--science encyclopedias, how it works books, National Geographic magazines, dictionaries, etc. I just made sure he had books he was interested in and took the time to continue reading with him. I didn't make him read what I liked or what the school would have made him read. I let him do musical theater so he was with kids up to high school age so he could have friends with common interests that were three and four years older.
At five my son was in half-day kindergarten and since he was already reading at a 5th grade level and they were doing letter of the week and lots of coloring we continued to unschool.
We unschooled almost everything except math. I had to make him do a minimum amount of math because he has dysgraphia and he hated writing out math problems. I ended up letting him play online math games when he was six at when he was tested by an educational psychologist the month he turned seven he was at a 4th grade level. His reading and comprehension were always at a higher level than math. Unschooling definitely worked for him.
He took one co-op class for composition and literature his 7th grade year and he had learned enough on his own that it was easy for him. He made a 98 for the year and he could write really well. He would not have written a poem if he hadn't taken this class and he found that he was good at that also. This year I didn't make him do any writing but he entered some contest online and won a game for something he wrote.
I never had to teach him to spell. He did a spelling bee one year and competed at the state level. Because he was unschooling he had plenty of time to practice.
He taught me more than I taught him. I think he must think I have learning difficulties because I am technologically challenged and he learns things so easily but he is very patient with me and his older sister and I can see that he would make a good teacher. He has an geology professor aunt on his dad's side and one of my uncles taught engineering so there are educators in the family but I wonder about this. How would someone who is unschooled learn to manage a classroom?
Now that he would be going into 9th grade and I think we need to be more structured and I am having a panic attack thinking about it.
