The Unschooling Handbook : How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom Paperback – April 29, 1998

This book is amazing and an answer to prayers! After starting homeschool with my daughter for Kindergarten (this year, we started in the summer) I became so frustrated that I wanted to quit before the "school" year even began!! I found it very difficult to wrap my mind around all of the things she was "supposed" to learn which varied so much depending on what I was reading, and I had a very difficult time implementing any kind of structure or formal lesson plans. When I wanted to work on something with her (like a phonics lesson, computer lesson or project) she was VERY resistant. I really didn't understand why because she was a natural born learner! She had always loved to learn, was always so eager to ask questions and explore, to create projects and she just soaked up everything around her. She did very well in a pre-school Montessori program (except for the being away from home part) and that's when I realized it was because it was CHILD centered. I thought again about how I taught her so much for the first 4 years of her life before she even went to school! I began remembering all of this when I started reading "The Unschooling Handbook" and everything just clicked into place. I don't need to force myself and my daughter into a structured system that doesn't work for us. I don't need to take away her natural curiosity by forcing her to do planned out lessons based on a cirriculum somebody else thought up. There are so many other possiblities to learn in a much more flowing and natural way which is what I already knew but somehow forgot! This book brought me back to "reality" and is helping me let go of pre-conceived notions I have about what home-school should be. I am now looking forward to the next year of UNschool and am so excited where this journey will take us! One question I think everyone would benefit from answering is how much do you remember from school? I sure don't remember algebra, geometry or biology. It was interesting learning at the time but it doesn't serve me in my life now. During all of the the years I spent in school, 12 years plus 7 years of college, I only retained the information that was interesting to me and what I need to know now. I am actually finding it amazing now how interested I am in basic astronomy, or learning about animal habitats. Things I'm sure I learned in school but am re-learning now because it's fun, exciting, and because memorizing all of those facts in school never meant I would remember them!! I think this book is truly amazing and may open your eyes to a world of possibilities for you and your child that you never thought possible!

After my son had a disasterous experience with public school kindergarten, we pulled him out of school and began homeschooling. My son is very bright and loves to spend hours exploring outside, finding rocks, bones, shells and whatever other parts of nature interest him. He asks a lot of questions about language and the meaning of things and is very engaged in the world. However, he detests book work and writing. His self esteem plummeted and he became very oppositional during formal schooling. This lead me to finding out more about unschooling. I liked the idea of unschooling, but was very nervous about how it would work in reality. Would I just be leaving my child undeducated? Not at all! This book does a great job of laying out the different facets of unschooling and includes tons of information from experienced unschooling families on how unschooling works in their lives. This book is really well organized and takes you through step by step covering specific subject like reading, but also addressing concepts like doubts and challenges. Since my son is kindergarten age, the book does a great job of letting me know what I can expect in the future as far as learning at different stages. The more I learn about unschooling and the more we practice it at home, the more outlandish it seems to do anything else.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down until I read it. I had the whole thing read in 3 days. However, I did expect more of a "how to" book, while this was more of a book designed to convince the reader of the benefits of unschooling. So as good as the book was, and I do not regret purchasing it, it should have a different title, because the title is misleading. The book consisted of a lot of interviews by unschooling parents and their children, why they liked unschooling, how they've benefited, and often examples of what a day in their life was like. In defense of the author, though, after reading up on unschooling and now coming to understand more about it, I think it is almost impossible to really, really write an unschooling "how to" book, because there are as many different ways to do it as their are children, literally. This is because each child's education is led by their own interests. Maybe more ideas of ways to encourage their interests would have been nice, but otherwise, I enjoyed the book. It did a lot to help me to understand the nature of unschooling. My daughter is cyber schooled, and I plan on home schooling her beginning next school year. After reading this book, I was able to come to my decision on whether to unschool or not. I have decided that my style of homeschooling will likely be somewhere between traditional homeschooling and unschooling, with an unschooling slant. I like the idea of letting the child's interest dictate their education. But I think my own standards require a little more discipline and structure. For example, many unschoolers let their kids choose their own bedtimes, choose what to eat, what and how much tv. etc. These are areas where I like more structure, although I don't enforce a very strict bedtime, I do make her go to sleep if she is up unreasonably late. But as far as the education itself, I would like to let her own interests lead her education. I loved what one of the interviewed unschool parents said in the book, in part, "In a world as vast and complex this one, how did we ever come to this mutual understanding that there is just one neat package of stuff one needs to get into one's head to be 'educated'". And there are so many more words of wisdom from other unschooling parents, that's just one. I feel exactly the same. While cyber schooling, I noticed that my daughter had to learn the layers and types of rock. I thought, "When did I ever fill out a job application and was asked 'what are the types of rock?'". There is SOOOO much to learn in this vast universe. The volumes of information couldn't fit into a warehouse. That said, what committee or politician or group of them decides what, out of that vast universe of knowledge to be learned, should be condensed into one little 4th grade text book and what should be left out? Of course, what ends up in the text book is just the tip of the iceberg, and half of what's in it does not interest my daughter, though she does love science, it's one of her favorite subjects. Shouldn't she be able to delve into whatever areas of science are interesting to her? Wouldn't it make sense that if given the freedom to pursue what fascinates her, she will learn it and learn it well? How much do any of us remember from 4th grade science if it bored us? What about if it interested us? That is why I'm going to "homeschool with an unschooling slant". As far as the book goes, yes, I would recommend it as long as the reader knows before they purchase it that it really isn't much of a how-to book. Given the nature of unschooling, that's almost impossible to do. The only part of the book I don't care for is the title.