Unschooling The Early Years

In 2005 I created An Unschooling Life, a blog detailing our unschooling experience after adopting our three children. Over time, An Unschooling Life became a hub for unschooling support and advice. The blog has been featured in print and digital media and was home to the popular Unschooling Carnival. I’m in the process of updating and moving all the posts to this blog where they will be housed under the An Unschooling Life section. This post was originally published on July 2, 2011, and was written by Stephanie Waldron for An Unschooling Life.

Unschooling ages 3-5

People are born with an innate desire to learn. Look at a baby eager to move, reach, roll over, sit up, babble, crawl, walk and talk. They are curious about their world and want to navigate it. When you’re unschooling the early years, children learn through play. They imagine, create, explore, build, research, draw and much, much more.

Learning is as natural as breathing when one hasn’t been stifled by schooling. It’s especially important for children to be able to learn without force, coercion, scopes, sequences, tests, and grades. Our kids have always followed their own interests and learned in their own way and time. I do not believe that every child can or should learn the same thing at the same age.

Unschooling with young kids is very hands on. It’s our responsibility to provide the environment and facilitate as needed. We watch for cues on when to step in and when to step back. It’s important to build a solid foundation when they are young. We need to connect with our kids and be open to question everything we were raised with. When we know better we do better. Try to say yes more, it can be a knee jerk reaction to just say no.

Whatever the child is interested in, allow them to explore it, help them as needed and be amazed at all they learn. Trust in the learning process, trust your child and trust yourself. They know how to learn, they know how to think. We are here as mentors, facilitators, and guides. Talk to them, listen to them, kids are so insightful. Have fun, laugh a lot and live the best you can. Learning happens, you can’t stop it. Kids are born to learn.

As our children grow and develop and reach new stages in their life we are right there with them. I have learned so much from observing my children.

Unschooling activities

Need a little kick start? Start with this list and work your way down.

• Read books
• newspapers
• magazines
• cook
• build
• play with toys
• explore inside and outside
• dress up
• create art
• watch TV
• collect things.

Unschooling isn’t just an educational philosophy, it’s a way of life, it’s living and learning naturally. It’s imperative to be our children’s partner in life. I believe that children learn what they need when they need it.