Welcome to the Five Steps to Unschooling mini series. Here you will find five small things that you can implement in your home as you move towards unschooling. They are in no particular order and I am certain other mini series will follow to give you further ideas of how you can move forward towards an unschooling life style.
I once saw a poster which was entitled ’10 ways to encourage your children to read.’ It simply said, in list format, 1-10 read to your child. In a similar vein, and to keep things straight forward, and focus our attention on one single aspect, all five steps will be about the role and importance of play.
-Provide opportunities to expand your children’s play-
The world is full of interesting things.
When our children are young they are often fascinated with things that we find mundane. They open cupboard doors and empty the mysterious contents inside, they watch slugs and snails and peer through railings at builders yards, they long to jump in puddles. Their world is full of things to explore.
The world is also big and wide and one way in which we can broaden our children’s opportunities is to introduce them to people and ideas out of their normal field.
If our children enjoy going out then we can take them to different places. Often repeat trips to the same museum can spark a new avenues of enquiry. Stopping in at a place that you have past and seen signposted many times before and investigate what is there or trying out a new play park or sports area for variety or walking a different route home one day.
It can be as simple as rearranging some toys or games and seeing what forgotten treasures you find, looking through a photo album or leaving a pile of elastic bands on a table.
It can be a grand as offering big days out, theatre trips or conventions.
Create a home life that expands your children’s opportunity to make connections between any number of sources. Give your children the opportunity to pick up something new, leave curious objects in their path, and allow them to explore them and pursue their own level of enquiry and equally be prepared for them to not engage at all.
Read more
Five steps to unschooling: step 1
Five steps to unschooling: step 3
Five steps to unschooling: step 4
Five steps to unschooling: step 5
Live. Play. Learn 
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