Interest Led Learning

I've always liked the idea of unschooling or interest led learning, but I'm terrified of not having the structure.  We love Classical Conversations and as posted earlier have ideas for using math and reading in our daily schedule.  When it comes to the other stuff I try to utilize the unschooling approach.  When we first decided to homeschool I read lots of articles on the different ways to homeschool.  There are lots of terms thrown out at you.  I thought this article was helpful in deciphering some of them:  http://www.parents.com/kids/education/home-schooling/homeschooling-methods/

So, how do I use interest led learning?  My girls are both very curious about how things work.  Whenever they hear us talking about things they usually want to know about it too.  They love being outside (except when its really hot).  We love to garden and include them in the process.  They help pick out our plants, plant the seeds, water the garden, and pick the vegetables/fruit.  They have learned about butterflies and chickens just from playing in our back yard.

We have a butterfly garden in our back yard.  This has been an amazing learning experience for our girls.  They love watching the butterflies.  They have a book to help them identify the different types.  We have picked specific plants to attract certain butterflies.  We have milkweed to attract monarch butterflies.  The girls have watched videos and read books about them and they are definitely their favorite.  Little Einsteins and Wild Kratts both have episodes about monarchs, Disney Nature has a movie called Wings of Life that is available on Netflix.  SM received a butterfly habitat from Insect Lore.  We ordered the Painted Lady caterpillars and watched the transformation.  We have used the habitat 3 times since March.  The last time we did things a little different - we watched a monarch butterfly lay an egg on a milkweed plant that happened to be growing in a pot.  We put the whole pot in the habitat and watched the process from the egg hatching to the monarch butterfly.  Its a great learning experience and they don't even realize they are learning.

We also have chickens.  We have 4 hens that are laying and we have 3 pullets that should be laying within the month.  We bought all of them as chicks.  The girls learned to care for them and help collect eggs.  The girls go out and play with them daily.