Unschooling......The Experiment (365:150-153)

I woke up last week and realized that I just could not do this anymore.  I hate the absolute drudgery of school. I hated it when I went to school and I hate it now that I home school my kids.  That's a lot of hate.  So, I wrote a long and impassioned email to the hubs about learning - what it is, what is isn't and what it should be in our home. I wrote, in part:

Well, exactly 3 weeks into school again and........I'm bored to death.I want to homeschool, not school at home. To me, homeschool is learning through living life. It's adventure not drudgery. It's out in the world, not home at the table. Yes, there are days when we should be at home, but not every day. Not even most days. I think that might be why Ladybug wanted to go to school. Why some of the others want to go. Shoot, I want to go.
I've never had the courage to change things. I'm so afraid I'll screw them up - well, their education anyways. I've already screwed them up. I've been so indoctrinated into the public school mentality that I don't know how to educate any differently. But I can feel in my heart that this is NOT the way to inspire creativity, passion and a love for learning.
I have a vision of what our day would look like. It's the ideal and even on the best of days, reality would fall short. But even falling short of the ideal, I still see laughter, less fighting and more cooperation, less grumpiness on my part and more appreciation of God and His creation.
I need help. I need your permission to let me put away the textbooks (except for math and language arts in the younger grades). I need help developing a plan of action so that learning does happen and we don't just play video games all day. 

He agreed wholeheartedly.  The experiment began. 

Two bees covered in pollen.  So cool!

Squirrel!