I think one of the hardest things is to pin point what we learn as we journey through our homeschooling lives. I often get asked by various people from various walks of life what I do with them, my kids that is! What we fill our lives with and how I teach them. Being so young I say we don't do any formal learning as yet, but we do regular stuff and spend lots of time playing at home or out exploring. It is then that I begin to think about the definitions people use as a guide to what they do, homeschooling vs unschooling etc. I guess these definitions don't mean much but are useful at times. I think these days we land somewhere in the middle, as we take a kind of freewheeling path guided by waldorf principles. So we do a mix of waldorf kindergarten and whatever else takes our fancy!
When I see how our kids learn it makes you realise so many things about how kids learn in general even without the formal schooling that has been given so much importance in the world today. For example, Sky loves to draw, colour and pretend to write. She has taught her self how to write her name without me 'teaching' her. It helps that her name is short! summer can sound her name and write the S but she is not too worried about learning the rest yet! But on the other hand she taught herself how to write her numbers up to 4. And this too was without me teaching her, without the join the dots. Summer is learning to colour by copying Sky. I have never told either of them to 'colour in the lines' but Sky did it naturally and Summer tries to copy that, she finds it tough as she prefers to scribble and doesn't have too muh patience for colouring but latey suddenly she has got it! Sky on the other hand gets brave watching her sister make everything into a gymnastic challenge! She is extremely co-ordinated and has a great sense of balance. Sky is much ore cautious. But watching and playing with each other they learn. At their own pace, and it's a wonderful process to be a part of.