in April we invited a photographer to come to our home and shoot two days in the life of unschoolers with a family business. No cleanup, outfits, or poses.

people ask if unschooling is just engaged parenting. The answer is yes. Engaged parenting WITHOUT sending the kids away to overworked, underpaid strangers 40 hours a week.

this is our Wylie girl. Her favorite things are writing songs and making up dances, as well as books, writing, and making waffles. She said the other day "if Taylor Swift can make music that everyone loves, so can I." as a parent, I can make that happen with her!

this is Rainer, our wild guy. Rainer's favorite things are building, engineering, throwing his hatchet, cooking, playing at the creek, Nerf guns, foraging, and getting to explore alone.

unschooling comes from real life experience. we learn the water cycle on a rainy day, not from a book because the curriculum says so.

we trust our children's interests. Watching shows and YouTube with our children allows them to expose us to interests they have that we couldn't introduce them to, like our son's favorite channel - Jacob Feder (started his own zoo!)

unsupervised play is our favorite thing to offer the kids, we're hoping that unsupervised clean up is next ;)

dirt school is a favorite. We've kept a garden in all our homes. My son much prefers foraging to cultivating food. he told me "finding food in the wild changed the course of my life"

our children need SO much roughhousing and physical exertion in the day. They are always moving, hardly ever still. Stuying human design has helped us to understand their needs before they could vocalize them. (they're 6/2 and 2/4 MG's)

our business goes around the family needs, not the other way around. here's us having a business meeting over a pile of dirty dishes. this is very normal for us. almost as normal as unschooling is for successful entrepreneurs.

my husband and I knew we wanted to unschool our children from the very beginning. He received a premium education, I was unschooled, homeschooled, private schooled, public schooled, independent study schooled. When I realized the only education that ever resulted in a happy and successful life was when I applied rigorous research to my personal interest and goals, I decided to offer that to my kids. Offer, not enforce.

unschooling is interest-based learning. Whatever they're interested in, including school, we will supply. Both kids have declined school, but we check in frequently on the topic.

learning is the gift of life. it's not a chore. it's a reward, and it happnes naturally.

our business relies on inspired moments, not schedules. It takes 90 seconds to shoot a video, they aren't edited, and usually about 15 minutes to post across all the platforms. We generate most of our leads from this, and delete the apps after posting.

we don't mind our kids seeing us work, but we take turns working. The kids don't really respect the phone, and truthfully, neither do we. this is me posting the video we just shot.

Rainer building while Wylie assists.

Running around outdoors comprises 90% of the children's day. We designed it this way, and chose our location to complement it. This is made possible by a location independent business I designed before kids, specifically to accomodate this unschooling lifestyle.

I'm very grateful for my husband because I could stay inside writing all day long, but luckily my husband is always down to go outside for hours on end.

assessing the strawberries

our town outside of Hudson, NY is filled with kids, and the doors of all our homes are always open. I love when my kids are at the neighbors homes, and I love it when the neighbor kids are at ours. We see real life as being more conducive to socializing than school.

Rainer building something.

when we see a turtle, we learn about turtles, and we remember it forever.

nature is the best teacher, and we are surrounded by it.

the maestro in the classroom

the more time the kids spend outdoors, the better. once they're exhausted, they're usually down to input something. Every bit of input they get is educational, even on screens!

entertain the idea that a formal education would not be applicable to a career as a professional ATV rider ;)

but if the kids started showing an interest in formal jobs like lawyer, doctor, or architect, we would treat it like any other of the hundreds of entrepreneurs we coach. What's your niche? What tools will you need? let the specialized education begin.

we'll share more soon, you've only seen the home life ;) wait until you see us travel. for more follow @weteachthem on Instagram