Homeschooling Preschoolers for Starters

Yesterday a friend stopped by and got me all excited about homeschooling again. We were talking about different ways of homeschooling, and then I realized I haven't posted much about homeschooling on the blog. We talked about Unschooling- the new way to not teach. There is supposedly no syllabus, and no particular direction in which to teach your kids. You go with their interests, and follow where the interests leads. An example would be for kids who are interested in cats, so you take them to the humane society. From there they want to know more about kittens, where they come from maybe, so you take them to the vet to ask questions. Then at the vets the kid learns you can only keep so many animals, so you go to the city court to see the laws behind having pets. Another way is through notebooking, which I do not know much about, except you write down everything that pertains to the subject in one notebook. A nice one we discussed was unit teaching, which is done with up to a few kids of different ages, and based on what the kids are suppose to learn you teach subjects like Egypt, the history, the culture, the geography, science of the area, and more. I really like the idea of going by a specific syllabus for each child, that would involve christianity, morals, principles, math, science, social studies, cooking, and whatever else I can come up with. Not all at once but over time. I am not sure if I will ever come up with such a curriculum, but I am looking. Until then here are a few different homeschooling references to share: Magic Learning Systems for ages k-12 Hands on Homeschooling Preschool Old School House Magazine - very popular website