We are at the beginning of our unschooling journey, so I thought it would be fun to share tidbits with you all along the way! My 3 year old is an amazing kid. He loves to learn, and has already learned to count to 100 (with a little help)! After spending a lot of his babyhood singing counting songs with him, we started buying him collectable Thomas Minis (there's over 80 of them). They're less than $2 each, so every time we go to the store that sells them, (maybe once or twice a month), we always get him one or two more. He has almost 30 now. This is a wonderful compliment to his learning, through play!
~He is always counting them, so counting to 30 now is a breeze on his own. He especially loves to count them after he gets new ones!
~He is learning the basics of math with them. Because they're small, and have wheels, some of them often go missing in the house. When he counts them, and some are missing, we encourage him to tell us how many he should have, and then how many are missing. "How many do you need to find?" We are also starting to do small additions, "one plus one train equals two trains!" with the visuals, of course!
~He is learning different names, and also commiting them to memory. Each mini has a name written on the bottom, which I just started reading to him yesterday. He already knows 90% of them off by heart, which is better than what even his momma could remember, lol.
~He is further developing his fine motor skills each time he connects those tiny little trains...it's an intricate task to get them together!
Fun inspires learning, so don't be afraid to use toys as your teaching material!