Disclaimer: Not into taking sides on homeschooling or unschooling or even national schooling system but into ways for children to learn and acquire knowledge. This is just me sorting out my thoughts out loud in writing them out.
I know there are many methods of education available and some countries practise unschooling or homeschooling too to go according to the child's interest and pace.
In my home, we are trying to do both. We do send the child to local academic school to follow a certain syllabus and also still nurture them with play and their interests.
I tapped into the local academic school a little late only when my son was 6 years old and before that he really just playing and drawing or baking or trying any home experiments.
When we tried him in school, we realised he also enjoy it and he can adapt, which to me is an important skill too. Asides from that, he learnt also how to socialize with others and learns tolerating skills as well as voicing out his opinions too.
Drawing is one of his favorite activities at home asides from also playing games with his dad. He started drawing when he was 2 years old and now he still picks up the brush or pencil very often. He loves colours. I believe many children at his age or even older enjoy drawing too.
The younger son also is a boy who loves colours so we also let him paint as he likes.
Another way of learning is through play. He pretend plays a lot with his soft toys and he feels compassionate for them. Today one of his toy monkeys' tail broke and he was saying,"Oh my, I am so sorry your tail broke. I will ask mummy to try to fix it back for you okay?"
He also plays with his younger brother and he has learnt to share things with the brother. I very love to see them play and communicate though at the current stage, his 2.5-year-old brother still speak little of English words here and there but more like gibberish language now.
Playing Play Doh is also their favorite past time to unleash creativity as they mould and play.
We play UNO cards too and I too think we can learn planning strategies through this game. If not, we learn to think hahaha.
All in all, I think I will let my children go through formal education in school as well as the informal education at home to explore knowledge. Was talking with a fellow mother friend that though we know our national school education system is imperfect, we will try our best to guide our children to thrive in it, not going after excellence in the academic results but more like finding joy in learning and managing through stress.
My personal stand is also to always have one to one time with my children to hear them out on their thoughts and feelings as they go through new experiences in life. As much as I am nervous about my eldest starting his primary one is 3 weeks time, I get myself and himself ready as much as we can then we will embrace and face the unexpected ones as well. I have a friend who say whatever it is, we can have support and also navigate it through together. Grateful for support system such as this after having people who bail out when things are not pretty.