What do burdock balls, leaf jumping and pumpkin carving all have in common? As unschoolers they all signified the last remnants of summer and the beginning of our 'official' unschool year. We didn't use the local school calendar to determine our schedule for learning. The way we saw education was that it happens 365 days a year. It didn't make sense to lock ourselves into a meaningless 180 day schedule, nor did we consider classroom learning our only option. In fact, we thought of the world as our school. If we followed any sort of calendar at all it was based on nature. We settled into a routine of structured learning from the time when the leaves fell from the trees until the pussy willows appeared in the spring. That was our unschool year. Any time before or after that was playtime! Time to play, time to travel, time to relax, kick back and let life unfold. There were adventures to live, people to meet and places to explore. We learned lots from our play and travels....