Unschooling is all about learning through natural life experiences. During the early years I have found unschooling to be an effective way to teach a young child.
I enjoyed unschooling my toddler. To unschool her, I followed her lead and placed things in her environment that she could interact with and learn. For instance, I had a cabinet full of books for her to access at any time. She would often grab a book and want to read on the couch. I had magnetic letters on the fridge that she could place in the little LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Holder. She liked to dance to the alphabet songs once or twice a day. The LeapFrog alphabet system plays a different song for each letter so the child not only learns the letter names, but the sounds the letter makes. So for I it says “I says ih and I says I. Every letter makes a sound and I says ih and I.” So through play she learned her letter names and sounds.
Playing with Play Doh and scribbling on paper helped her develop fine motor skills necessary for handwriting. But learning academics through play is a small part of a day.
Play is wrapped up in the world of pretend. Pretending to feed a doll, pretending to pack a bag and leave, pretending to cook or eat, and playing dress-up 
