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Homeschooling has become increasingly popular in recent years, but not all home-school families choose a structured option. The News Station's Katie Stukey explores the other end of the spectrum - an educational approach known as "unschooling."

Lisa Hardiman explains simply, "I just let my kids lead the way and I say 'OK, that's what you want to do. Let's do it'."

Her children, 16-year old Nate and 12-year old Sana, have grown up seeing all the world as their classroom.

Nate gives an example of some of his recent learning, telling us, "The sunflower is an example of fractal geometry which is the geometry that works in nature. Regular geometry doesn't work 'cause you don't find perfect rectangles in nature."

A typical day starts later than most kids, with Nate & Sana waking up around 9 am.

The day begins with writing and grammar, and later in the day, they do math with their dad.

And in between those lessons, they explore and learn things that catch their interest.

Nate said, "We might watch a documentary or something like that." Sana noted, "I do like art classes in the middle of the day."

Early on, Nate briefly attended public school, but Lisa opted for an alternative education, saying everyone learns and develops differently..

Nate is happy with the decision: "I get to explore what I want to. I do more history than they would at school."

There's often little rhyme or reason to how Nate finds materials. For example, his recent exploration of the Middle East was triggered by a globe. Nate said, "With the Saudi Arabia thing, I just took the globe and spun it.. Happened to land on Saudi Arabia."

They practice chemistry with a kit they got from a college nursing student; a run-in with someone who owned a life-size skeleton opened the door to anatomy exploration; and a casual conversation with a calligraphy pro led to in-home lessons for Sana.

Lisa commented, "A lot of our teachers are people we just meet and we learn their life story and we learn a lot."

The unschooling option drew sharp criticism even from their closest family, but seeing the practice at work, Lisa says she now has several supporters, noting, "And that's how we connect. We create community doing what we're doing."