I think so, yes.  Deb, of NotSheep, has posted about how they do things within their large family.  She reckon’s it’s not autonmous, despite agreeing with the principles of autonomous learning, but I disagree.  This is part of the comment I left on her blog:

I think it’s really interesting that you put at the end that you think you’re life is very ’schooley’. I think it sounds very autonomous to me - if one of your boys said they wanted to go to school, and you let them, they’d still be allowed to learn autonomously as what they have autonomously chosen is to learn via teachers in classrooms. If what you are doing is working for all of you, and it sounds like it is, then surely that counts as autonomous. From what I know of you (and I’ve known you cyber-wise nearly since Flopsy was born now, I think, from various email lists etc.!), I don’t think you’d continue this way if one of the boys indicated that your family’s way of learning wasn’t working for him, you’d soon change things so that it was…? Autonomous education (in my opinion) doesn’t mean intentionally refusing to do workbooks or ‘normals’, but following your children’s lead (which is what you’re doing) and if workbooks and ‘normals’ are what works for them, then what’s not autonomous about it?

We consider ourselves to be very child-led in our family (ok, so we’re not at school age yet, but I think this is relevant nevertheless).  We try not to coerce either of the girls, and we certainly don’t ask Flopsy to spend set amounts on reading, writing or numeracy.  However, it just so happens that the only way I/we can cope is to have some sort of morning pattern to follow, and the girls just have to fit in with that for a while.  I never force them to help out, but I do ask them to, reminding them that chores will get done quicker, and I’ll be able to play sooner, if they join in - and they usually do help.  Flopsy loves the ‘workbooks’ that come out of some of the magazines she enjoys us buying for her, and is currently hooked on spending time writing over dotted letters to practice - she can now reliably write about 5 or 6 letters with nothing to trace, and can sometimes write a few more if she’s feeling brave.  My point is that she wants to practice writing because she wants to learn how to do it, so we end up doing a lot of it.  On the other hand, although she’s moving on very fast with her reading, she doesn’t appreciate practice time doing that with an adults - she prefers to be read do, to point out words she knows in her books and in ours.  The books she feels confident that she ‘knows’, she’ll often go and grab and read to herself, or to Mopsy, but not to us.  She loves the pre-school games on the internet (Cbeebies & Sesame Street are her favourites), and they are clearly intended to be educational, and lots of her interests have been inspired by those.  She is particularly keen on rhyming words at the moment, and will often be rambling away to herself then will suddenly say ‘Mummy, does cat rhyme with hat?’ or ‘Daddy, what does buggy rhyme with?’.  She loves numbers, and can now count to 30 - one of her books has a countdown to blast off in it, which she has taken a liking to, so she can now count backwards from 10 as well.  She has a lovely numbers book that my mum bought her and at the end it explains about adding and subtracting - yesterday she wanted to do the sums with me and she spent absolutely ages with me counting out lego bricks and adding and taking them away.  I thought she’d get bored first, but actually I did!  So, within any given day, we probably accidentally follow the government’s ‘guidelines’ as to how long to spend on literacy and numeracy - sitting down for fifteen minutes tracing over dotted letters; doing sums with lego bricks; talking about rhyming words; reading books over and over again; looking out for known words - it all sounds pretty schooley to me, but it isn’t at all.  Flopsy just likes that way of learning and it works for us.  We have little need of structure to our days at the moment, but I can see why a larger family would need to be a bit more careful to structure days in order to make sure that every child gets the time they need and the quieter ones don’t get left out.  In fact, I can see Flopsy being the one in danger of being ‘left out’ as time goes on - she’s much quieter and more pensive than Mopsy and if number 3 baby turns out to be more like Mopsy, I’m going to have to be very careful to not assume that Flopsy is ok and her needs are being met simply because she’s not making a fuss!  I can see that any more than 3 children, and the best way of ensuring everyone gets the time they need is to have some sort of loose, flexible structure to your days/weeks/whatever.  Ever eager to learn from those more experienced…are our childeren autonomous learners or not?