Homeschooling approaches

Although every 'homeschool' is unique, several 'standard' styles of home education can be distinguished. Below I will mention some, to give an idea of the many opportunities there are.

• School-at-home: most often portrayed in the media, because it is so easy to understand. Families who follow this approach often buy a boxed curriculum with text books, study schedules, grades and record keeping.


• Unit studies: using a child's interest in different subject areas like math, reading, spelling, science, art, and history. For example, if your child likes dinosaurs, you would learn history about the dinosaurs' period, you learn geography about where they lived,  you read books about fossils, you write stories about ancient times, etc.  This home education method recognizes the fact that people learn best when they are interested in a certain topic.


• Relaxed or Eclectic Homeschooling: Eclectic means, chosing the best, and that is what most homeschoolers do. They use a little of this and a little of that, using certain workbooks for math, reading and writing, and taking an unschooling approach for other subjects.


• Unschooling: Also known as natural, interest-led or child-led learning. Unschoolers learn from everyday lif experiences and don't use formal lessons or school schedules. Founder of the unschooling movement is schoolteacher John Holt. According to him there is no difference between living and learning.


• Classical homeschooling: This method began in the Middle Ages and was used by some of the greatest minds in history and its goal is to teach people how to learn for themselves. The five tools or learning, also known as the Trivium, are reason, record, research, relate and rhetoric.


• Charlotte Mason: Core belief of this method is that children deserve to be respected and that they learn best from real-life situations. Children should be given time to play, create, and be involved in real-life. Students of the Charlotte Mason method take nature walks, visit art museums, and learn geography, history, and literature from "living books," books that make these subjects come alive. 

So what do we do?

I think we can be called eclectic/relaxed homeschoolers. We use whatever we find appropriate. The ideas of natural learning speak to us, as well as Charlotte Mason's concepts. These approaches exhibit a lot of freedom. We don't use any formal workbooks yet, because our children are still young and don't need them. Maybe later we will.

 

 

RELAXED seems a good word to me

 with a little help from www.homeschool.com