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One of the first steps in homeschooling is to determine what kind of philosophy or method of homeschooling best fits your family and your children. We have found that there are seven main categories, with of course some overlap, different names, and subsets. Here's a very, very brief overview of each and this is not comprehensive by any means.
Traditional – Like public school, but at home. Textbook, lecture, fact driven.
Classical – Comes from the Greeks. Starts with a lot of memorization without much understanding and moves towards logic and communication skills as the child gets older.
Unit Studies – Looks at the big picture first and facts hang onto that framework. You pick a broad idea to start with and branch off of that in all directions for various subjects. Everything is related, though possibly very loosely.
Charlotte Mason / Living Books – Short, structured morning lessons. Read a lot of living books – books written by one author passionate about their subject. Free afternoons for outside play to stimulate the physical body and immerse self in God's creation.
Unschooling – First pioneered by John Holt. Has unfortunately been misunderstood and become more like “unparenting”.
Relaxed – Meet the child at their level and interests.
Delayed – It is better to start late than early. Children will learn a subject in their own time and retain info / progress faster if not pushed to start something too early.
Each method has good parts…. and bad. We personally have landed near the middle with the Charlotte Mason / Living Books model. Of course, we're pulling in parts of other models that we feel fit Jonathan's learning style and our family life. For instance: Jonathan really loves tracing letters and numbers in workbooks right now. That's a very traditional style of learning and very much not a part of the Charlotte Mason philosophy. But he likes it, and I'll keep providing those resources until he shows me that he is not interested in that method. He'll likely not want to do worksheet after worksheet of seat work as he gets older.
Soon, I'll share how we came upon the Charlotte Mason / Living Book model and why we feel like that's the best fit for our family as of right now.
If you are homeschooling or have homeschooled, where you to fall on this spectrum? If you could chose a way to have been taught, what method would best fit your learning style?
