Types of Homeschooling

Traditional Homeschooling

Traditional homeschooling is essentially doing school-at-home, using similar methods to those used in public or private schools. Because this is the educational model that parents are most familiar with, many new homeschooling families begin their journey by purchasing textbooks, desks, wall posters, and other items that mimic the conventional school setting.

In addition, traditional homeschoolers usually utilize a lecture teaching style, have their days solidly scheduled, make frequent use of tests and quizzes to track progress, and try to align their curriculum with what their local school follows. Although many families migrate away from this style as they gain more confidence with homeschooling, it is a popular approach for those who are concerned with “getting it right” or who appreciate the familiarity and accountability that traditional homeschooling provides.

Benefits of the school-at-home homeschooling style include:

• It gives new homeschooling families a touchpoint for where to begin

• It provides structure and familiarity to students and parents

• It smooths the transition back to school for students who will only be homeschooling short-term

• Recordkeeping and assessments are straight-forward

• It provides confidence to parents who wonder if they are doing “enough”

Unschooling

Unschooling is a style of home education that allows the student’s interests and curiosities to drive the path of learning. Rather than using a defined curriculum, unschoolers trust children to gain knowledge organically.

Contrary to how it sounds, unschooling is an active learning process and not the passive, unstructured method that its terminology would suggest. Unschoolers are homeschoolers who are focused more on the experimental process of learning and becoming educated, than with “doing school.” The focus of unschooling is on the choices made by the individual child, dictated by interests, learning style, and personality type.

John Holt, one of the leaders of the unschooling philosophy said,

“Birds fly, fish swim, man thinks and learns. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do, and all we need to do, is bring as much of the world as we can into the school and classroom (in our case, into their lives); give children as much help and guidance as they ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest.”

Unschooling is different from deschooling, which refers to the period of time when a student (and family) adjusts after leaving a traditional school setting. Instead, it involves nurturing a child’s natural curiosity, without placing artificial time constraints on them such as the introduction of certain subjects at certain ages, or without structuring their day in the same way a classroom setting might.

Montessori Homeschooling

The Montessori approach to early childhood education is a child-centered approach that values each child as a unique individual. Creativity and curiosity are encouraged, which leads students to value knowledge and seek it out for themselves.

“Self-regulation” is a key goal of the Montessori philosophy of education, meaning the ability of a child to regulate his or her conduct in a way that is appropriate to the situation. The Montessori method views a child’s classroom as a preparatory environment for the biggest classroom of all: life.

Some of the characteristics of a Montessori education include:

• Mixed-age classrooms

• Cooperation and collaboration among students

• Hands-on learning

• Active learning methods

• Teachers who model the behaviors and values that they want children to emulate

• Teachers who see themselves as a facilitators rather than instructors

• Respect for each child’s individual learning style

• Freedom of children to choose between learning activities

• Guidance on positive behavior and conflict resolution

Helping students see connections between traditional subjects such as math, science, history, and language arts

Waldorf Homeschooling

With the worthy goal of educating the whole child (body, mind, and spirit), it is no surprise that many homeschooling families have embraced the Waldorf philosophy for their educational model. Some of the benefits of the Waldorf teaching method for homeschool include:

• The Waldorf approach to early childhood education de-emphasizes academics

• A focus on age-appropriate learning

• Art, music, gardening, and foreign language are key focuses in the elementary years

• No textbooks are used in the first several grades

• No formal grades are assigned during the elementary years; instead children are assessed by progress made

• An integration of the natural world into all aspects of education

Classical Homeschooling

The classical approach has the worthy overall goal of teaching children to think for themselves. Using the “trivium” model, children move through three main stages of learning: concrete learning (the grammar stage), critical learning (the logic stage), and abstract learning (the rhetoric stage). It’s a language-focused, literature-focused style of learning that has been adopted by many homeschooling families.

• The Grammar Stage – Just as grammar is the foundation for language learning, the grammar stage of the trivium involves the years where children are building foundational knowledge in many educational arenas. Because children in the early elementary years most often think in concrete terms, the focus of learning in these years is on memorization and repetition. For homeschoolers, this boils down to making sure a student has a core knowledge of math, language arts, science, and social studies.

• The Logic (or Dialectic) Stage – By the time a student has reached fifth grade, concrete thinking gives way to more analytical reasoning. No more are students willing to take information on face value; they want to ask questions, compare and contrast, understand how knowledge relates to other knowledge. The word most apt for this stage is, “why?” Homeschooling a child during the dialectic stage involves introducing them to logic: asking questions that help them arrive at valid conclusions.

• The Rhetoric Stage – As you might imagine, the final stage of the trivium builds on the previous two. The student combines their foundational knowledge from elementary school with the critical thinking skills they learn in middle school to be able to articulate their reasoned opinions and conclusions via debates and persuasive writing. Classically homeschooled high schoolers will focus heavily on the medium of communication. They will learn about essay writing, public speaking, accounting, engineering, politics, and economics.

Charlotte Mason Homeschooling

Charlotte Mason put a heavy emphasis on using high-quality literature, which she called “living books,” to teach children. She believed that education should involve the whole person, not just the mind. According to Mason, education is “an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”

In terms of homeschooling, the Charlotte Mason approach translates to:

• The abundant use of narrative literature

• Plenty of time spent outdoors exploring

• The development of an appreciation for art, music, and nature

• Journalling, narration, dictation, and copywork

Roadschooling

Roadschooling is a growing trend in which families pack up their belongings and take their homeschooling on the road. Many families who embrace this lifestyle integrate what they are seeing and experiencing into their child’s homeschool curriculum.

Homeschoolers are able to use the landmarks and attractions they encounter as a means for educational enhancement and exploration. Students don’t just read about the Constitution, they can view the original document. They can spend a day focusing on bats and echolocation when they learn that the next day they will be traveling near a bat conservation exhibit. Even stopping for a pizza can turn into a teachable moment about pepperoni pie and fractions. These are just some of the benefits of roadschooling.

This hands-on, experiential way of learning appeals to many families and accounts for the growth of roadschooling nationwide. Although roadschooling will look and feel different for every family, it is an approach that fits families who prefer:

• Unscheduled and impromptu learning experiences

• The ability to integrate travel with the subjects and themes they are learning about

• A desire to help children make connections between educational material and the world around them.

Worldschooling

Worldschooling is an educational movement that recognizes that a student can receive no greater education than by experiencing and interacting with the world around them. For families able to make it work, this often involves traveling together and using the journeys to enhance their child(ren)’s education.

While every worldschooling family is unique, some of the sentiments they share in common often include:

• A desire to travel

• A wish to introduce children to the wider world around them

• A holistic approach to learning

• A preference for experiential learning to solidify knowledge

• A need for flexibility in exploring children’s talents that traditional schooling cannot provide

• A desire to understand and become sensitive to other world-views

It’s also important to keep in mind the myriad of ways to incorporate world culture in your child’s education. Some families, for instance, might travel to a country and enroll their children in schools there with the goal of culture and language immersion. Others with the time and resources may choose to travel to multiple countries with their children to gain a wider worldview. Still others may only be able to take the occasional world journey, but will focus heavily on subjects like geography, social studies, and world culture.

Eclectic Homeschooling

Eclectic homeschooling is a highly individualized education method resulting from mixing and matching a variety of homeschooling resources. It is an exceptionally personalized approach for every child based on their strengths, learning styles, and interests. Many families find that what worked well one semester, may not work the next. Or in some cases, what works for a child in one subject, does not work in another subject. As a result, the eclectic homeschooling approach will be completely different for different families.

While some homeschoolers pursue only a Classical approach or only an unschooling strategy, eclectic homeschoolers see value in a variety of different educational methods. While actual statistics are hard to come by, it’s likely that most homeschooling families eventually adopt an eclectic approach to their children’s education.

Homeschooling with Unit Studies

Unit studies are time-specific overviews of a defined topic or theme that incorporate multiple subject areas into the study plan. Sometimes called “thematic units,” these studies often involve multisensory learning where each activity is organized according to the thematic idea.

The objective of unit studies is to allow students to delve deeply into a given topic so that they can gain mastery of it. By exploring a subject from multiple angles, information is more likely to be retained.

Thematic units have long been a popular approach to learning in the preschool and early elementary years of traditional schools. Many homeschool families have adopted this method as well—not only because it allows students to study subjects more in-depth, but also because the variety of activities keeps them engaged.

The unit study method of homeschool works especially well for these situations:

• Families homeschooling children across multiple age groups

• Homeschoolers on the autism spectrum who have intense interests in specific subjects

• Homeschooling parents who want to create their own curriculum

• Families who need low-cost curriculum options

• Homeschoolers who want to break up a traditional homeschooling approach with short-term unit studies for variety