Ways to Home Educate

Styles of Learning

first of all we thought it was a great idea to watch our kids and learn HOW it is they learn - a pretty good page of information on learning styles is at EZine articles

as for ways to home educate these are probably as diverse as the people who do it - generally though we fall into a few categories

school at home - and/or curriculum/textbook learning

this is probably more common among new home educators and those homeschoolers in the US where home schoolers really "do" school - personally i dont see the point when you have the freedom to choose why choose a model that doesnt work lol ie school room type environment - it probably serves the adult rather than the child - but to each their own.

As for the curriculums they are wide and varied and attempting to choose is an awesome task lol - due to lack of finances i have often searched for free curriculums to cannibalise lol and used what suits us or visited sites which offer free samples and enough information for me to "get the idea".

Most home educators we have met us what they call "methods" the ones we have come across usually com under:

charlotte mason method - ambleside - a free online charlotte mason curriculum - absolutely first class - calm and relaxed - concentrating on good literature and narration among others. To get a better idea about visit this charlotte mason site - if ever i follow a curriculum i think this would be the one

classical method - based on foundation stones of grammar, rhethoric and logic - for more info try this classical education site

child led or unschooling method - not an easy one to pin down lol - basically it is individual to each family although they may share a common belief in no textbook or curricula learning - often using life and projects. for 3 great articles on unschooling try this page

we probably fall between this and the next one -

eclective method - when you use various methods to make up your own method it is called - this article at theHomeSchoolMom.com has loads of information

then there is my favourite

the unit study method - this is really fun - pick a topic and make everything fit around it - (more of ours to come lol) for a better explanation that i could offer without rambling ;) try this one