Home School News Blog

Posts Tagged ‘methods’

For many people, homeschooling may call to mind the picture of two or three children sitting at a table and writing feverishly in their workbooks, while mom or dad stands nearby. This is the not entirely true. There are different methods of homeschooling, and the method you choose will decide the curriculum and your style of teaching. The section below will help you to familiarize with some of the better known methods of homeschooling.

The Charlotte Mason Method

Charlotte Mason is known as the founder of the homeschooling movement. A homeschooler herself, she was passionate in her zeal to lay out the foundations for an effective a complete homeschooling program that is fun and educational at the same time. This method focuses on all the core subjects with emphasis placed on classical literature, poetry, fine arts, classical music and craft. Mason used a variety of books from classical literature, which she called ‘Living Books’. Since this method encourages a passionate awareness of literature, the child is read to daily from the ‘Living Books’.

After this, the child is asked to narrate what she has heard. This process begins at the age of six, and by ten the child is expected to write her narrations in her book. Mason also advocated the use of ‘Nature Diaries’. After each short and interesting lesson, the child is asked to go to Nature and draw observations from Nature.Thus the child also gains a sense of respect for her environment. Mason believed that development of good character and behavior was essential to the complete development of the child’s personality.

The Eclectic Homeschooling

This is a mixture of various homeschooling techniques. Here, the innovative parents trust their own judgment and pick out the topics that make the best curriculum for their child. Such parents continuously look out for the best products that will meet the needs of their homeschoolers. Most Eclectic homeschooling curriculums are improvised. This means that the basic curriculum is ready-made. The parents then make changes in the curriculum to accommodate the individual needs and interests of their children. The child’s gifts, temperament, learning style and interests dictate the curriculum. Eclectic programs include visits to the museum, libraries and factories.

The Montessori Method

This method began in Italy, when it was observed that children have acute sensitive periods, during which they undergo periods of intense concentration. During such phases, a child will repeat an

activity till he gains a measure of self-satisfaction. The Montessori method depends on a prepared environment to facilitate learning. All the materials used in this method are designed to satisfy the inner desire for spiritual development of the child. The materials used progress from simple to complex, and are rather expensive.

The Unschooling Method

A Boston public educator name John Holt laid the beginnings of the unschooling method. He believed that children learned best when they are free to learn at their own pace and when they are guided by their own interests. His message was to ‘unschool’ the child. This method is a hands-on approach to learning, where the parent takes definite cues from the children. There is no definite curriculum, schedules or materials. This method is the most unstructured of the various homeschooling techniques.

These are just a few of the methods of homeschooling. Whatever the method, the underlying factor is flexibility and a keen interest in the desires of the child. The secret is to use the child’s desire for knowledge to further his education.

The Waldorf Method

The Waldorf homeschooling method was popularized by Rudolf Steiner in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Waldorf approach is a holistic liberal arts education where subjects are not separated from one another and education covers the mind, body and spirit. Early education is focused on activities and experiences rather than head learning and in that regard.Textbooks are not used until the children are older and even then,only infrequently.Moral qualities are subtly emphasized through life.Discovery is the focus of the middle years and experiences relating to finding one’s place in the “real world” are the focus of the upper grades.

A couple weeks ago, the Heart of the Matter Homeschool Conference became my talk radio. Fellow homeschoolers encouraged while I painted cabinets, dressed dolls, washed dishes, folded laundry, and skipped around the internet. There were so many helpful ideas. So many passionate speakers. So many foundational truths. How do I sort it all? Even encouragement becomes cacophony unless the grains are sifted for a few sweet morsels to gnaw. It is easy to get overwhelmed. Full-color magazine

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Questioning Homeschool

Do you get nervous when it gets really quiet around your house? Do you have to put markers, glue and other creative art supplies up on a high shelf ? Do step stools located in unusual places around the house make you cringe? If you have answered yes to two or more of these questions, then you must have a toddler living in your home. Toddlers are a joy, there is no doubt about that, but they can also create havoc if left alone with nothing productive to do for too long… There are t

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Homeschooling With Toddlers

There may come a day when our family will be world travelers, but until then we are exploring our world from the comfort of our home. We might be sprawled out on the floor using an atlas, globe, and some great literature to learn all about the world around us, but in our own way we are traveling and having a great adventure. The first year we homeschooled, our oldest was in kindergarten and my theory was “I really can’t do much to mess up kindergarten….so it will be fine!” The next year, when

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A Bite of Geography

There are so many reasons why mini-offices are beneficial to our children. But the main one is commitment to memory. When I was in college I learned all about memory tactics in my advertising classes. You have to see/read something three times before it is available for recollection. After seeing it three times or more you are cementing it in your brain long term. This is why bulletin boards in classrooms are so fundamental. I can’t tell you how much I learned simply because I read/saw the

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Creative Homeschooling: Mini-Offices

As our thoughts turn to planning the school year, I thought I would list some things I have found through the years that make homeschooling easier on us as teacher moms. Some of them are very simple, and yet they make things run much more smoothly! I hope this list gets your ideas flowing. A library basket : Several years ago I got a gift card to Pier One and used it to buy a large, pretty basket we now have sitting in our living room. I have trained the kids to store all library books in

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Making The School Year Easier On The Teacher

Our family has become quite accustomed to building our own books. We do a loose combination of all of the popular forms of booking: lapbooking, scrapbooking, notebooking, altered booking, etc. We have actually simply started calling it “heartbooking © ” since our style fits none of these exclusively and because we base the foundation of our education on God’s word which teaches us that we must examine the condition of our hearts. Studying history, science, and the especially the bible can give u

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Creative Homeschooling: Lapbooking/Notebooking

Counting Money If your husband often comes home from work with spare change in his pocket, use this as an opportunity to teach your child to count money. If they can correctly count the change, they can put it in their piggy bank. Once they master counting the coins, alter the rules: they can have the change if they can correctly add the amount to what is already in their piggy bank. You can keep a tally on a piece of paper or white board. Skip Counting For most kids, skip coun

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Creative Homeschooling: Math

“Awe mom… do we have to do this again?” Heads up: education can get boring if you don’t get a little creative with it. We would do our selves a favor and serve our children well by making it fun and enticing. I could quote you all kinds of statistics and give you links to a thesis or two based entirely on what works best for children but instead I’m just going to recommend that you ask your kiddo if learning might be more tolerable if it were fun. What do you think they will say? Yes

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Creative Homeschooling – Week One

Sometimes I drive myself crazy wondering if any of our homeschooling lessons are actually going to stick. Will my kids really remember the scientific method or this history lesson by the time next week rolls around? Will they even remember any of it tomorrow ?! I think it is safe to say that I am not the only homeschooling parent that has struggled with these thoughts at one time or another. As a home educator, one of my goals is to make learning both interesting and memorable for my

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A Little Goes a Long Way