The Big Schooling Debate

As I have started my homeschooling planning, I have found that there are actually a lot of different styles of homeschooling. Here is a website with more information and details of each kind. There are many different styles to fit the needs of all kinds of families. I'd like to give a few opinions about what I have researched.

Unit Studies is honestly a great way to go about schooling. When you keep a theme chances are that students will retain more. I personally love how spelling, science, math, reading and sometimes history and bible all come together in a unit study. The only downside is sometimes making sure you find a way to relate everything your child really needs to learn. A popular curriculum called Our Father's World is a unit studies program. I have a friend who has started with this curriculum and loves it. I would love to look at it more in detail myself.

Classical Education reminds me of a one-room school house. The approach focuses on memorization and learning a broad amount of facts in each subject area so that later in education you have higher level thinking to apply all of it to. I think that memorization can be a good exercise for a young mind. A child can learn many things when they are extremely young just by focusing on memorization. The great thing about memorization is that the information is always with you. However, many children are not auditory learners so this becomes dull, boring and eventually they stop thinking about what they are repeating all for the sake of repeating it. I think it is also important to master things sometimes even at a young age.

Montessori Homeschooling is based on allowing children to learn at the pace they want. I know that this can work really well for children on the autism spectrum. Allowing a very intelligent kid to learn at the level they desire can be very beneficial. I love that Montessori schooling promotes hands-on activities too. However, I don't agree that children should just be left to their own learning standards. I think allowing a child to learn teacher or parent directed learning is so important. How would they survive higher learning? I think there is a balance.

Unschooling or Self-Directed Learning is very similar to Montessori type teaching. Basically you allow the students to only learn about what they want to learn about. If your child is interested in butterflies, then you would find all kinds of real books (not textbooks), TV shows, movies, hands-on experiences, art, science experiments, field trips, etc. that explore butterflies. You would not sit down to do a worksheet or read in a textbook. A child would not be forced to explore the resources that they were given. A child is basically in command of their own learning schedule and objectives. While I love the idea of encouraging learning in things they are interested in, I think this is also lacking in parent or teacher directed learning. This sounds to me like an outflow of child focused parenting. Your child might not want to learn to keep a check book, but as a teacher or parent they will need to learn things that will prepare them for life. Again, I think there needs to be a balance. There is nothing wrong with using a textbook or worksheet to help teach something.

Standard Curriculum driven Schooling at Home looks like the traditional public school only at home. Basically you buy all of the curriculum for each subject area and then teach it to your child just as a school teacher would. Being a teacher, it probably won't surprise you that I do agree with having standards or benchmarks for your child's education. I will probably need to post a whole new post about this topic, but for now, I just want to emphasize that you need objectives/goals to make sure you cover the material that you would like to cover. Obviously it would not be acceptable for a child to be in 10th grade without learning basic addition. How would they ever learn to solve a simple geometric equation in 10th grade if they never learned basic math skills? The wonderful thing about being at home is that you can go outside of or even delay standards until your child is ready. Buying curriculum as a homeschooling parent is the easiest way to go. You get the curriculum and you follow it as you go. The huge downfall to most curriculum is that it is not often hands-on or outside of the "classroom". Another worksheet? More flashcards? YUCK! How boring! A teacher often relies on these things as a way to measure 20-30 students at one time so they can keep record of the progress each child is having in their class. It is the way they evaluate. However, you have the awesome one-on-one time with your child so evaluating your child is pretty obvious. Only use worksheets that aid you in your teaching, don't use them as an instrument to keep them busy.

So what kind am I using? Well...pieces of all of them. First of all, I am going to go through standards and make objectives for each year, each month, and each week. These objectives will guide me. I will use some curriculum...especially for reading, but I will also take a hands-on approach and use thematic units to create a creative learning environment. Curriculum will never direct my teaching path, it will simply be my tool to use in conjunction with my objectives. I will also try to overlap some of my objectives for each kid so we can learn as a family. I will write more on how this looks as I continue my homeschooling journey.

Animal Print FUN!

One of my former teaching partners and good friend teaches Kindergarten. She was working on putting up a creative Word Wall for her students this year. Since I love to create on the computer, I took over her creative vision and made some letters for her. I had so much fun making it! As you can tell, her theme in her classroom is the jungle.

You can get a copy here: