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Did you know that May is Homeschool Awareness Month? Homeschooling your child can be a supremely rewarding experience. You have the assurance that you will get to be with your child as they hits every developmental milestone, and that’s valuable stuff. You also receive the opportunity to cater your child’s learning experience to their individual needs and interests!
You might be wondering why more people don’t choose to homeschool their kids. The reason why is also one of the chief benefits of homeschooling. Namely, the possibilities of homeschooling are endless!
There are scores of different ways to give your child an education at home, all of which have interminable variations to allow for each child’s particular set of circumstances. All the choices and decisions you’ll make in homeschooling your child can be extremely overwhelming.
But if you are considering giving your child a learn-at-home experience and don’t know where to start your research, Wondrfly has got you covered! We’ve outlined the ins and outs, pros and cons of three common homeschooling methods, along with resources you can use to find out more about one that appeals to you.
1. School-At-Home
This is perhaps the most traditional homeschooling method, as it seeks to replicate a classroom environment and structure in the home as much as possible.
What is it?
The school-at-home method can consist of a parent-teacher taking on the responsibility of administering a prepackaged curriculum, often the same curriculum used by private or public schools in the area. It can also consist of enrollment in an online school, public or private, where faculty administer classes entirely via the Internet.
Pros:
The school-at-home method is tried and true and ensures that your child will meet the core standards required by the state for public school students, so they’ll be able to compete with peers for scholarships once college rolls around. There are a ton of resources for this method as well, in the form of prepackaged curricula and online learning websites.
Cons:
Prepackaged curricula are often expensive—sometimes nearly as expensive as a private school education! In addition, this method leaves little room for personalization of your child’s education. The selected curriculum or school’s learning requirements can’t be changed. Also, this method has the parent-teacher often doing the work of several different teachers at once, which can lead to burnout. Even when they are using a completely prepackaged curriculum or working with an online school, parents have a lot of work to do in facilitating the learning environment and getting students to sit and focus for long periods, as they would do at a traditional school.
Resources
Traditional Homeschooling: The School-at-Home Homeschooling Method (howdoihomeschool.com)
K12: Online Public School Programs | Online Learning Programs
Textbooks & Digital Programs | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (hmhco.com)
2. Unit Studies
Unit studies are a great way to put a fun thematic spin on your child’s learning experience.
What is it?
Unit studies are blocks of time where your child’s education is based on a single thematic element like marine life, outer space, dinosaurs, pioneers, etc. Selecting a topic to build your child’s learning activities around allows for endless possibilities.
You can assign projects that cover multiple areas of learning and development, engage in Socratic dialogues, play themed games, watch and discuss movies, make arts and crafts, perform science experiments, and more!
Pros:
This method puts more emphasis on your child’s individual learning needs and allows you to better support their weaknesses by incentivizing subject areas they wouldn’t ordinarily enjoy as much.
Simply put: Themes make everything way more fun! Unit studies also help kids with the ability to apply knowledge from more than one discipline at once, a higher-level neural function known as “synthesis”.
Another benefit of unit studies? It can often be used in partnership with or within other homeschooling methods, like school at home or unschooling.
Cons:
This method is less structured than the school-at-home model and presents some difficulties. For instance, it’s difficult to know how to measure competency in key areas such as literacy, math, and science without pre-created curricula to rely on.
Unit studies also tend to work better within the humanities than STEM subjects. This is because many math and science concepts require prerequisite knowledge for learners to comprehend. Therefore, many people will use an established methodology or system to teach STEM subjects to their kids and allow humanities to fall into unit studies.
Resources
Free Unit Studies – DIY Homeschooler
Homeschool Unit Study Planner (donnayoung.org)
3. Unschooling
This newly popular homeschooling method was first advocated by John Holt in his book entitled Teach Your Own.
What is it?
Unschooling completely rejects the format and structure of a traditional classroom. Experiential learning and hands-on learning activities are given priority over intensive instructional learning, which may still be implemented, to some degree, for essential subjects. However, traditional testing and evaluations are uncommon in this method.
Pros:
Your child gets to follow their passion in an unschooling environment, plain and simple. You can find creative ways to integrate essential knowledge into learning activities that facilitate higher-level learning than simply reading words off a page. Unschooling also allows your child to focus more of their learning on subjects they care most about, and treats each child as a unique individual.
Cons:
Since unschooling is not aligned with any recommended set of core learning objectives, you may find the program lacks the structure or rigor that your child requires. One of the troubles with interest based studies is that they can lead to knowledge gaps when your child has less interest in a certain area of learning.
Resources
Unschool RULES - Uncurriculum. Unformal. Unbelievably joyful.
Family Unschoolers Network - Unschooling Support http://www.unschooling.org/
One might say that there is no single “best” way to homeschool a child. Indeed, the best path often turns out to be a combination of many elements from different methods and techniques. But we hope that our guide to three of the most common homeschooling techniques will help you find a great place to start your research. Whatever path you choose, remember to keep coming back to the Wondrfly blog for more of the best learning activities and parenting advice on the internet!
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