Methods to our Madness

One of the things I didn’t know about home learning is that there are many different ways/methods/philosophies that you can teach your child at home. When I first considered home schooling Emily I knew about  schooling at home and unschooling and neither was quite right for us. Then I did my homework and realized there is a method that will work for us!
Some of my info is from SimpleHomeschool which is one of my favorite resources and has already taught me sooo much. I love SimpleMom and SimpleBites. Who knew I would love SimpleHomeschool too?!?!
Heres the breakdown of what I think each of these methods means. By no means is this exhaustively what they mean, but its my idea of how they work.

1. The Traditional Method – Using textbooks and worksheets and tests and turing old-school schooling into a homebased idea.
2. Unit Study Method-Picking a subject like fish and then using that subject for every part of the lessons. Counting fish, drawing fish, writing and reading about fish…etc.
3. Charlotte Mason Method – Uses short lessons and loads of nature study. Lots of literature as opposed to texbooks
4. Unschooling Method – Student lead exploring and following what the student is interested in. Very relaxed and not the same as non-schooling.
5. The Classical Method – works through stages rather than ages. The grammer, logic and then rhetoric stages. Major importance on reading and discussing.
6. Literature Based – Focus on literature to teach everything and that a story helps a child’s mind put more complicated things together.
7. Workbox Method – Mom puts all the work for the day into a box and the child starts working on it. Self starting, but kind of a method of organization not just a methodology.
8. Leadership Education Method – Also a stages rather than ages idea that moves around core, love of learning and scholar stages. Tomas Jefferson Education concept.
9. Eclectic Method – Like the name, a combination of different methods and idea.

Can you guess which method we are going to choose? Here are some of my thoughts. Unschooling is not for us. I dont relax enough to make that work well  and I don’t think I would be ok with letting go of needing to make sure that Emily learned specific things. There is one Curriculum I really like for when Emily is a bit older that is totally Classical Method and two other ones I like that are literature based and unit studies. Yep, you guessed it. We are going with Eclectic Method. We are going to make sure we hit specific subjects and learning outcomes, but we are going to keep it fun and interesting by keeping our node in exciting stories and exploring the world. We are going to learn things Emily wants to learn, but be directing her to the things she needs to learn. We are going to make a HUGE mess and be uber creative with out art, crazy loud with our music and thoroughly enjoy classic stories like the Chronicles of Narnia. It’s going to be soo fun! Kind of makes me miss going to school…not too much, but a little.