The 5 Best Homeschool Choices for Your Family

Answers to your Top Questions about types of Homeschooling

We all want the best for our kids. What that looks like may differ, but the end goal is the same.  Education is no different. We want our children to have the best education possible. One that meets them where they are, helps them grow, challenges them and stays true to a curricula in which we approve.

What happens when you feel that the public schools are not doing their job and your child’s needs are not being met? 

This is happening more and more. While charter schools may have been the most popular answer a decade ago, many parents are now seriously considering homeschooling their children.  If you are new to this idea, what does that look like?  What are the different types of homeschooling? What is the best homeschool choice for your family?

It is hard to answer these questions if you are new to the world of homeschooling.

First, I want to ease your mind, there are Facebook Groups, yearly conventions, planned out curriculum and “step by step” ways to ease into this big step.  You can always find support from your local or state Homeschooling group.  I am very pro homeschooling, if it is done by someone who is a good “candidate” for teaching their children,  What does this mean?  Read my previous blog: Should everyone homeschool? NO!  You will find that even as a highly qualified teacher, I would not have made a good homeschool teacher.

IF you are interested in the different types of schooling options available to you, other than homeschool, check out: What You Should Know About School Choice and the 5 Different Types of Schools.

There are many steps in converting your home to a homeschool. I simply want to show you the many ways you can homeschool in this article.
Then you can make the best homeschool choice for your family.

1. Traditional: parent teaches children in home.

This method has many pro’s and con’s. Your family can decide on a school schedule that works best for you. You can find the perfect curriculum to match each child’s learning style, level and interest. You are completely engaged in your child’s learning so you can also coordinate other subjects, outings, experiences into the field of study you are currently working on.  This is called an integrated curriculum and engages the learner and helps them understand concepts and ideas better because the same idea is being taught across the subjects.

The main issue I have with the traditional method is that you may be different from your children. That sounds so “simple” but what if you love languages and history, but your child loves math and science? You need to grow your child. Will you be able to find a good curriculum in the subjects you are less interested or familiar with? Will you be able to aid your child in their learning process?

Also, a child “reads” your interest. They do this with any teacher. Think back to the really great teachers you had and the not so great ones.  How many of those great teachers were passionate about what they were teaching?  Almost every single one in my case.  Will your child get as jazzed about science if they can tell you hate it?

2. Co-op: many parents get together and teach all of the children.

I LOVE this method of homeschooling. I have a talent for teaching children how to learn to write, not how to physically form letters, but how to write papers, paragraphs and sentences.

I have a friend who is great at math. If we were in a homeschool co-op, I could teach the different levels of writing. She could teach the different levels of math. Other parents could teach science and history. 

The pros for this method of teaching homeschooling are:

The person who is really good and passionate about a subject is the one teaching it.

Children are taught with a few other children, which teaches them social lessons.

Even if you do are part of a homeschool group that has many outings for socialization, if you talk to kids, usually the thing they love most about school is the other kids.

A parent is not responsible for their child’s entire learning; this takes a lot of stress off of the parent/child relationship.

The parents have each other as a support group. You can decide together curricula, outings, how to handle higher learning, testing, etc.

I am a huge fan of masterminds. If you do a homeschooling co-op, you have a natural mastermind made up of parents who are invested in their children’s education and who often have a similar way of seeing the world as you do.  Very few co-ops that I have seen are a mix of secular and non-secular, they are one or the other.

3. Online: the children work at home with an online resource.

This method is very similar to the traditional method. Usually the parent is responsible for finding and approving of the online method that will be used.  The parent provides the consistency of when school is and how long will be dedicated to each given lesson.The parent also needs to be able to help the child with any difficulties.

This method seems great.  The parent is more like a moderator and the computer program takes the “heavy lifting” out of homeschooling.

I caution you, I am not a fan of this method. I was a public school teacher. Granted, I was unconventional and I only “made it” for four years in the traditional setting, however, I took teaching very seriously and went to as many conventions, read many books and learned at every opportunity how to become a master teacher. 

This does not mean I could simply teach my subject. This meant I could reach the children.  Each and every single one of them, I had to find a way to speak to them so that they could understand what I wanted them to learn.

Nothing in the 20+ years of learning different methods of teaching says that children are engaged and learn better in front of a computer. 

I have been to homeschool conventions and one of the “hot topics” that speakers address in the “pull out” sessions is classroom management in your homeschool. If you have a learner that is any type other than visual, they will have a hard time sitting in front of a computer and learning their lessons. A “normal” child will be squirrelly and want to move and be engaged. If you choose an online method, please watch your child with support and encouragement. Watch to see if they are able to absorb and learn in this manner.

If they are-you are super lucky because this is by far the easiest way to homeschool!

4. Experience Based: the children learn through experiencing their world.

In a more structured way this could look like Waldorf or Montessori (if you want to learn all about them, read the article on “What to Know about School Choice and the 5 Types of School.” 

In a less structured environment this could be unschool or road schooling.

Unschooling has the core belief that every child is a sponge and wants to learn. For this reason, unschoolers do not follow a specific curriculum or set of teaching tools. Instead they allow the child to follow the direction that interests them. The parent provides learning resources and methods for their child to grow within their interest.

Road Schooling is based on children learning through experiencing their world. A family can plan a trip to a location that emphasizes what is being learned. For example, if the children are learning about the Civil War, there are a lot of battlegrounds, statues, homes, etc that they can take tours of and learn about by seeing and touching. 

Typically, road schoolers do follow a curriculum. Even if that curriculum is a the national park junior park rangers program, there is a curriculum that follows what they are currently studying or where they are visiting.

The Charlotte Mason Method believes that learning best occurs from real life situations. This is a type of learning, like Waldorf and Montessori, however, if I were to classify it, I would say it best fits in “Experienced Based” learning methods. Students go to places for geography, visit museums, their books are “living books” and rather than tests to show knowledge they have a lot of narration and discussion. I have not ‘seen’ or spoken with a homeschooling parent who uses the Charlotte Mason method, however, from what I have researched, it is very close to Road Schooling.

5. Unit Studies are a curriculum choice, not an actual way to teaching, in my opinion.

A parent determines what “skills” or “topics” need to be taught/learned in a specific year. Then, they find engaging curriculum that not only covers the necessary skillset, but these unit studies also have the benefit of being integrated across the curricula.Traditionally, students are more engaged and they learn better due to everything “making sense” since one topic is taught, for example, Egypt, but within learning about Egypt there a teachings in math, science, language and often sociology.

I say that this is a curriculum choice not a way of teaching because you can do Unit Studies while Road Schooling. It is great to do a Unit Study of the Civil War and visit the East Coast. This can lead to the social lessons of inequality. A visit to The Harriet Tubman National Historic Park could be on the journey to talk about the underground railroad.

A family can just as easily incorporate unit studies in a traditional homeschool or a co-op.

You are choosing to homeschool so that you can make the right choices for your children about their education. This means you are in charge. While that carries a lot of responsibility, it also means there is a lot of flexibility. The one method I did not talk about is Eclectic Homeschooling. It is basically just taking a little from different methods to create the program that “fits” your children’s needs, your style of teaching, your beliefs and how you live your lives day to day.  I love the idea of balance. Eclectic Homeschooling seems to me to be a great balance. 

Choosing the right homeschool option can be a daunting task. There are so many options to choose from, and since many may be new to you, it can seem difficult to choose. These 5 Best Homeschooling Methods should give you enough background and description to get you started.  I wish you the best in your journey.

“There is always something more to learn even for a master.”

~ Po, Kung Fu Panda