Finding Your Homeschool Style

In this episode we look at the most common homeschooling styles to discover the best fit for your family.

Read the blog post here:  Finding Your Homeschool Style.

Resources Mentioned in this episode:

So You're Thinking About Homeschooling: Fifteen Families Show How You Can Do It by Rachel Whelchel.  

Better Late Than Early by Raymond Moore

The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Susan Wise Bauer

The Circe Institute

Ambleside Online

A Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason

Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles

How Children Learn by John Holt

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Chapters

• 1:16 Discover Your Homeschooling Style
• 6:55 Exploring Different Homeschooling Styles
• 18:45 Exploring Different Homeschooling Philosophies

Transcript

Audrey: 1:16

Hello friends, welcome back to Grace For my Home. I'm Audrey McCracken and I'm so glad you decided to join me here again today. I hope that your week is going well. We are doing great. We had snow last week, which was a treat because we never get snow, and it took several days for it to melt. Now we're back on schedule. And it took several days for it to melt. Now we're back on schedule.

Audrey: 1:38

The last few weeks I've been doing a homeschool series here on the podcast and I'm also writing blog posts that go with this. So if you'd like a little more detail, you can go to graceformyhomecom and actually read the posts that go along with these podcast episodes. You might get a little more out of it if it's something of interest to you. After I finish this homeschool series, I think I'm going to do a series on marriage Now I've shied away from that a little bit because I don't feel like I know everything when it comes to marriage and I'm going to share with you about marriage, not from the viewpoint of an expert, but from a woman that has been married, for this year will be 23 years and I believe that the Lord has. I know that the Lord has given us grace. He has shown us many things when it comes to marriage and what makes a strong marriage, and if you're interested in that, I will start that next week and I plan to do four weeks, similar to what I've done with the homeschooling series, but this week I want to finish up with our homeschool series. Same thing as I said about marriage, I do not see myself as an expert when it comes to homeschooling, but I have homeschooled for 12 years, so maybe some things that I've learned I can share with you and you can glean some things from the stories that I share.

Audrey: 3:04

This is the fourth and final episode of the homeschool series, to kind of give you a recap if you want to go back and listen to the other three. The first episode that I shared was following God's call to homeschool, where I talk about how we as a family felt like it was the Lord's call for us to homeschool. We were unlikely homeschoolers. Like I said, my husband is a high school principal was not something we necessarily thought we would ever do, but it happened that way and I'm so glad it did. So the first part of this series is about the call to homeschool. The second part is homeschool as discipleship, and I talk about how our goal or one of our goals in homeschooling was to disciple our children for Jesus. To disciple someone for Jesus is to teach them the way, to show them how to walk with the Lord, to help them build their own relationship with Christ, and as parents, I believe that's part of what we do, and so homeschooling was a wonderful tool in doing that. Part three was homeschooling as a lifestyle, and I spoke on that last week and how, for us, homeschooling got so much better when I learned how to make it part of our life and not just something we do, but it's who we are. We are always learning, always growing, and we incorporated our homeschool as part of our life and it made it so much better.

Audrey: 4:38

But this week I want to talk with you about finding your homeschool style. There are as many different reasons to homeschool as there are families. There are a lot of different ways to homeschool and styles of homeschooling, and today I want to talk with you briefly about several of the most popular or most common styles of homeschooling. The reason I want to talk with you about that is because, once you know your homeschool style, it answers a lot of the other questions and it makes things go a little smoother.

Audrey: 5:12

One of the first things people ask when they decide to homeschool, or one of the first things they think about, is what curriculum am I going to use? So a lot of people they jump straight from I'm going to homeschool to what curriculum am I going to use? Well, when you know your homeschool style, it really narrows down the choices of curriculum, because every curriculum is developed for a particular style. So when you know your homeschool style, it kind of points you in the right direction of what kind of curriculum you should be looking for. Also, when you know your homeschool style, it helps you find a group of people that have a similar style or that think a similar way. Now you might say why is that that important? Because you're going to need those people.

Audrey: 5:58

Like I said, there are many different ways to homeschool and I enjoy talking to people who homeschool differently than me and people who homeschool the same way I did. I like to hear people's stories. I like to know why they decided to homeschool and what it looks like in their home. But when I find people who are homeschooling for similar reasons or who have similar personalities as I do, then, when things get hard, I have a resource, I have somebody I can go to and say well, what do you do when this happens? Or how do you handle this situation? Or when I'm just discouraged and I want to quit, I have people who are like, no, you don't want to do that, this will pass, you'll get over this hump. And so when you find your homeschool style, you can find your tribe, you can find the people that are going to be helpful in this walk, and you don't have to do it alone. You don't want to do it alone.

Audrey: 6:56

Now I'm not going to go into all of the homeschool styles in detail. Like I said, I'm not an expert. When I first started homeschooling, I remember thinking I had to become an expert, and it brought peace to my mind when one day I realized I don't have to be an expert on every child or every homeschool style. I just need to become an expert for my child. You know, I need to learn how my children work, how they think, how they grow, because I can't learn it all. So I'm not an expert. I can't tell you all the ins and outs. I can tell you I've done a lot of research and I've read a lot of books, but I did that not necessarily to teach you, but because I was trying to figure it out. Now, everybody has their favorites and I don't want to step on anybody's toes. So I'm going to give it probably a very general overview of the most common homeschool styles and I'll tell you why and how we landed where we landed. But if you want more information, if you want more details, like I said, go to my blog and I'll talk about these in more detail. Sometimes, when we know our why why we're homeschooling we can automatically figure out our homeschool style. For some people it works that way.

Audrey: 8:15

I have a friend. Her name is Rose Marie and she is not a native English speaker. English is her second language and she speaks it well. But she wanted to homeschool her children, at least until they entered high school. But she wasn't comfortable teaching them herself because she didn't know what she didn't know and she wanted to make sure they got the best education they could, at least a good foundation, so that when they entered high school they'd be ready for whatever they faced. So she decided to go the online route, and what that means is she signed her kids up for a public school online. I think she did Connections Academy. There are several, some of them are Christian based, some of them are sponsored through universities, but she did Connections Academy. It was completely accredited, all of the teachers were certified teachers, and so she had activities that she did as a family, but then her kids had instructors that were all online and that worked great for her. That was perfect for her because she could spend time with her kids at home, she could pour into them, but she knew they were getting what they needed academically and her oldest child has already gone to public school and he is doing great. And because she knew what her goal was, she knew this fits what our family needs. So online education is definitely a valid option.

Audrey: 9:51

What a lot of people do and this is what I did to start with is they adopt the school at home model or the traditional model. What that means is that you take the traditional school model and you just bring it home. I know some public school teachers who decided they wanted to homeschool and so they took that model, brought it home and it works great for them. Okay, of course, minus the. They don't have the bells and they don't have, you know, classroom of 30 kids, but for the most part, they stick with a traditional curriculum and that's how they teach and that's how their kids learn.

Audrey: 10:28

Now, like I said, we started there and I'll give you a little story on why we started there or how we started there. First of all, we started there because that's what I knew Most of you listening that's what we knew. That's where we went. We went to school at a traditional school and so that was school to me. And so when I decided to homeschool my kids actually my church had had a Christian school a few years before my kids were born. The school had shut down, but all the curriculum was there and the pastor at the time he said I could use anything I wanted to, and this was a really expensive curriculum and a lot of people really love it. So I thought, well, this is a no-brainer, I will use this curriculum. Also, my sister, she used this curriculum and so that's the way I went and, like I said, it was a traditional school at home curriculum.

Audrey: 11:21

It didn't work for me. It worked great for my sister. She just graduated one last year and she's graduating another student this year using that same curriculum. It was great for them. It just didn't jive with me. I didn't like it, the kids didn't like it, it was frustrating and it took me a while to figure out what was wrong. It just wasn't my style but I had to try it to figure out. It wasn't my style, so I knew this is not the kind of curriculum that works for me and this probably is not my style, but at the time I didn't even know what my style was.

Audrey: 12:01

Now I found a book Somebody put in my hands a book that I found very helpful and it was called so You're Thinking About Homeschooling and it was by Lisa Wetchel. Now Lisa Wetchel for you guys who are my age, you may remember a show that used to come on called the Facts of Life. She was Blair on the Facts of Life and she became a Christian and she homeschooled her kids and she wrote this book. And I found this book helpful. In the book she shares 15 examples of homeschool families from all different walks of life and all different homeschool styles and how, for different reasons, they decide to homeschool and how they homeschool, and for me it opened up possibilities. It made me think of homeschooling in a new way. I got to see how you know everybody's different and it doesn't have to look like the person next door. It doesn't have to look like traditional school, doesn't have to look like your best friend, and you know, god has a plan. We just have to figure out what that plan is for us. So I really encourage you to get that book. Now, that's an older book. I'm sure there are newer books that do the same thing, but this was the one I read. It was called so You're Thinking About Homeschooling? By Lisa Wetchel, and I'll put the link to that in the show notes. But that helped me kind of get my wheels turning, like, ok, we don't have to do it this way. And in that book, the families that I was drawn to, like the stories that really clicked with me. That gave me a clue that, ok, this, maybe this is the way we should go.

Audrey: 13:42

Now I'm going to go really quickly over several of the different types of homeschool styles. Two of them we've already mentioned online school and the traditional or school-at-home model. Another is unit studies. Now, unit studies is where you take a theme and all of your subjects are taught around that theme. Silly example Okay, let's say that for this month, our theme is frogs. Well, you're going to teach spelling, literature, math, science, all of these things you're going to teach around the theme of frogs? For science, we can talk about what an amphibian is. We can talk about the life cycle of a frog. We can talk about the difference between frogs and toads. For literature, we can read books about frogs. We can read the princess and the frog. For reading, they can read toad and frog. For spelling, we can learn how to spell things like frog, toad, more advanced students amphibian metamorphosis, habitat. So you kind of get the picture. Frog is the theme. Subjects all revolve around that theme.

Audrey: 14:56

Now I read a book early on, not too long after we started homeschooling, and I think I'm pretty sure this book is out of print, but it was very encouraging for me. But it was called Better Late Than Early by Raymond Moore, and in that he was an advocate of unit studies, and so that was the first time I was introduced to that concept and I loved it. Studies, and so that was the first time I was introduced to that concept and I loved it. I thought, oh, this is such a great idea and the idea is that it just makes learning more natural. I tried it for a season but I wasn't very good at it. I don't think I'm organized enough for it and at the time I didn't know about all of the wonderful curriculum resources that are out there for families who like to teach this way. So if that sounds like something you're interested in, you know you just go and do a search on unit study curriculum and there is a plethora of things out there. But, like I said, we tried it. It didn't go that great for us, but I'm sure it wasn't the method, I'm sure it was me, I'm sure it was me Now.

Audrey: 15:56

Another very popular homeschool style is classical. And this homeschool style it was popularized by a book by Susan Wise Bauer called the Well-Trained Mind, and I have read that book, even though we were not classical homeschoolers. I gleaned a lot of wisdom from it. Classical homeschoolers, I gleaned a lot of wisdom from it. Now, the traditional classical model is that there are three stages of learning called the trivium, and in those stages there's the grammar stage, the logic stage and the rhetoric stage, and those stages loosely parallel elementary school, middle school, high school. I am like I said, I am not an expert on the classical method, so I don't want to, you know, misrepresent it. I will tell you that it's interesting. I learned a lot by reading the book, but I did not follow it because we were just more we had. Like I said in my last podcast episode, I flowed more than I stayed with a strict schedule and so, although I learned a lot from it, it wasn't something that I adhered to.

Audrey: 17:09

I will say that Susan Wise Bower's book is not the only way to implement a classical education. There are other resources out there to do so. I enjoyed listening to podcasts by Andrew Kern. He is the founder of the Searcy Institute and you can go to searcyinstitutecom and he has some. I found some very encouraging messages by him about why we educate our children, and he's Christian based, and so if you're interested in the classical method, those are the two places I would start. I would start with the Searcy Institute and I would start with the Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer.

Audrey: 17:51

Now the next method I'm going to talk about is the Charlotte Mason method. That one holds a dear place in my heart because that's where we landed and we stayed for a long time. Now, such a brief overview here, but Charlotte Mason was a British educator at the turn of the 20th century. She was ahead of her time. She wrote several books about education and she taught teachers how to teach children. Her methods were taught in schools there were Charlotte Mason schools but also in homes. They fit well in homes. I read several of her books. Ambleside Online is a free curriculum dedicated to Charlotte Mason and her methods and I learned so much there and that's where I, like I said, that's where we stayed for a long time.

Audrey: 18:45

One of her mottos was education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life, and that fit in really well with my desire to make homeschooling a part of our lifestyle. In one of her books, a philosophy of education, she lists her 20 principles of of education, and that was helpful for me to kind of see that, yes, this is the style that I want to use. I did, to the best of my ability, implement a Charlotte Mason type homeschool for many years. It was never perfect, but I enjoyed it, we enjoyed it. It fit us. You know, we spent hours reading, we spent hours outside doing nature study, we spent much time on the couch singing hymns and folk songs, and it was fun. You know, if you're going to do this, let's make it fun, right? And so her method just spoke to me. It clicked with me and that's where we stayed for many years.

Audrey: 19:46

But you can check her out. You can check out Charlotte Mason. There's so many blogs out there. Simply charlottemasoncom is a good place to start. Like I said before, amblesidecom is a wonderful way, is a wonderful place to start. The ladies on there are awesome. They're very helpful. All the curriculum is free. Many of the books you can find in the public domain and so I really I recommend it. It was awesome.

Audrey: 20:13

Another homeschool style is unschooling. Same thing. I don't I never unschooled, so I don't want to misrepresent unschooling, but unschooling is very child led Unschooling. It was popularized by John Holt who wrote. It's a classic now, but it was a book called how Children Learn. I'll put these books in the show notes so you can find them if you want to go check them out. I have read his book. I found many nuggets in it. I thought it had some wisdom in it, but I just my personality, I just couldn't unschool. I guess I don't trust the process enough. I had to have lessons, I had to have plans.

Audrey: 20:55

Think of unschooling as the exact opposite of a traditional school model. A traditional model the teacher is making the plan and the student follows the plan, is making the plan and the student follows the plan. Well, with unschooling, the student is making the plan and the teacher is not really even a teacher. It's more of a facilitator, providing what the student needs to follow their plan. The student learns what they want to learn, when they want to learn it and how they want to learn it. There are some awesome blogs out there of people who have gone that route and loved it and their kids have flourished and they've done really well.

Audrey: 21:35

Another popular homeschool style is the Montessori style. You probably know of schools that use this style and it was developed in the early 1900s by Marie Montessori. She was an Italian physician who studied children and how they learned and from her studies she implemented this child-centered learning style where, similar to unschooling, the instructor is really more of a facilitator than an instructor, is really more of a facilitator than an instructor. It's really more of a facilitator than a teacher and it emphasizes self-regulation in the child, teaching the child how to learn. It's very hands-on and I've seen many schools in our area that have adopted this model and they're doing really well with it and I think it's interesting. I don't know as much about it as I do, the Charlotte Mason method, but that's something that you can check out.

Audrey: 22:36

And last but not least, I'll mention the Eclectic Homeschooler. And I guess if I had to put me in a box, that's where I'd put me, because the eclectics don't like to be put in a box. You know, eclectic homeschooling is basically you pull from different styles what works for you. And see, the wonderful thing about an eclectic homeschooler is you can use a different style for a different child, for a different subject. You make it your own, you can figure out what works for you guys and you can implement that in your home. And I consider myself an eclectic homeschooler because, like I said, we started off with a very traditional curriculum that didn't work. So then we tried unit studies for a little bit. Didn't love that. We settled on Charlotte Mason for a long time. But even in the Charlotte Mason community there were things. Didn't love that. We settled on Charlotte Mason for a long time. But even in the Charlotte Mason community there were things that didn't work for me. And instead of beating myself up and thinking, oh I just you know, I can't do this right, I just you know came to the realization one day that I don't have to be married to this. You know, I'll tell you a story Towards the end, I guess the last two years of my homeschool career, maybe three years of my homeschool career I had, like I said, I fell in love with the Charlotte Mason method and it worked well for us until it didn't and I had a kid.

Audrey: 24:11

I had a kid who was struggling in some areas and you know, everywhere I went to find help and I went to forums and I, you know, I talked to people and and different things, and people were like, you know, do it this way and do it that way. And this was all good Charlotte Mason advice, but it it it didn't click for us. And this was all good Charlotte Mason advice, but it didn't click for us and it was like I was trying to make the method fit the child. Okay, I'd found something that worked and I was not ready to jump ship.

Audrey: 24:41

And I remember it was like I was praying one day and it was like I saw this word picture is the only way I know how to explain it it was like the Lord had called me to homeschool and so that was a huge challenge for me and I was nervous, but I was excited and I didn't know how to do it. So it was like I was in this boat with everybody else and the Lord had called me out the boat. He called Peter and said come, come, peter. And so Peter got up and he left everybody in that boat and that was a huge challenge. But he trusted Jesus enough to get up out the boat and go to Jesus. And that's what it felt like to me when I started homeschooling. I'm getting out of this boat and I'm going somewhere. I don't know exactly where I'm going, but I got my eyes on Jesus and I'm going to trust him. And that's how it felt when I first started homeschooling.

Audrey: 25:36

Well, when I found myself years later at a place where what we were doing didn't quite fit me, at that point it wasn't answering the questions that I needed at that point it was like the Lord telling me you're in a boat, it's like you've gotten out of the water. It's like you've gotten out of one boat. You've walked across the lake and you got in the Charlotte Mason boat and now you're comfortable and it's not fitting. I'm calling you out of that boat. And I didn't like that because I had found my place. I had found my style, I had found my tribe, but this wasn't fitting, and so it was like a leap of faith. I had to stand up and say you know what I love this, but I'm not married to this. And I had to get up again and walk it on the water to a place that was uncomfortable.

Audrey: 26:37

And that was a great word picture for me, and that's why I guess I would consider myself an eclectic homeschooler, because I found something that worked until it didn't. And that's the wonderful thing about homeschooling is we get to choose. We get to decide what works for us and what doesn't, and we can change it even after we've done it for a long time. So I hope that word picture helped you. It helped me and I hope that this message has helped you and at least maybe open up your mind to some things that are out there that are possible.

Audrey: 27:12

And if you have any questions, please reach out to me and let me know. I'd love to talk with you. I had a few people reach out to me this week. Alyssa, she contacted me. She's from Virginia and she contacted me and told me that she's listening. And, alyssa, I just want to say thank you. That means the world to me. That's why I do this and if I can answer any questions, guys, please let me know. There is an option in the show notes where you can click and send me a text and I can't respond unless you give me your email. But I get those and I read those and I appreciate that. I hope and pray you have a great week. Thank you for listening, god bless.