You have decided you want to homeschool but how do you actually start homeschooling? How do you make sure you are homeschooling legally as well as how do you really educate your children? I will be tackling those two questions today.

If you have been homeschooling for years but feel like you are stuck in a rut you may still benefit from this video as I give some tips and tricks on how to find a method that works for your personality and your family.

 

 

 

WATCH NEXT

• Homeschool Q & A – With My Husband!
• Homeschool Bookshelf & Cabinet Tour – Sharing Some of Our Favorite Homeschool Resources
• What’s Been Working in Our Homeschool Lately

 

MORE HOMESCHOOL RESOURCES FOR YOU

• Most Common Homeschool Methods
• Free Homeschooling as a Lifestyle Workshop
• Free Unschooling Workshop
• Free Homeschool Printables and Resources

I’m not really the kind of person who likes to put myself in a box (I’m a rebel through and through) BUT I have found it helpful to figure out what homeschool method works best for us.

We just finished our fourth year homeschooling and we finally hit our stride in the last few months of this year once I realized that there was a definite homeschool style that suited our family.

Today I’m going to share the five most popular homeschool methods that I see people gravitating to these days and what they actually mean.

These are very short summaries to give you an overview. My goal here is to give you a brief idea of these methods and then if you find one that resonates with you, you can research it further.

 

 

 

The 5 Most Popular Homeschool Methods and Styles Explained

 

 

CLASSICAL

Classical education is called so because of the emphasis placed on classical writings. Families who follow a classical homeschool method usually follow a pretty rigid schedule, read from the original classic words and focus a lot on writing and memorization.

If I were to chose one word to describe classical education, it would be “rigorous”. 

This method reminds me a lot of the type of education we read people receiving about 150 years ago when there was a big focus on memorization because they didn’t have all the answers at their finger tips like we do now.

This method best suits those who like a lot of structure and routine. It also requires a lot of parental guidance and input, especially in the early years. If you like rote memorization, history and classic works this may be the method for you.

 

 

CHARLOTTE MASON

The Charlotte Mason method is named after an English educator who taught in the late 1800 and early 1900’s.

The Charlotte Mason method has a strong Christian emphasis and you’ll find most families that follow her method are quite involved in nature study as well.

Charlotte Mason was big on habit training, teaching children in short lessons and having the afternoons for time in nature. She is also well known for her idea of using living resources, instead of using dry textbooks she liked to use books written by authors who were passionate about a certain topic.

This method best suits those who want to expose their children to a lot of good resources, focus on Christian discipleship and want to cover many different subjects in a day. If you like structured mornings with afternoons free (at least in the early years), studying nature and focusing on living books, this may be the method for you.

 

 

UNIT STUDIES

I think most of us know about unit studies from our time in school!

Unit studies are pretty simple to explain, you just take a topic (like pirates) and for the period of time that you are studying that unit all (or most) of your subjects stem from that unit. So, for a pirate unit you’ll have your children do their writing around that topic, you’ll study the history of pirates, for science you may find some different experiments to try (like, does covering your eye with an eye patch help you see in the dark?), etc.

This method best suits those who like to dive in deep into one topic at a time. If you like to research and organize resources and materials this may be the method for you.

 

 

ECLECTIC

The eclectic homeschooler is one who finds themselves pulling bits and pieces from a variety of the different homeschool methods and bringing them all together for their homeschool.

This method may be for you if you have been reading the previous methods and found yourself agreeing to several of the pieces from each method.

 

 

UNSCHOOLING

Unschooling is pretty much child-led learning. As an unschooling parent your job is to pay attention to your child’s skills and interests and help them dive into learning about them by providing a variety of different resources for them.

With unschooling, resources and curriculum are not used unless the child wants to use them and they directly benefit them in some way.

This method best suits those who like to encourage their children in the areas they are gifted in and provide them the resources to learn more. If you like to have a pretty open schedule and provide your children plenty of time to be bored and creative this may be the method for you.

If you want to learn more about unschooling, I have a free workshop called Unschooling with Intention that you can check out here.

 

CONCLUSION

As I mentioned, that is just a very brief overview of five of the different homeschool methods. We’ve jumped around a bit on the different methods before firmly landing in the unschooling camp.

Also, what works for you one year may not work the next. The nice thing about homeschooling is that we have the ability to change things when we see they aren’t working.

I thought it would be fun to start a new series here on things that have been working in our homeschool lately, resources we’re loving and things I need to change.

We are doing year rounds schooling this year so while lots of people are closing out their school year we will just continue on the way we do. That being said, summer learning looks quite a bit different here than winter learning, since we spend a lot more time outside in the summer than we do in the winter.

Okay, the video and the resources are below!

 

 

 

I would love it if you would subscribe on YouTube!

 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

The Handbook of Nature Study

50 Ways to Draw Your Beautiful Ordinary Life

Free Sermon Notes Printable

The Beginner’s Bible

Night of the Ninjas

Inkheart

Furthermore

Almost Super

The BFG

Sir Kendrick and the Castle of Bel Lione

Lorne Cunningham

Simply Piano

Free Homeschool Mini Planner Printable

I get lots of questions about homeschooling and I decided to bring Jared in for a Q & A video because homeschooling does not fall completely on my shoulders, it’s something we do as we live life together as a family.

In the video we are tackling these:

• how is unschooling going?
• what if your husband isn’t on board with homeschooling?
• what is your favorite part of homeschooling?
• how do you make sure you are following your local curriculum?
• how do we manage with extra curricular activities?
• how to we make individual Bible reading part of kids’ day?
• how do we homeschool while adjusting to a new foster care placement?
• with not requiring a lot of book work, do our kids ever revolt when asked to do something?
• how do we plan your homeschool year?
• how do we keep records of what we’ve covered?
• do we foresee any future concerns with homeschooling?
• how has your teaching degree helped with homeschooling?
• how do you make sure your kids are getting enough socialization?

 

 

 

RELATED LINKS

• my free homeschool vision planner book
• I like to keep track of our homeschool week using the weekly spread from my homeschool mini planner
• curious about unschooling? I have a free online workshop on the topic called Unschooling with Intention
• follow along with my homeschool Instagram account

Even though we recently switched to officially unschooling I still like planning. I’m in the process of reflecting on our last school year and will soon be planning for the next (though, to be honest, we learn all year round).

Last year I made a homeschool vision planner guide book and it was well received and downloaded thousands of times, I am going to be using the vision planner again this year to do some planning for our year but first I wanted to make a few updates.

The vision planner has now been updated and I can’t wait for other homeschoolers to use it to set a vision for the next school year.

 

 

The Vision Planner includes tons of questions to help guide your vision and goals for the next school year.

To grab your free homeschool vision planner guide book, just enter your email address below!

 

 

This month on the Intentional Homeschooling Instagram I have been hosting the third annual #HereIsOurHomeschool challenge. As part of it I have been sharing a number of our favorite homeschool resources in my Instagram stories and the other day I had the idea of doing a giveaway and buying some of our favorite homeschool resources for one lucky person, and because I like to act on things fairly quickly, here’s the giveaway!

Even though I am hosting the challenge over on Instagram I didn’t want to have the giveaway there because I’m honestly so over Instagram giveaways. I’m constantly being tagged by people for their entries into random giveaways and I knew that’s not how I wanted to set this up.

So, I’m hosting the giveaway here, if you want to win some of our favorite homeschool resources, read on!

 

WHAT YOU COULD WIN

I will be giving away $100 USD in value of our favorite resources!

I’ll send the winner a list of some of our favorite resources and they can pick $100 worth from the list, that way you won’t be getting something you already have!

You can see the photos at the end of this post for some ideas of our favorite resources.

 

 

HOW TO ENTER

You can get a maximum of 27 entries into the giveaway!

Here’s how:

1) Subscribe to my homeschool newsletter (then leave a comment on this post saying you did so)

2) Subscribe to my personal newsletter (then leave a comment on this post saying you did so)

3) Subscribe to my YouTube channel (then leave a comment on this post saying you did so)

4) Follow Intentional Homeschooling on Instagram (then leave a comment on this post saying you did so and tell me your Instagram username)

5) Follow my personal account on Instagram (then leave a comment on this post saying you did so and tell me your Instagram username)

6) Pin this post to Pinterest (then leave a comment on this post saying you did so)

7) Earn one entry per prompt that you participated in over on Instagram for a maximum of 21 entries (comment on this post and say your Instagram username and which prompt you did, for example: “@yourusername – nature study”), the possible entries include:

• challenge photo
• introduction
• method
• main homeschool space
• your bookshelf
• language arts
• math
• science
• history
• nature study
• geography
• extra curricular
• read alouds
• technology
• mother culture
• socialization
• games
• habits
• introverts & extroverts
• out of the box
• best tip

 

MORE ENTRY DETAILS

Each entry must have its own comment.

Comments that include more than one entry will not be allowed to win.

Comments that don’t say which entry they are for will not be counted.

I will verify to see if the winner actually completed the step they said they did (ie: subscribed to the newsletter, did the prompt on Instagram or whatever it may be).

If you’ve never left a comment on my blog before I will have to manually approve it, so don’t worry if it takes awhile to show up.

 

WHO CAN ENTER?

This giveaway is open worldwide! If the winner in Canada or the US I’ll send their items via Amazon, if they live elsewhere, we will figure it out!

 

WHEN WILL THE WINNER BE SELECTED?

You can enter the giveaway until the end of the day on June 1st and then I will use a random number generator on June 2nd to pick one lucky winner! I’ll share the winner over on my Instagram stories and will contact the winner via the email address they use for commenting on this post with their entries.

 

Here are some photos that include some of our favorite homeschool resources:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, you can enter by commenting below, good luck!

Welcome to a tour of our homeschool cabinet and resources! I have tried to link our favorite resources for you here.

If there are any other homeschool specific videos you would like to see in the future, let me know.

Also, I would love to hear what some of your favorite homeschool resources are, leave me a comment and let me know!

 

 

OTHER LINKS

curious about unschooling? I have a free online workshop on the topic.
my monthly-ish newsletter
homeschool newsletter
personal instagram
homeschool instagram
our foster care timeline