Eclectic Homeschooling

A lot of us follow an eclectic homeschooling approach, even if we don't start out that way!

Eclectic homeschool lets you adopt a pick-and-mix approach and choose whatever learning style suits your child best.

I am one of the very few people taught at home myself and now I homeschool my own children.

Being homeschooled myself has let me use the best bits of my Mom's more classical style and add to it a more relaxed approach to homeschooling my own children.

What is an Eclectic Homeschool?

I have to confess 'eclectic' is a word that I rarely use in real life.

I wonder if it's only me who finds 'eclectic' the sort of word I tend to look up in the dictionary!

However, as with many things in homeschool, it all comes clear once you've actually been homeschooling for a while.

When you come to decide on which home school schedule suits you best, you'll soon find that there are all sorts of different approaches to homeschool education.

Learning Styles

The first step is to work out how your child learns.

Is your child a visual learner? Or do they learn best when actually doing the activity?

All children learn differently, and the magic of homeschooling is that you can adapt your teaching to whatever learning style suits your child.

Homeschooling Methods

Here are some of the homeschooling options you can choose:

One

1.  A traditional 'school at home' approach.

Two

2.  Learning through Unit Studies. You can see this method in action in three of our homeschool Unit Studies:

• Rainforest For Kids
• Ocean Creatures
• Kids Dinosaurs Activities
• Lapbooks are often used as a way to bring these Unit Studies together

Three

3.  Online curriculum. I've suggested a few online sites in my page on free home school materials and would welcome suggestions!

Four

4.  Workbooks to re-enforce and add structure to 'free learning.'

• I've made some free story kids creative writing worksheets
  
• And here's how to get hold of the best free homeschooling worksheets

Five

5.  Unschooling. In the UK we call this 'autonomous' learning.

Homeschooling allows you to follow the interests of your child and learning is child-led.

John Holt is probably the figure most associated with unschooling, but his ideas speak to all of us who are concerned about the way our kids are educated.

You can see what unschooling looks like in my page on what is unschooling?

Eclectic homeschooling means adopting a magpie approach and choosing bits out of all of the above options!

Real Life Homeschooling

Please note that the book links on this page are affiliate links so if you buy I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Confused? The best way to see what might suit your child best is to see how other homeschooling families do things so you can pick the method that works best.

Why Eclectic Homeschooling?

I think you may find that eclectic homeschool is often where you'll end up!

Here are some of the reasons:

• When you're getting going on homeschooling it's very common to stick to the methods you know about and everyone else expects you to follow.

• As you'll see from our our homeschooling day, things change over time. When the children are young, you may find sticking to a strict timetable doesn't fit with reality.
• If you are homeschooling a child with special needs, an eclectic approach may well help your child succeed far better than a traditional school-style week.
  

• Curricula and worksheets don't suit every child. Having head to head confrontations every day can be one of the big anti-homeschooling reasons against teaching your child  and make you give up altogether.

Which leads us on to the last and most important point:

Homeschooling's greatest strength is that it allows you to pick and choose what method suits your child best.

Eclectic homeschooling allows you to be a true homeschool scavenger and decide what's best for your child at any particular time.

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