The Three Popular Paths to Homeschooling
For some people, home schooling is when parents watch over their children working in a textbook… but that couldn’t be further from the truth in most cases. There are several recognized ways of educating a child in a home setting, and the one you decide to follow through with depends on your and your infant’s personality. First off, we have Charlotte Mason’s system (she was the founder of home schooling). She was known as someone dedicated to make home school programs thrive… she wanted to make them fun as well as educational for the children. Even though she taught practically every subject, she placed heavy emphasis on subjects such as poetry, classic literature and music, fine arts… etc… etc… When it came to reading, her method was to have a kid (at least 6 years of age) read something, and then give an account of what he’d read in his own words. Also, she used the “Nature Diary” technique, which consisted of having kids look up something interesting they see in nature and transcribe it anyway they want to in their journal.
The second style is the eclectic style, which basically has no schedule or syllabus. The parents merely pick topics which they believe their children ought to learn. The main advantage of this style is the way it drives infants to learn, since the program is adapted to suit any child’s strengths and weaknesses. These eclectic programs also include a lot of field trips to museums and the like. The third path has been developed by John Holt, and he called it the unschooling method of Homeschooling. The basis for this method was hands-on learning. His belief consisted of allowing children to learn what they want at their own pace… in other words, parents should be teaching children what they want to learn. Out of all the systems available, this is the most chaotic one. There are many more home school programs available out there, and as you can see, it’s up to the parent to know their child and to select the appropriate program.
