how to homeschool

6 Different Approaches To Home-Education

Most home-educating families fall into one of these categories. And yet, every family has their own way of home-schooling. There are as many ways to home-school as there are families who do it.

There Are No Rules…

In all our years of home-educating, I’ve never met two families who do things the same way, even if they follow the same philosophy, and I’ve rarely met a family who’ve stuck rigidly with one approach.

Most of us try things out, adapting, changing, tweaking as necessary depending on our children’s or family’s needs.

And now, to add to that long list on Google, here’s an introduction to the most popular approaches to home-education, in a nutshell. You’ll find links to books, websites, blogs, and podcasts so you can delve deeper into whatever appeals to you.

The three stages of the trivium are as follows:

  • The Grammar Stage, roughly age 4-11, is a time for acquiring knowledge through memorization (think times tables, definitions of parts of speech, etc.), and skills through practice (think handwriting). This may sound tedious to an adult, but consider how easily children of this age absorb information; my son had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Aussie Rules football statistics at this stage, and was happy to spend entire days creating animals out of loom bands, practicing until he perfected his skills.
  • The Logic/Dialectic Stage, roughly age 11-14, is when the child learns to reason and to analyse information, to compose arguments and debate intelligently. Again, developmentally, this is an age where children are naturally inclined to challenge all kinds of rules and assumptions.
  • The Rhetoric Stage, roughly age 14-18, is a time for applying the knowledge (grammar) which is by now well understood (logic) to the world at large (what we call wisdom). During this stage, the young adult is learning to communicate ideas and information with authority, both in writing and verbally.

A classical education will have an emphasis on literature, languages, history, and the arts (although not to the exclusion of other subjects). Reading, writing, and speaking are very important.

The aim of a classical education is to create a person who appreciates truth, goodness, and beauty and who will continue to learn throughout their life.

*A little note – most of the classical home-education resources available assume a Christian world view. The links below are resources that we have found useful and interesting,. Use your own discretion when it comes to adapting content to suit your family.

Over To You….

So, there you have it – the most common approaches to home-education, in a nutshell. Home-school is whatever you choose to make it. That is an awesome responsibility, but it’s also an awesome opportunity.

You get to choose what works for your family.

Be open to new ideas, be flexible, be humble, laugh together, read together (a lot), listen to your child.

Enjoy the journey!

(Article written by Catherine Monaghan)

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