Picture this; You've decided that you want to try educating your child in a different way to mainstream. Maybe you were influenced by idyllic Instagram posts or your own experiences with the main stream schooling system have made you want to learn more about what this entails. Home school is definitely the way you want to go. But wait! Now you're seeing words like unschooling, deschooling, flexi schooling, school from home, you name it when honestly? You just thought home school was home school and that was that.
Well I'm here to help with some explanations of different home education terminology and styles so that you can decide what would suit you and your family best (or just give you a better idea of how other families work).
If there's a specific style you wanted an explanation of you can jump to it here:
Home Education:
Home education is the umbrella under which all the different styles of educating fall. Whether you are an unschooler or flexischooling, you will be a home educator. If you're looking for a broad term when a stranger or family member asks "We home educate" will have you covered without having to explain in detail what that means.
Now that we have covered the basic, lets dive into some different styles that the home education umbrella covers!
Homeschool:
Homeschool is often what people will say when they are referring to home education but it is actually very much its own branch rather than encompassing everything.
Homeschool (or school at home) is a much more traditional approach to home education than the other styles in this guide. People practicing homeschooling will be:
Following a more structured routine
Use set curriculums
Create a similar environment to a classroom
Have set working hours
Have set terms within the year
Unschooling:
Unschooling families are at the opposite end of the spectrum to homeschooling families. Where homeschoolers thrive on structure, unschoolers thrive on freedom. When a lot of people see unschooling they think that there is no parental involvement in the educational process when actually unschooling parents/carers have to be VERY involved. Unschooling requires a lot of facilitation on the part of the adult involved. For example if your child shows a passion for cooking it's then your responsibility to ensure that your child has all the resources they need to kindle that love and grow into the keen chef that they are at heart. This could look like having them help with meal prep, having them create shopping lists for the meals they want to cook and going and getting them. It could be showing them safe knife skills or finding appropriate cooking shows for the kind of cuisine they want to cook. It could be providing recipe books and encouraging them to adapt and improve those recipes. It could be enrolling them in a cookery course. It could be helping them to film videos of them cooking for the Youtube channel they want to create. My point is the possibilities are endless but it's up to you to facilitate and nurture, without smothering their love. It can be a challenging balancing act! But the hardwork you put in as an educator will pay off when you see your children flourishing.
Another common misconception about unschooling is that we don't teach our kids crucial life skills like reading, writing and athematic. This just isn't true. Just because we choose to have a more freestyle approach doesn't mean that we don't have ANY lessons, they just might look a little different to traditional, sit down and listen lessons. Personally, we teach phonics with a tutor on Plassroom once a week and back this up with reading practice daily, math is taught through board games and Osmo (I highly recommend their Wizard Math series!). A lot of our learning is play based and then backed up with real life application. Going back to the cookery example, Addition, subtraction, fractions and multiplication can all be taught from following recipes and changing serving sizes, reading practice can be reading the recipes and as for science and cookery they go hand in hand! Everything from anatomy to chemistry is covered by cooking if you know where to look. If you are worried about whether your child is getting a "well rounded" education when you start unschooling try documenting everything you do in a day with them and then adding in what subjects were covered. You'll soon see that they are gaining everything they need.
One of my favourite unschooling accounts is Little Fenders. Jolene is an ace unschooler as well as a pro at setting up home school co-ops!
Flexischooling:
Flexischooling is the term used when a child is both home educated AND registered in a traditional school. This can take many different shapes from a couple of days at school and the rest of the week at home, 4 days at school and the rest at home or taking time out of school as needed depending on the childs' needs that day.
It's worth noting that flexischooling is NOT something that any school has to offer or accommodate by law so it will be at the schools discretion whether they are open to a flexischooling schedule.
Flexischooling can be a great approach for many families if you;
Don't have the resources to home educate full time
Your child enjoys school but becomes overwhelmed by it
You want to try home education but don't want to commit fully
You child has school related anxiety and needs a shorter week for their mental health
These are just a handful of reasons why flexischooling may work for you.
If you are on Instagram one of my favourite flexi schooling accounts is Fiona Cameron Green. She has lots of information on flexischooling as well as how to handle schools who may be reluctant to support you or your childs needs. She also has great resources on deferring your summer born child for later entry and what your rights are to defer.
Deschooling:
Deschooling can be used to describe a few different situations in the home education world (and it wasn't until I started typing this that I realized just how broad those situations are!).
To put it simply, deschooling is the stage where we retrain our brains to come out of the traditional schooling system and into the home education world.
For children who have been in a traditional schooling system deschooling is often used to describe the period of time between being taken out of school and starting home education. It can be really useful to have this time to let children relax, recover if they need to and find their love of learning again! Not every child will need this time whilst some will need a much longer period to adjust. Take it at your own pace and find the right rhythm for your family.
You'll also see deschooling used a lot in regards to educators who have been through a traditional schooling system and are now stepping into home education for their own children. I can be really hard to deprogram our brains from the Monday-Friday, 8-4, 40 weeks a year mentality but you will get there! It's worth noting that for most home educators I have spoken to it takes men longer to adjust and see how home education is just as effective (if not more so) compared to traditional schooling and school hours.
World Schooling:
World schooling is exactly what it sounds like. It's using the world outside of your home or a school as your classroom. Many families who travel frequently tend to use a world schooling approach, using the culture of the area and resources such as museums and local gardens or parks as their "classrooms".
World schooling doesn't have to be 100% of the time and any trip outside of your local area could be classed as world schooling. A day trip to the seaside, a weekend away, your 7 day holiday abroad or taking 3 months to travel Europe. All of this could be described as world schooling. The more you embrace and immerse yourself in local cultures, the more of an education you will receive.
Essentially world schooling is another form of unschooling where you use everyday experiences to educate instead of a textbook.
Road Schooling:
Really this can follow on from world schooling but there is a subtle difference so it gets its own category.
Road schooling is learning on the road (exactly as it says on the tin!). Families who road school will move around a lot and live from their vehicles. Road schooling isn't something that you will see very much of in the UK and it's essentially small scale world schooling within your own country. You will see more families in countries like America or Australia who road school where they can explore more (and the weather is better suited to it!).
Secular Education:
Secular home educators are those who keep their faith based views and education separate. This doesn't mean that they don't teach about religion but rather that they keep their own religious believes out of the conversation when teaching. If you are a secular home educator you wouldn't choose to use faith based learning materials (for example you can get many biblical based early reader and hand writing textbooks) and you wouldn't have daily religious study based on your own religious group.
For a lot of home ed families this is a difficult stance to take as we all have our own beliefs and it can be tricky to keep those out of the classroom! But for many it is a simple choice.
We personally take a secular approach and have yet to discuss any religion (apart from ancient Greek gods and goddesses) within our education. I'm sure this will change as we delve more into geography and history over the coming years and I can't wait for the conversations we'll have around it!
Eclectic Homeschooling:
I've saved the best until last!
Probably my favorite term and what I suspect the majority of home educators would actually be classified as (even if they don't want to admit it).
Eclectic homeschooling is the combination of a diverse set of education styles and methods and combining them into a specialized method of learning unique to your child/family.
Basically it's where you take all the best bits from different curriculums, education theories and learning styles and just use what works for you without worrying about any labels!
There can be some quite heated arguments about what is and isn't a certain type of education *cough* Waldorf and Montessori *cough* but at the end of the day does it REALLY matter what style you use or if you mix and match the best bits, so long as your children are happy, healthy and thriving? I don't think so.
I hope this has been a helpful explanation of some of the different styles of home education and has busted some of the jargon for you!
Are there any specific terms that you've seen or heard and are unsure of? Leave a comment and I'll do my best to explain them to you!
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