There are many approaches to homeschooling. We’ll help you find the one that fits your family.
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Discovering Your Homeschool Style: The Charlotte Mason Method
The Charlotte Mason method takes its name from a revolutionary English educator who lived from 1842 to 1923. At a time when children were educated according to their social class and only the wealthy were exposed to the riches of literature and fine arts, Mason believed that all children deserved […]
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Discovering Your Homeschool Style: The Classical Model
Classical home educators are united by their desire to cultivate a life of virtue in themselves and their children. They are devoted to teaching their children from the best of what Western Civilization has to offer. Many classical home educators follow the neoclassical approach outlined by Dorothy Sayers in her […]
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Discovering Your Homeschool Style: The Unit Study Approach
With the Unit Study method, families organize their learning around a central theme. There are so many different ways to use this strategy. A theme could be topical (like space, insects, or the Civil War) or seasonal (such as learning about maple syrup in early spring or snow during winter). […]
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Discovering Your Homeschool Style: The Traditional Approach
Many homeschoolers follow a Traditional approach, especially if they’re just starting out. Traditional style homeschooling (also known as a school-at-home approach) closely mimics the education your child receives in a mainstream public or private school. Are You Drawn to the Traditional Approach? Here are a few signs that you might […]
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Discovering Your Homeschool Style: The Unschooling Approach
Unschooling is a child-led approach to education where children have a high degree of autonomy over what and how they learn. Unschoolers seek to honor their children’s natural learning processes without imposing arbitrary timetables or grades on education. Those who identify as unschoolers exist on a spectrum. On one end […]
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Learning at the Speed of Life
Education has always been important to our family. When our son turned 3, my husband and I began the process of finding the best preschool. We chose a wonderful local learning center. Three mornings a week, we would drive from our home in the mountains to town. Our son loved […]
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Our Classical Homeschool Day Through the Years
We are a classically-focused homeschooling family. My husband and I have twin teenagers, a boy and a girl. We began homeschooling when they were in third grade, and our focus shifted over the years, but our kids are still classically-educated, even if it sometimes looks eclectic or relaxed. When we […]
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A Joining of Charlotte Mason and Classical Education
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting the Homeschool Compass by shopping through our page! Never in a million years did I think I would homeschool my children. Growing up, we had neighbors that homeschooled. They were considered a little strange by my family. Didn’t they know their kids would never get the […]
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Homeschooling: A World of Opportunity
Perhaps George Whitman, founder of the renowned Parisian bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, said it best: “All the world is my school, and all humanity is my teacher.” Many people think of learning as something that happens only in an educational setting or purposeful situation, but we have experiential learning opportunities […]
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Simplifying Classical Education
A few years ago, dressed in tennis shoes, shorts, and a T-shirt, I was happily riding along the bike trail on my son’s mountain bike. A woman rode alongside me just long enough to warn, “I wouldn’t ride out here without a helmet.” As she sped away in her full […]
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Discover Your Family’s Homeschooling Style
There are many ways to cook an egg, earn a living, tell a story, and teach a child. When it comes to homeschooling, styles range from strict adherence to traditional teaching to complete freedom for the student to follow his or her interests and everything in between. Whether you’re new […]
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Living the Adventure
When I first began to entertain the thought of homeschooling after the birth of my first child, I never imagined how that decision would lead us on a journey of a lifetime. But it has, and the only way to describe our experience is to say just that: it has […]
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Understanding Learning Intelligences & How They Impact Your Homeschool
What are Learning Intelligences? We all know people who struggled with a certain subject in school whether it was a classmate, a sibling, ourselves or our child. The tendency is to focus on the negative. “I’m no good at math; numbers just don’t make any sense” “I’ll never be able […]
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Homeschooling Philosophies and Methods
Deciding to homeschool was one of the most exciting times in my life as a parent. I had always loved the idea of homeschooling, but never thought I would be able or willing to take the plunge. When my husband and I finally determined that I should give it a […]
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A Gentle Preschool: The Charlotte Mason Way
The preschool years are a special time, full of wonder and innocence as children try to make sense of their world. I don’t know about you, but when I think about what I want for my preschoolers, I want these years to be abundantly full of excitement, discovery, and learning. […]
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Change: An Inevitable Part of Homeschooling
Kids’ “Back to School” picture, Fall 2017 If I had to describe our homeschool journey in one word it would be change. My reason for homeschooling has changed over the years. It started as simply not wanting my mature but impressionable daughter to be the oldest child in her class. I […]
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The Sense of Classical Education
The aim of a classical education is to form children into adults who pursue truth, prefer goodness, and proliferate beauty. The art of grammar provides practice in gathering truth naturally through hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling. The art of dialectic provides practice in wisely analyzing the goodness of the things we see, hear, […]
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Delight-Directed Learning
When my son was a little guy and we began homeschooling, I pored over homeschool magazines, surfed the Internet for hours, joined forums and Yahoo groups, and asked every homeschool mom I encountered a million questions about curriculum, homeschool methodology, and schedules. If I was going to homeschool my bright, […]
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The Unit Study Method
During my second year of homeschooling, a friend invited my girls over for a playdate. I will never forget the sound of my youngest, as she yelled across the house, “Mom, they get to make stuff and go on field trips for school! Why do we have to write in […]
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Relaxed Home Schooling ®
The basic tenets of relaxed homeschooling are the following: You are a family, not a school; You are a father, a husband, and the head of the family, not a principal; You are a mother, not a teacher; You have individual relationships with your children; not a classroom. Relaxed homeschooling […]
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What is Classical Christian Education? A Sailing Ship
The word classical is derived from the Latin word classis, which means “a fleet of ships.” Let me, therefore, touch on some of the ways in which classical Christian education can be likened to a ship. Like an old three-masted ship built of wood and powered by the wind, classical education sailed around […]
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Inside a Charlotte Mason Homeschool
Pull up a chair. We’re just getting started with our homeschooling for the day. Amy is eight this year, and we’re using the Charlotte Mason method. If you’re curious about what a typical day looks like, you’re welcome to take a peek inside this Charlotte Mason homeschool. 8:30—Scripture Memory I […]
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Understanding Learning Styles Sets Us Free
We were two weeks into my second son’s first grade year. It was our second year of homeschooling. He was seated at his desk, and I was stationed at the whiteboard, emulating my public school teachers. This was our routine: Me: “Sit still, Honey.” I would teach. Me: “Pay attention.” […]
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