Home education is uniquely poised to provide exceptional opportunities to focus on each child’s strengths and weaknesses, both academic and non-academic. Please remember that children have different academic abilities, and there is nothing wrong with possessing gifts in different areas. Academic excellence is not the end-all and be-all. For instance:

• One child may do well in some academic subjects (for instance, math and chemistry) and struggle in others (such as language arts and biology).
• Another child may excel academically but struggle athletically.
• A third child may excel athletically but lack a creative bone in his or her body.
• A fourth child may excel artistically but find academic studies and athletics challenging.
• A fifth child may have equal gifts — of varying ability — in two or more of these (or other) areas.

One thing all of our children have in common is this:

Each of them is a unique individual with a great deal to offer our world.

As home educating parents, let us do our best to inspire our children to excel in their strengths and to improve in their weaker areas, and let us always encourage them to be kind and good members of our families, of our society, and of our world at large.

Parents decide to home educate their children for a multitude of reasons.

Are you thinking about home educating:

• for academic reasons;
• because of religious convictions;
• because your child’s learning style does not mesh well with a traditional classroom situation;
• to protect your children from negative influences;
• to have more quality time as a family;
• so that your child has more time to train in a specific sport;
• to protect your child from being bullied?

Read more: Why Home Educate?

There are many different approaches to home educating, and it’s not unusual for a home educating family to change their approach as they become more comfortable and experienced with home educating.

Some approaches include:

• Curricular: Highly structured, using mostly textbooks and workbooks
• Accelerated Education: The student begins high school when as young as 10 to 12 years old
• Delayed Academics: No formal studies until a student is 8 to 12 years old
• Classical Education: Trivium-based form of education using the grammar, logic and rhetoric stages; used to develop critical thinkers
• Unit Studies: Integrates and relates several subject areas into one theme
• Charlotte Mason Method: Learning through real-life “living” books
• Delight-Directed Studies: Learning based on child’s areas of interest
• Unschooling: Learning through natural life experiences
• Eclectic: A combination of two or more approaches

Read more: Approaches to Home Education and Selecting Curriculum