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

When deciding on an approach, you may want to consider:

• your children’s style(s) of learning (two children may be better served by two different approaches);
• the number of children you teach at the same time;
• the level of learning ability (which for any given student, may be higher in one subject area and lower in another when compared to public school levels/grades);
• the level of confidence you have as a teacher; and
• the amount of money you are able to, or desire to, spend on resources and curriculum.