Is our homeschool style eclectic? What does an eclectic homeschool look like?

River ferry trip

Most homeschoolers naturally use more than one approach to learning.  The very idea that one style fits every child, or that every child learns the same way, is incorrect.  It’s also what drives many of us to bring our children home to learn in the first place.  Some children can look at something once and remember everything they read, some children need to hear it spoken multiple times, some children learn best while they are moving….the list goes on.

Charlotte Mason…Classical…Traditional School at Home…Co-Ops…On-Line Public School…Unit Studies…no one style or curriculum works for every child.  No one style works for every child for every “subject”.  No one style even works for every child every day! 

Utilizing an eclectic, or “relaxed” style has many benefits;

You can match the curriculum to your child’s learning style and for each subject you want to teach.   For example;

• Unit studies and projects can cover many subjects and topics, and you can add in worksheets and videos for some additional science and math topics as needed.
• Co-Ops can help with subjects you aren’t comfortable with, or simply a way to help your child with social skills.
• Math can be learned on-line Monday, at the grocery store on Tuesday, as part of a History Unit on Wednesday, with a worksheet on Thursday, and while playing a board game on Friday!

Comfy reading pillows

Being relaxed means you can be flexible enough to change things as necessary. 

• You aren’t tied to an expensive curriculum when it doesn’t appear to be working.
• Your education plans can change and work with a major life event such as a move, new baby, or illness.

Engaging your children in the process of planning, developing, and evaluating their own experiences can help you cultivate a lifelong love of learning. 

Eclectic learning lets you incorporate life into learning instead of dividing life from “school”.  This means all learning, such as family trips, chores, videos, music lessons, family game night, and the dinnertime discussion about the museum you visited last year all count as “school”.

You can help your children see how things fit together.  Since life doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it isn’t divided into subjects and it only makes sense to learn as a whole.  Learning about Autumn and the leaves that change can include;

• literature (books and poetry about Autumn),
• writing (poetry or a story about Autumn or colors),
• geography (map of where the leaves change),
• science (identifying trees, chromatography & why the colors happen),
• math (estimating how many leaves on a tree in a clearing vs in the woods),
• art (leaf collages or crayon ‘stained glass’),
• history (what parts of trees have traditionally been used for dyes, food, housing)

Jamestown Settlement trip

Over the years, my family has used workbooks, textbooks, online programs, videos, games, loads of fiction and non-fiction books from the library, parts of free teacher guides from textbook and other publishers, trips to museums, businesses and other cities, pets, free and purchased Unit Studies, and units my children and I have created.  We prefer the term “eclectic”, since there are many days where the learning is quite intense or busy, and don’t seem “relaxed” at all!