Preparing to Homeschool: Homeschooling Styles

Articles

Eclectic Homeschooling by Beverly S. Krueger
Eclectic homeschoolers use what "seems" best at the time. The choices eclectic homeschoolers make are not erratic. The methods and resources they select to use are chosen to further the educational goals they have for their children.

Scrapbooks and Home Schooling = A Winning Combination! by Kelly Crespin
If you are reading this article, chances are you already home school. Most of us have been through curriculum reviews, textbook decision making, choosing which units to teach and making numerous lesson plans. One way to reduce the planning, decision making and testing formats is to use scrapbooks in daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly lesson plans...and with wonderful end results!

Sifting Through the Advice
Experienced Homeschoolers Speak About the Advice
They Were Given as Beginning Homeschoolers by Beverly S. Krueger
If you could just ask experienced homeschoolers, not what they use but the kind of questions that could help you sort out all the advice a beginner's life would be so much easier. We've done that for you.

Articles

An Unschooling Life Style by Patricia J. Donahue-Krueger
What have your children learned lately? Math? Spelling? Foreign Languages? My children have studied none of those things. No times tables, no spelling lists, not a single Spanish phrase. Yet, the things that they have learned are great in number and vast in importance.

Christian Unschooling... How Can That Be? by Jeanne Musfeldt
How can a Christian unschool? Isn’t that a term coined by John Holt? Doesn’t that make me a humanist?

Confession Time by Tammy M. Cardwell
This has been, perhaps, the hardest piece of writing I’ve ever worked on. I’ve begun it more times than I care to think about. I even wrote one complete article and tossed it because it didn’t say what I felt needed saying. Some would ask why I’ve bothered with it at all, but I’ve seen things in the past month that…well… I’ve confessions to make – not big ones in the overall scheme of things, but big ones in my personal world – and I hope that in making them I can help someone else have an easier homeschooling experience.

How Much Is Too Much? by Patricia J. Donahue-Krueger
Wondering how much is ‘too much’ in terms of planned activities for your homeschooled children? Do you look longingly for at least one blank page in your date book? Do you yearn for one small square on your wall calendar that is totally free from times and meeting places and ‘must do's’? Have you found yourself in that zone of madness where activity equals productivity? Then you are not alone.

Unschooling Against God's Will? by Beverly S. Krueger
An editorial response to a letter to the editor expressing the belief that unschooling is contrary to the Word of God.

Unschooling Department
Our Unschooling Department is available with many more resources at out main EHO site.

Articles

Creating a Media Rich Unit Study by Beverly S. Krueger
Certain unit study topics lend themselves to multi-media presentation. These can be very easy unit studies to pull together when the right media resources are found. A video series, computer software, and online resources can be the means to an inexpensive but sophisticated unit study.

How to Pull a Unit Study Together Quickly: Dogs by Beverly S. Krueger
A friend (I'll call her Abby) wanted to take a trial run homeschooling her youngest daughter. Abby needed to quickly pull together a unit study that could focus on skills her daughter needed to shore up and act as a carrot for homeschooling at the same time. Her daughter likes dogs, so we put together a unit study on dogs.

Unit Studies Using Art as the Thread by Sharon Jeffus
When we give students brief encounters with art and teach it as a separate subject, we miss the opportunity of teaching by doing art to enforce the core. If we include science principles with art projects; history principles with art projects; geography principles with art projects; English principles with art projects; we end up teaching important art basics and having our core curriculum become sheer delight for kinesthetic and visual learners.

A Helping Hand Advice Column Questions

Question:
Do you have to be more educated, as a teacher, to be sure you get everything you should in a unit study?

Unit Study Department
Our Unit Study Department with many more resources to help you create your own unit studies is available at our main EHO site.

Articles

Classical Christian Homeschooling - Why Study Greek? by Harvey Bluedorn
We think Greek is a foreign language written in a foreign alphabet. Yet we speak and write Greek every day without realizing it. Our alphabet comes from Greek. Our vocabulary is filled with Greek. Much can be said of the broad understanding of language and culture, which can be gained through studying this language. But let's face it, such thoughts do not move most persons to do so.

Classical Homeschooling Links by EHO Staff
A variety of links to articles, websites and other resources for those interested in classical education and classical homeschooling.

The Trivium and Charlotte Mason by Laurie Bluedorn
Are the Classical Approach and the Charlotte Mason Approach two homeschool approaches so opposite from each other that they cannot be reconciled? Or is it possible to use a combination of these two approaches? Let’s look at each of these approaches separately and see what are the similarities and differences.

Working Towards Using the Socratic Method by Robert L. Holder
The Socratic method is something like woodcarving. Just as a woodcarver removes layers of wood to get at the form of the object he is carving, the Socratic method is used to carve away all suppositions contrary to what is true about a given idea. It’s a way at getting at the positive by focusing on the negative.