Hanson's Ridge
Many many many people have written about different homeschool styles. It can be dizzying for the new home educator: Montessori, Charlotte Mason, Waldorf, Classical, Traditional, Unschool. I'm not going to go into a full explanation, but you can find one here.
So what are we? Well, I have a background in Montessori and traditional school (obviously). I was an assistant teacher at Montessori preschool for a year, teaching 3-6 year olds. I'm not officially Montessori trained but I know the basics about how things go. While I like some of the lessons, known as "works," there are elements of the philosophy I disagree with. Initially, I thought I'd be more Montessori influenced, but I'm not at all. How about traditional schooling, such as what happens in a public school classroom? I tend to teach reading and math in a more traditional format. I have more choice in my tools for teaching, but it's still more teacher-led than child-led. I'm using formal curriculum for reading, and I've started using Moby Max for math because the kids like it. Moby Max is very traditional and clearly prepares kids for testing. But you know, it's easy for me and the kids like it. For science and social studies, I loosely follow the themes from AYOPS or the kindergarten standards for Virginia. But this is the area where we are much more child-led. I'm happy for them to just get basic ideas from our read-alouds, while we go deeper into the topics that interest them. You'd probably call us unschoolers in this category. Unschooling doesn't mean not teaching--it means that you are led by child interests. Some radical unschoolers don't do any formal instruction, but it's a spectrum. I like the nature study aspect of Charlotte Mason. So what are we? Technically, we are eclectic homeschoolers. That just means that we don't fit into any neat homeschool labels. That works for me.
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AuthorHi! I'm Stephanie Hanson. I live with my husband, Himself, on Hanson's Ridge in Virginia. Archives
September 2017
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