Choosing a Homeschool Philosophy

When we lived in Missouri about half of my friend group was made up of Homeschool parents. I greatly enjoyed watching these friends parent and teach their children. I learned so much about gentle parenting, bringing learning into daily life and homeschool in general.

So when I first decided to homeschool I was familiar with a few different styles because those are ones my friends use. I knew about Unschooling, Waldorf, and Inquiry based learning. I had sent my children to Montessori, Forest and Reggio Emilia preschools so I was familiar with those philosophies in a school setting and knew they could be converted to a home school environment. Based on this prior knowledge I was planning on using a Montessori based learning style.

Then I joined some groups and started hearing all these words I had never heard before.

Charlotte Mason

Classical

Unit Studies

Traditional

Thomas Jefferson.

I'm sure I am forgetting a few. Each time I came across a new philosophy I would start to research and I usually found aspects of the philosophy that resonated with me. My confusion and anxiety started to spike. Making this decision seemed so huge. This is what was going to guide me and help me make future decisions. It would have rules and outlines and when I became lost I could come back to my philosophy. I decided this was the most important decision I needed to make.

Luckily I found a quiz! I love taking quizes. What Hogwarts house are you? What dog breed is your soul mate? What is your love language? If there is a quiz I want to take it. Even those silly quizzes with lots of ads (Buzzfeed I'm looking at you). I found this quiz from Eclectic Homeschooler. She has a more recent quiz with project based and reggio based philosophies added, you can find it here. This was great! Someone else was going to make this decision for me.

Unfortunately, my scores for all of the philosophies were about the same. I took the second test and its results were about the same. That is when I realized that there isn't a scoring system. I don't get in trouble if I have a room set up as a reggio emilia/montessori inspired play space and then do a Unit or Project style lesson. Then focus on learning about Cheetahs because my son wants to learn about them followed by a week of hiking and outdoor exploring. We can pick the parts of the philosophies that work for us and leave off the parts that don't work for us. As long as my children are happy, healthy, learning and thriving we are succeeding. This will be trial and error and what works for one child may not work for another.

So I am doing my own thing and this realization was so freeing. Do you have a homeschool style or philosophy that you follow?