Many homeschoolers like to define their family’s approach to homeschooing by certain educational philosophies and/or labels (i.e. Charlotte Mason, Classical, eclectic, relaxed, unschooling, etc.) While this can certainly be helpful in identifying other like-minded home educators, I sometimes find it a bit limiting.
I personally prefer to use words that express our values and lifestyle. This is something I’ve been musing over for awhile now, but I finally settled on three words that I believe best describe the educational atmosphere of our family and home. And yes, they all begin with the same letter because I’m a sucker for alliteration!
Our Learning Lifestyle is…
SIMPLE – We have a flexible, family-centered learning rhythm that uses minimal educational resources and changes as needed with different seasons of life. While we enjoy using a variety of books, videos and other resources, we have found that trying to stick to a specific curriculum has not worked well for us. We tend to thrive with short unit studies for our family learning time and a few self-paced courses for individual subjects like math and language arts. When and how we use these resources will depend on our family’s current needs.
SLOW – We do not rush any learning by striving to finish books or courses in a certain amount of time or push our children to reach specific academic achievements by a predetermined age. As I mentioned above, we go at our own pace when it comes to using curriculum and resources, so that our children do not feel that they must learn anything before they are ready.
SPIRIT-LED – Rather than focusing on being child-led and/or parent-led, we trust the Lord to guide our learning journey and prayerfully seek His direction. Without God’s guidance we would be walking blind and easily distracted by various philosophies, methods and curriculum. The Bible promises to give us wisdom when we ask for it, which is exactly what we need to determine the educational needs of our children and discover a homeschooling lifestyle that works best for our unique family.
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
James 1:5
While I will probably continue to describe our homeschool approach as “relaxed homeschooling”, “lifeschooling” or “christian unschooling” when I meet new homeschooling friends because it doesn’t require as much explanation; I think simple, slow and Spirit-led sum up our learning lifestyle quite nicely.
Have you ever tried to describe your homeschool lifestyle? What words would you choose?
I’d love for you to share in a comment!
