Homeschool styles

Question:
We're looking into various "Styles" of home education, and I'm curious about your opinions. Anybody have any thoughts on Unit Studies (what we currently do) -vs- the Classical style -vs- Real Life Experiences type stuff?

What style do you use? I know in our case it's really a combination of real-life and unit studies.

Answer:
-We are also eclectic homeschoolers. We have used primarily Unit Studies in the past (I own all three volumes of KONOS), but have always used other approaches as well. Currently we are shifting more towards the Charlotte Mason approach, which is strikingly similar in the older grades to Classical and the Core Knowledge folks (although much more in depth than the Core knowledge). I think every home schooler really uses real-life experiences, too. The difference is just in how much other stuff we use. I had some friends who owned a sheep farm and opened up on sheep shearing day to the public- offering snacks (goat's milk ice-cream, barbqued Chevron, goat's milk fudge), craft booths, educational presentations, and so on, as well as the chance to watch hand-shearing, hand spinning, and so on. The shearers said they could always spot the homeschoolers, as they didn't just watch, they asked quesstions, their kids asked questions, the parent and kids talked about what was happening, etc. Interesting. Here's a website on combining the Classical and Charlotte Mason approach: http://mut1.muscanet.com/%7Etrivium/ttt/tttsuggested.html

-We're using a Classical curriculum for our regular day-to-day work but, like everyone, I suspect, we also drop everything fairly regularly and mix in "unit studies" from "real-life experiences." For example, my sister, a National Park ranger, was just here for a visit so she did a study with the kids on Mt. Rainier, which involved science (volcanos, glaciers, including "making a glacier" in a box of sugar, etc), geography (state of Washington, identifying fire lookouts on a map--they each got their own Mt. Rainier map, which they thought thrilling--, etc), reading (we have several books on volcanos and glaciers that the kids read aloud), writing (each child had to report on what he learned), zoology (native animals of the area), computers (connecting to Mt. Rainier Web site and checking it out) etc. (Elaine could augment my short list with about fifteen more subjects if she put her mind to it, I'm sure.) When these things happen, the Classical curriculum materials (the stuff that's methodical & scheduled, such as math, catechism, phonics, phonograms, grammar, music practice, taekwondo, etc) get temporarily shelved. And then of course there are art days where we make lots of messes and drop everything else because all the available table space is filled with works of art that are air-drying and our fingers are too sticky to hold a pencil anyway!!!