Explore unschooling
I have done unschooling, (child-led learning without much restriction from adults), after having tried public-school-at-home (detailed scheduling and watching the clock). I think these are the main extremes of homeschool philosophy; anything looser than unschooling is too anarchic to count as formal education. My search for a better way eventually led to _A Thomas Jefferson Education_ and, for elementary ages, Charlotte Mason. The premise of _A Thomas Jefferson Education_ includes the idea that children grow, generally, in phases. Unschooling fits really well in the middle phase, Love of Learning, which would be about age 7 or 8 to about age 12-14. Before that is Core Phase, in which the focus is on teaching the child who he is, how to care for himself, how he relates to other people, good-bad, right-wrong. School work for the Core Phase is working With Mom and Dad and siblings, and also a lot of play--working cheerfully so that it feels like play, and allowing for a child's shorter attention span and lesser coordination and understanding. Core also includes unstructured time, while Mom and older siblings do things they need to do; the young child needs time to mentally process what he's learning and to experiment (safely) on his own.
Love of Learning comes closer to what I understand as unschooling, because in Love of Learning the focus is on Love, not making the child learn but learning to love learning. A child's interests naturally flit from subject to subject; for Mom's sanity, Mom has to restrain the formal school time to one or two at a time, but remember to switch when the child is tired or uninterested. Charlotte Mason works well here, because her method focuses on short subject periods and lots of exploration. Lots of discussion of what the child is learning and what Mom and Dad are learning, will lead to clearer thinking and better understanding, so that as the child begins to express himself in writing, he will know how to say it. There is a need to require help in the home; I try not to require academics in that time, but I do require dishwashing, laundry, cleaning, and getting along with people cheerfully, because these are skills children will always need. In the next phase they may not have the time or drive to learn home care.
At about age 12-14, if the child has had opportunities to explore lots of different subjects, the child will probably have a good grasp of what he wants to explore further in depth. By 13 my children have generally wanted to do math more intensely, because they could see the need to memorize times tables and get on to higher math. That's called Scholar Phase, and as a child gets going on the subject or subjects he's passionate about, he may be studying 8 hours a day, because he Wants to. He's passionate about it; he’s excited and interested and feels driven to pursue it. That's the time to ensure that he gains the writing and math skills that will prepare him to be an independent adult. It works best to relate the skills he needs to the subject he’s driven to explore. Then is the time to set goals with the child and require specific results.
When I first wrote this about unschooling, four of my children had developed into Scholar Phase, one as early as 12 (a seatwork-minded girl, a real grind at schoolwork), one as late as 14-15 years old (an intellectual boy who at age 20 was still exploring everything, only with difficulty limiting himself to one subject--he's like me). Since 2012, my last three children have also switched, almost magically, from flitting subject to subject, to intense personal study of things they find important. Unschooling served us well in their earlier school time; they accepted the change to formal classes to fill in math and writing skills when, as teens, they recognized the need for these abilities. In the meantime they explored everything under the sun, and I got to learn with them. It has been a blast.
