If you are considering home schooling your children, you need to decide which method of home schooling you will follow. There are many ways to home school. In this article we will give a brief description of five common methods of  home schooling. These five methods are, online home schooling, correspondence schools, the traditional method, unschooling and co-ops.

The first, online home schooling, is probably the easiest for the parent. All you have to do is sign your child up with an online academy. The lessons are presented online, test are taken online, grades are given and records are kept by the online academy. In other words, to re-state the obvious, it's all done online. This type of home schooling requires the least amount of input from the parent.

If you are one of those people who want to write your own curriculum, this is not for you. If you like the online academies curriculum and want to keep your children out of public schools, go for it. 

If you'd prefer more flexibility, some of these academies will allow you to just take one or two subjects online while you teach the others offline.
 
Another type of home schooling involves what are known as correspondence schools. This is where the parent does the teaching and someone from the school will visit 4-6 times a year to test the child. The schools keep the records. The schools provide the curriculum and usually insist that you use their curriculum. .
 
Many people who are home schooling choose what is called the traditional approach. This is simply where the parent teaches the child with no input from a school. Traditionalists like to choose their own curriculum and work at their own pace. They may get their math from one publisher and their science from another. Or they may use one publisher for all of their subjects. They often use educational games, or science kits. They often go to the zoo, the museum or a park for class.
 
Traditional home schoolers may find a site online that teaches something they want their children to learn. There are many online sites that are not schools but do provide learning helps for school aged children. Some of these focus on math and provide pages of math problems, story problems or math games of some sort. Some are focused on developing grammar skills. Others teach science or history or art or music. To find these sites pick a topic and do a search.

Traditional home schoolers may use unit studies. You can buy pre-configured unit studies, or you can pick individual topics and design your own unit studies program. First you choose a topic like wolves, Egypt, Columbus, volcanoes, the American Revolution, etc. Then you find some books on the subject and read them. Then you write a report (practicing your grammar skills, of course). You could present your own play on your topic. You can draw or paint pictures about your subject. Or you could even make a model of your topic.
 
Home schooling is flexible. You, as the parent can decide what you want your child to learn, when they should learn it, and how.
 
There is also what is known as unschooling. This is probably the most flexible type of schooling. Most unschoolers are not fond of textbooks. Their children learn the things that interest them. It is considered a child led way of learning. Unschoolers are often found at parks, zoos and museums. Sometimes they use library books for their curriculum. Or they may write their own curriculum. Usually they use their environment as curriculum.

The final type of home education we'll discuss is co-ops.
 
Suppose your child wants to learn chemistry and you know nothing about chemistry. What do you do? You find another family or two who are home schooling and form a co-op. If your expertise is algebra and theirs is chemistry you teach their children algebra and they teach your children chemistry. Parents with high schoolers are most often involved in co-ops, since the subject matter is more difficult at that level. 

As you can see there are many ways to educate your child at home. Each type has its own set of pros and cons, as well as its proponents and critics. Only you can decide which is best for you.

Lisa Lee