The Eclectic Homeschooling Method Explained

What happens when classical homeschooling is too rigid and unschooling not structured enough? What if you love the Charlotte Mason approach for one subject, but not the other? Although we’re swimming in a sea of information and more than enough options regarding homeschooling styles, methodologies, and resources, it doesn’t mean that you’ll find what you’re looking for in a predefined system. After all, you might be eclectic. 

Eclectic homeschooling is just what the name suggests – a style deriving from a broad range of sources. It’s a style that’s not really a style because it’s different for every family depending on their preferences. There aren’t any statistics to back this belief, but our experience has shown that most homeschooling families eventually end up being eclectic. 

In this article, we’ll explain the eclectic homeschooling method and give you an overview of how it looks like in practice. If you thought that maybe something was wrong because you couldn’t find one style that perfectly matches your personal style, experience, and background, keep reading because eclectic homeschooling might be the choice you never knew you had. 

What Is Eclectic Homeschooling? 

Eclectic homeschooling is what you get if you change, add, remove, or mix elements from different homeschooling styles and curriculums. It’s not a predefined method that follows a certain philosophy, but a practice-driven method that emerged spontaneously. 

We’re pretty sure that most parents practicing an eclectic homeschooling style weren’t even aware they were following any style in particular until someone decided to put a name to it. In fact, we can’t say that this is a style in the same sense that the other homeschooling methods are, as it’s rather the act of changing a specific style to fit one’s personal needs. 

Eclectic Flexibility

The term “eclecticism” is not a new concept, as it has origins in ancient Greece and Rome. Gradually, it came to signify the phenomenon when a particular school of thought refuses to stick to one paradigm, and, instead, selects and merges ideas from different, already existing beliefs to construct a new, “eclectic” doctrine. 

Just like ancient philosophers, homeschooling parents today believe that education needs to be flexible and personalized, so they take elements from various different curriculums and predefined systems that seem reasonable to them. 

Benefits of Eclectic Homeschooling

Aside from being a relaxed and extremely flexible approach to education, the eclectic homeschooling method has several other benefits that make it quite popular. 

The first and most obvious benefit of eclectic homeschooling is a completely personalized education. No matter how good one homeschooling style is, it can’t perfectly match all the different personalities, temperaments, and strengths or weaknesses of children around the world. Eclectic homeschooling means that you’ll make the necessary changes to optimize your child’s education. 

The second benefit adds to the first. Parents can take the best of everything! While they’re optimizing the curriculum, keeping in mind their child’s needs, parents can select only the evidence-based practices that are backed by experienced homeschooling parents. This certainly minimizes the frustration of going through something that feels unnatural or something that makes both you and your child feel like you have no clue why are you doing it in the first place. 

The third benefit concerns a more financial and practical aspect. The eclectic homeschooling method can easily be adjusted to students in a different age group, meaning that parents with two or more children can follow one curriculum for both of them, but tweak it by using different activities and sources to make it suitable for the educational level of each child. 

Finally, eclectic homeschooling is arguably the best method for special needs students. Students with special needs can learn the same concepts and acquire the same skills as students with typical development, but they need extra help, different resources, and ways of teaching. This is why tweaking the curriculum to fit your child’s needs is the most common and reasonable practice. 

Drawbacks of Eclectic Homeschooling

Nothing is perfect, right? Even if the eclectic homeschooling method can perfectly fit your child’s needs, there are some concerns worth considering. 

One drawback of the eclectic homeschooling method is that it requires a lot of research and analysis, which can be psychologically exhausting for the parent. It’s not uncommon to get a headache simply reading about all the different homeschooling styles claiming to be the best approach for an exceptional home school education, but then you’ll actually have to analyze all the arguments for and against, find evidence, and filter out a myriad of teaching resources. Worst of all, selecting the best of everything doesn’t mean that the system you’ll come up with will be best, or even functional, for that matter – the selected elements must complement one another. 

The first drawback also comes with the implication that the parent must be knowledgable in a lot of areas, so they can choose elements that work well together and make a coherent system. Unfortunately, that is quite rare, especially in families that are just starting their homeschool journey. 

Finally, with the eclectic homeschooling method, there’s a lot of experimentation and it’s practically impossible to know what works best for your child from the very beginning. This means that a certain time-period must pass before you can fully enjoy the benefits of an eclectic homeschooling education. 

Eclectic Homeschooling Compared to Other Homeschooling Styles

The eclectic homeschooling method is typically confused or sometimes even used interchangeably with the term “relaxed homeschooling”. While they’re certainly very similar in terms of intensity and structure, these two styles are inherently different. The relaxing homeschooling method uses a single curriculum while allowing the student’s interests to dictate the topics. The eclectic method, on the other hand, uses elements from various different curriculums, while the focus or themes isn’t necessarily student-driven. 

When it comes to the other homeschooling styles, they can all be part of an eclectic education. Families use traditional (school-at-home), classical, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, and unschooling approaches in their eclectic home school. Your eclectic homeschooling education will get the characteristics of whichever method you use predominantly. 

Eclectic Homeschooling Curriculum

There’s no such thing as an eclectic curriculum that you can buy. At the same time, every curriculum can become eclectic once you adapt it to fit your child’s personal needs.

What does this mean? 

You can buy a classical homeschooling curriculum and follow it for teaching literature or grammar, while practicing unit studies for history, for example. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you what you’ll need to do exactly, as the whole point of eclectic homeschooling is to find a unique blend of everything that’s available on the market today.   

Eclectic Homeschooling Teaching Resources

While there’s no such thing as a fixed eclectic curriculum, there are a lot of different books that can help you get the hang of eclectic homeschooling without feeling overwhelmed or lost in the massive sea of information. 

The Relaxed Art of Eclectic Homeschooling by Amber Oliver is an interesting read for busy parents who are looking for encouragement and support. 

Homeschooling Curriculum Guide on A Personal Eclectic Curriculum (6th ed.) by Willemien Kruger is another gem that aims to show parents how an eclectic curriculum would look like and help them construct one for themselves.  

McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer (Illustrated) and McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers – Complete Set (Illustrated) by William Holmes McGuffey are two amazing books filled with different resources for teaching children reading skills. 

Homeschooling for Absolute Beginners: Make Learning at Home Simple, Affordable, Fun, and Effective by Lorilee Lippincott is a book that will help a lot of parents who are just starting their homeschooling journey and they’re not sure which curriculums to choose, how much they can stray from the “rules,” and simply how to turn their home school into a positive experience. 

Eclectic Homeschooling Groups & Co-ops

We mentioned that one of the drawbacks of eclectic homeschooling is that the parent must be knowledgeable in making a coherent system for studying a specific subject or unit. One way to overcome this obstacle is to join an eclectic homeschooling group or a co-op.

Co-ops are a smart strategy to give your child a world-class education. While groups are a wonderful source of support and encouragement for homeschooling parents, when it comes to eclectic homeschooling, they can also be a means of finding exceptional learning practices and educators. 

Some parents have experience, skills, and knowledge in one area, but are complete beginners in another. This is why, eclectic homeschoolers use these communities to exchange ideas, lessons, and even organize classes where one parent teaches one subject or a topic, based on their experience.  

Before You Leave

Hopefully, you got a pretty good idea of what eclectic homeschooling is and how you and your child can benefit from following this method. In fact, as we saw, it’s not quite following a specific method, but rather searching, filtering, and constructing a system from all the methods available today. 

It might seem like a lot of work, and truth be told, it is, but it can be incredibly rewarding. After all, parents know their children best and they can choose what’s best for them if they have the right information to guide them in that task. 

We want to believe that we are such a source of insightful information. If you liked this article, follow the link to our blog where you can find many more articles dedicated to homeschooling and children’s education in general. 

Knowing that eclectic homeschooling works exceptionally well with our adjustable and interactive worksheets, here’s a reminder to visit our worksheet library and see how a typical lesson plan looks for a specific topic.