Alternative ways of homeschooling may seem an odd thing to write about since homeschooling is already thought of as alternative by many people, but the best known types of homeschooling (textbook, classical, unit study, and unschooling) often don’t fit people with unusual circumstances or schedules.

Homeschooling has changed a lot over the years. These days many homeschoolers no longer have the luxury of one parent at home full time to do the homeschooling. If there is one parent who can be at home, that parent may also be working from home, as I do. I’ve lost count of how many posts I see on Facebook asking if it’s possible for a parent to work and homeschool their child. Parents are desperate to bring their kids home from public school but fear that they can’t successfully educate their kids and earn an income.

Other families want to travel the world or are on the road a lot for various reasons and find trying to do a traditional textbook style of education unwieldy. Some homeschool families have children who are actors, dancers, singers, or musicians, or kids in competitive sports who spend a lot of time pursuing their activities and need to find time-saving yet effective ways to get school done.

The standard types of curriculum are often not compatible with the lifestyle of working parents who homeschool. Sometimes the standard types of curriculum are not compatible with how your children learn, how you want to teach, or how your family lives.

If you find yourself frustrated or dissatisfied with your current way of homeschooling or you want to homeschool, but the standard options don’t suit you, I have four alternative ways of homeschooling for your consideration.

Gameschooling

Gameschooling is a fun, memorable way to teach your kids using games. Until I ventured into the Gameschooling Academy Facebook group, I was skeptical that this could be a viable way to teach. After being a part of the group, I found games to teach the principles of physics, games that teach geography, math, economics, and more. Gameschooling isn’t relegated to only younger students, either. You can implement Gameschooling for students of all ages. Kids naturally want to play games, so you already have some buy-in from them, which makes teaching a lot easier. You can even purchase blank game boards on Amazon to create your own games if you don’t find one for the subject you want to teach.

One Hour Homeschooling

Before you get too excited, it’s not actually that you only homeschool for a single hour each day. But what you do in your one formal hour of schooling is to cover the subjects that need more consistent daily study, such as math, English, reading, writing. The rest of the day is devoted to learning experiences, such as field trips, experiments, art activities, etc. Once you have completed your planned hour of lessons, your children are free to learn on their own through the materials, books, supplies, games, and activities you have readily available to them. Essentially One Hour Homeschooling is a bit of traditional schooling mixed with a big dose of unschooling. As long as you’ve curated a home full of educational materials your kids will be learning and you’ll be surprised at how much they learn without you directly teaching them.

Nightschooling

If you have both parents working and responsible teens at home, or you work from home and need to work during the daytime, you may wish to consider Nightschooling. Teens and pre-teens naturally want and need extra sleep, so why not work with that tendency and shift their schooling to the late afternoon or evening once you’ve finished work? When my last three children were teens, I worked from 9:00 a.m.- 1:00 p.m. which meant I was gone from 8:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. During that period of our lives, we often began school around 3 or 4 p.m. or later. By the time you’re ready to start school, your kids will have had time to get up, eat, and do some chores or work independently until you’re ready to work with them. You can nightschool with any curriculum, so if you really want to do a certain style of homeschooling you still can.

Streaming Schooling (Netflix/Amazon/YouTube and more)

During Covid, I searched online in my various streaming services for educational content that I could use in our homeschool to add variety and interest since our options to get out and about were severely limited for a while. I discovered a wealth of educational content was available for all ages. I found something in nearly every subject area and I didn’t have to spend any additional funds to access it as I was already paying for it. I just learned a whole new way to use my streaming services. I’m thankful that there are folks like Homeschool Breakroom and Homeschool Together who publish streaming recommendations to help fellow homeschoolers. When you’re a busy homeschooling parent, you can use these streaming services to teach your kids while you’re getting your work done.

The Takeaway

The old saying if there’s a will there’s a way is true of homeschooling- if you want to homeschool, you will figure out a way to make it work. Alternative ways of homeschooling may just be the key to success in your homeschool. If you’ve been struggling to homeschool using one of the more standard methods, why not give one of these a try?