“We Unschool.”

“I use a boxed curriculum.”

“He does piano to round out his portfolio.”

“I picked this one because it’s secular.”

“We ditched the schedule and found our rhythm.”

If you’re new to homeschooling, those sentences probably sound like a secret code. I remember standing in a co-op parking lot three months into our first year, nodding along while someone talked about “loop scheduling their morning basket with living books and strewing,” and thinking, “I have a Bachelor’s in Education and I still have no idea what is happening.”

You’re not dumb. The homeschool world just has its own language, and almost nobody hands you the dictionary when you start. So here it is—the friendliest, most practical guide I wish someone had slid across the table to me with a cup of coffee eight years ago. This is everything you ever heard someone say and wondered “wait…what does that actually mean?”

Why Knowing These Homeschool Terms Actually Matters

When you understand the lingo, a dozen really practical things get easier—fast.

1. You stop feeling like an outsider. Walking into a homeschool Facebook group or convention hallway can feel like entering a foreign country where everyone is fluent and you’re clutching a phrasebook. Once you know the words, you realize these are just normal moms in yoga pants describing what worked for their family. Suddenly you belong.
2. You can research way faster. Instead of typing “how do people teach their kids at home without going crazy,” you can search “loop scheduling for large families” or “open-and-go secular math” and land on exactly the blog posts, YouTube videos, and reviews you need in five minutes instead of five hours.
3. You can ask better questions. “Should we try Charlotte Mason?” is a huge, overwhelming question. But once you know the vocabulary, you can ask, “How do you keep narration from feeling forced with a wiggly seven-year-old?” or “Which living books for science don’t break the bank?” Those specific questions get you gold-mine answers.
4. You discover you’re already doing half this stuff. You’ll realize your “lazy summer mornings on the porch with library books and lemonade” are someone else’s “hygge morning basket.” Your “we just follow whatever the kids are obsessed with this month” is basically unschooling. Naming it gives you confidence instead of imposter syndrome.
5. You can mix-and-match without guilt. When someone says, “We’re rigid classical,” and someone else says, “We unschool,” it’s easy to think those are the only two acceptable options. Knowing the homeschool terms shows you there’s a giant buffet—take a scoop of Waldorf art, a spoonful of classical memory work, and a whole ladle of interest-led science. Eclectic stops feeling like “cheating” and starts feeling like wisdom.
6. You’ll sound like you’ve been doing this for years (even when it’s week two). Nothing boosts a new homeschool parent’s courage like being able to say, “We’re deschooling right now and leaning toward a literature-based approach with a loop schedule” when Aunt Linda asks, “But how will they learn anything?” You don’t have to use the words, but having them in your back pocket is reassuring.

In short: the vocabulary is the key to reading the map. Once you can read the map, the whole homeschool world stops feeling like a giant, scary forest and starts looking like a bunch of friendly trails you get to choose from.

PART 1: The Big Methods

The section is all about the “How do you actually teach them anything?” question

Deschooling

The gentle (or sometimes not-so-gentle) decompression period after leaving traditional school. You do little to no formal lessons so your child can remember that learning doesn’t have to feel like a fluorescent-lit cage.

Some families deschool for two weeks. Some take a whole year. The rule of thumb I’ve heard most often is one month of deschooling for every year the child was in school. So a fifth-grader who just left public school? Maybe five or six months of Legos, library books, baking, documentaries, and long afternoons doing absolutely nothing that looks “educational” on purpose.

It feels terrifying, like your child will fall behind. But as long as your child isn’t staring at a screen (video games included) all day, then they’re getting what they need from deschooling and when it’s time to hit the books again you’ll be glad you took the time.

Unschooling (a.k.a. Child-Led Learning, Interest-Based Learning, Delight-Directed Learning)

Learning happens through life. No curriculum required. If your kid wakes up obsessed with dinosaurs, you spend three weeks watching documentaries, building models, visiting museums, reading every library book on the subject, and maybe never opening a math workbook. Unschooling parents are facilitators, not instructors. These parents strew cool stuff in their child’s path, encourage questions on Saturdays, and trust that a human who is free to follow their curiosity will learn more than one forced to follow a scope and sequence.

It’s radical. It’s beautiful. It’s also the method that makes relatives the most nervous at Thanksgiving.

Classical Education (a.k.a. The Trivium)

A philosophy of education built around three stages that match brain development:

• Grammar stage (elementary years) – memorize facts, chants, songs, Latin noun endings, timelines, and math facts.

• Logic stage (middle school) – argue about everything, formal logic, debate, and ask “Why?”…a lot.

• Rhetoric stage (high school) – learn to express ideas beautifully and persuasively.

Think Latin, memorization, Great Books, writing papers, and a lot of “Tell me again why this matters.” Heavy on history and literature.

Charlotte Mason

Short lessons, nature walks, living books, narration, art, music, poetry tea times, and the underlying belief that children are born persons worthy of respect and beauty.

A Charlotte Mason day feels like a gentle exhale. You read gorgeous books aloud, go outside and look at clouds, draw what you see, copy a poem in your best handwriting, and call it school. No textbooks with cartoon mascots, no fill-in-the-blank workbooks. Just rich ideas and time to think about them.

Waldorf (Steiner)

Head, heart, and hands. Lots of art (wet-on-wet watercolor, beeswax modeling, knitting), music, movement (eurythmy), storytelling, and rhythm. Delays formal academics until around age 7. No screens, very little plastic, lots of wood and silk and natural fibers.

If you walk into a Waldorf home you’ll smell bread baking and see beautiful seasonal nature tables. Overall, it feels like a hug.

Montessori

Child-led, hands-on, real tools (glass cups, sharp knives, metal scissors—yes, really). The prepared environment is filled with beautiful materials on low shelves. Children are given long, uninterrupted work periods.

The teacher is an observer and guide. The child chooses their work. Practical life skills are practiced (such as, pouring, sweeping, and polishing) and are considered just as important as math or language.

Unit Studies

Pick one topic—Sharks, Ancient Egypt, The Titanic, Chocolate—and learn everything through that lens. History, science, literature, geography, writing, art, even math (graph the sinking rate of the Titanic, calculate shark bite force) all revolve around the unit.

You can buy pre-made unit studies (Konos, Gather ’Round, Five in a Row) or DIY them with library books and YouTube.

Literature-Based

Everything springs from really good books. Beautiful Feet, Sonlight, Ambleside Online, BookShark—these are all literature-based programs. You read historical fiction and biographies for history, living science books instead of textbooks, and the spine of your year is a giant stack of novels.

Eclectic

The most common method of all, even if people don’t call it that. “We’re classical with a Charlotte Mason morning time and some unschooly rabbit trails on Thursdays.” Translation: We do whatever works and helps us meet our goals in each subject.

Welcome to the club. Most of us live here.

There are dozens more—Thomas Jefferson Education, Robinson Curriculum, Moore Formula, Wild + Free, Gameschooling, Project-Based Homeschooling—but these are the big ones you’ll hear tossed around most often when you’re at a homeschooling group meet up. Check out a more comprehensive list by following the link below.

Read Next: Homeschool Methods

PART 2: Schedules & Rhythms

This is the part that most homeschool moms talk about I think because either we’re struggling to find what works for our family or we think we finally have it figured out and that’s when you want to shout it to the mountains. Even if it might all change in a few months because your season of life changes easily when kiddos are little. So the big question here is, “When do you actually do school?

Traditional Schedule

8:30 Math, 9:15 Language Arts, 10:00 Break, 10:20 History… just like school, but at home. Works beautifully with boxed curricula like Abeka, Memoria Press, BJU, or Sonlight.

Block Schedule

Do only 2–3 subjects per day but go deep. Monday/Wednesday/Friday might be Math + Science + Foreign Language. Tuesday/Thursday is History + Literature + Writing. Everything gets more breathing room.

Loop Schedule

You have a list of 8 subjects. You work through the list in order, but you don’t have to finish it every day. Whatever you don’t get to just waits patiently for tomorrow. No guilt, no falling behind.

Rhythm (where we break away from the schedule)

First breakfast, then morning basket, then outside time, then whatever lessons can be fit in before lunch, then lunch, then quiet time, then maybe some art or a read-aloud on the couch. Things happen in roughly the same order every day, but the clock doesn’t rule your family.

Year-Round Schooling

45 days on, 10 days off (or 6 weeks on, 1 week off, etc.). No long summer slide, vacations when parks are empty, and you finish the curriculum in March if you want. The days on and days off may fluctuate depending on sickness, family visiting, etc.

4-Day Week

Monday–Thursday school, Friday is field trip/co-op/park day/hike day/life skills day. This is hugely popular and fits with most any of the above schedules/rhythms, it’s just 4 days instead of 5 that you’re on that schedule.

Delayed Academics (better late than early)

Formal reading and math instruction starts at 7, 8, 9, or even older. Lots of play, stories, and real life in the early years. Common in Charlotte Mason, Waldorf, and some unschooling homes.

PART 3: Stuff We Use

The “What curriculum do you use?” conversation is beyond one of my most favorite topics to talk about with other homeschooling parents. I love hearing the options, why they chose it, and how it’s working for them. But this can also be one of the most intimidating topics for some homeschool parents to even broach when they’re just starting to look into homeschooling their kiddo.

Boxed / All-in-One / Prepackaged Curriculum

Everything arrives in one big box (or online portal). Teacher manuals, student books, tests, schedules—the whole year planned for you. Examples: Abeka, BJU Press, My Father’s World, Memoria Press, Sonlight, Heart of Dakota, BookShark, Master Books, The Good and the Beautiful.

Read Next: The Pros and Cons of Curated vs. All-in-One Curriculum

Open-and-Go

Mom slang for “I can literally open this and start teaching without three hours of prep.” The holy grail of curriculum for large families and exhausted parents.

Morning Basket (also Morning Time, Symposium, Circle Time)

This can be used to supplement other curricula. Everyone gathers (usually on the couch) for the things they want to do together: poetry, Scripture, memory work, read-aloud, art appreciation, composer study, Shakespeare, folk songs, prayer. Whatever feeds the family culture.

This is truly the heartbeat of many homeschools.

Read Next: Morning Basket 101

Living Books

Books that make you forget you’re “doing school.” Written by an author with passion for the subject, usually narrative style, not dry textbooks full of sidebars and review questions. Think classics, check out 36+ classic read aloud titles to start with your kiddo today.

Twaddle

The opposite of living books. Dumbed-down, moralistic, poorly written pablum. Charlotte Mason’s word, now used freely by all of us when we spot another cartoon-character book at the library.

Manipulatives

Math U See blocks, tangrams, Cuisenaire rods, base-ten blocks, fraction tiles, globe, scales, pipettes—anything kids can touch and move to understand abstract concepts.

Spines

The main curriculum that holds everything together. “We use The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading” as our phonics spine but supplement with Bob Books.”

Rabbit Trails

When you’re studying the Civil War and suddenly you’re three hours deep learning about battlefield medicine, Clara Barton, and how to make hardtack because your kid asked a question. This is the bhe best part of homeschooling.

Strewing

The unschooly art of casually leaving cool stuff around the house to spark interest. A microscope on the table with a few specimens. A new field guide by the couch. A coffee table laden with ocean books and sea creature discoveries.

PART 4: The Words That Make People Argue at Co-op

Secular vs. Faith-Based/Christian

Secular = no religious content (or religion-neutral). Faith-based = explicitly Christian.

Some families only want secular. Some only want Christian. Some want secular science with Christian history. Some want everything overtly Christian. All are valid. No one needs to justify their choice, but it’s still good to know so when you’re in a conversation and someone says, “I love Abeka, but it’s not entirely secular -just so you know.” You know that Abeka is God focused.

Neutral/Worldview-Neutral

Usually means no Bible content but still acknowledges God or has a “theistic” tone. Master Books is Christian. Apologia is Christian. Berean Builders is neutral-ish. Singapore Math is secular. It’s a spectrum.

Charlotte Mason Purist vs. Charlotte Mason Inspired

Purists use only her original writings and volumes. Inspired folks borrow the ideas (short lessons, nature study, living books) but happily use curriculum written in the last decade. 99% of homeschool families are “inspired.”

Academic vs. Delight-Directed

Academic = rigorous and focuses on college-prep. Transcripts are easy to compile for the next level of education.

Delight-directed = follow interests, maybe less “impressive” on paper but your child may have a passion for a certain subject and wish to pursue that as a career.

Both can work beautifully. Neither is morally superior.

Afterschooling / Supplementing

When your kids are in public/private school but you add enrichment at home—Latin, instruments, extra read-alouds, etc.

Hygge Homeschooling

Danish concept of cozy, warm, contented togetherness applied to education. Blankets, candles, cocoa, read-alouds by the fire. Learning feels safe and joyful. Think: gardening, baking bread, herbalism, and watercoloring.

Read Next: Creating a Hygge Home Environment

Part 5: The Secret Emotional Vocabulary

The section is all about the feeling words we hear or the feelings we feel but don’t have a word for…yet.

Deschooling (Parent Edition)

Exactly like deschooling your kid, but for YOU. The phase where you realize that all the curriculum you bought for every subject under the sun can’t possibly fit into yours and your kiddo’s daily life. So you drop subjects and keep only the priority subjects for your child’s age.

Symptoms: frustration at 3 p.m. when your day didn’t go as planned and you only accomplished 3 subjects, doom-scrolling Facebook groups to figure out what you’re doing wrong, and drafting new schedules weekly that will definitely work this time with your 14 month old’s current nap schedule. This is all completely normal and will last for a few years, but is usually only seen at the beginning of every new school year.

Homeschool Mom Guilt

The low-grade fever that never quite goes away. Flavors include: “We only did two subjects today,” “She watched an hour of Wild Kratts instead of math,” “I yelled while baking muffins instead of gently guiding like a perfected Montessori angel,” and the classic “I’m ruining them.” The cure: talking to literally any experienced homeschool mom who will laugh and say, “Same, girl. Every day for ten years.”

Comparison Crash

What happens when you see someone’s Instagram reel of their kids reciting Latin poetry while watercoloring a nature journal at a hand-crafted wooden table under a eucalyptus garland. It feels like a gut punch because your day was filled with screaming, crying, chaos, and a few lesson workbooks. The antidote: remember that was a 22-second highlight filmed after three hours of chaos and two meltdowns (theirs and hers).

FOMOschooling

Fear Of Missing Out on the “perfect” curriculum, co-op, method, or field trip that someone else is doing. Leads to buying Beautiful Feet, then Gather ’Round, then Guest Hollow in the same month. Stop the scroll and focus in on your family: make a list of blessings and pick out 2-3 beautiful moments you all had that day.

Burnout Light

Not full-on I-quit burnout, just the little blinking warning light: too many co-op commitments, saying yes to every playdate, planning elaborate unit studies at 11 p.m. If ignored, it becomes Burnout Deluxe (complete with tears in the pantry while you chow down on your secret chocolate stash).

Read Next: Protect Your Mental Health as a Homeschool Mom

The Witching Hour

The daily moment when blood sugar is low, patience is gone, and everyone simultaneously hates math, handwriting, and each other. Solution used by 9 out of 10 veterans: snack + everybody outside NOW.

Homeschool High

The magical days when the read-aloud clicks, the science experiment actually works, the kids play peacefully for two hours building a Lego Parthenon, and you think, “This. This is why we do this.” Chase these moments. They carry you through the witching hours, FOMOschooling, and the mom-guilt.

Part 6: The Money & Stuff Words Nobody Says Out Loud

Curriculum Junkie

A completely normal hobby where you buy beautiful curriculum “for next year” even though this year’s is only half done. Symptoms: a dedicated bookshelf of untouched teacher manuals and a secret Pinterest board called “Someday.”

The Curriculum Graveyard

The shelf/tote/box in the basement or garage where abandoned programs go to die: Saxon 76, Teaching Textbooks, Life of Fred, and that one gorgeous Waldorf main lesson book you bought during a fever dream in 2022. These are actually beautiful to keep around in case you decide to try that curriculum with a younger sibling. Or personally it’s benefitted me because this is how I decided on the history program I wanted for our family because I visited another homeschooling mom’s curriculum graveyard and had the opportunity to flip through The Mystery of History.

Library Dependency Disorder

When your weekly library haul weighs more than your toddler, your hold’s list is beyond comparison, and the librarians know your entire family by name (and you know their names).

Rainbow Resource Cart Syndrome

The annual spring ritual of window shopping all the add-on curriculum items and manipulatives online that look so beautiful and enticing…and then you remember your homeschool budget.

Co-op Tax

The hidden fee of belonging to a homeschool group: $180 registration + volunteering to teach Spanish once a week + bringing snacks + buying the group T-shirt you’ll never wear. Some are pricey, some are reasonable – Local homeschool Facebook groups is the go to place for finding what will suit your family the best.

The “Free Shipping” Phenomenon

Adding $47 worth of random pencils, stickers, and a laminated hundred chart you don’t need just to hit the free-shipping threshold. We’ve all done it. No judgement.

Laminating Season

That sacred time (usually late August) when the Scotch laminator runs night and day and your dining room smells like warm plastic for two weeks straight. I love creating hands-on activities for the little ones from free resources online.

The Great Declutter

The future moment when your curriculum, manipulatives, and old assignments begin pushing you out of your homeschool room or pouring off the shelves. It’s time to declutter both the memory drive and the shelves.

PART 7: Legal Stuff

The part that makes newbies panic and seasoned homeschoolers yawn. Disclaimer: Not every state requires every legal homeschool term listed here. Your best option is to visit HSLDA to specifically look at your state’s laws:

HSLDA (Homeschool Legal Defense Association)

The superhero lawyers who fight for our rights. Worth every penny of membership if you’re in a high regulated state.

Letter of Intent (LOI) / Notice of Intent (NOI)

The “Hey district, we’re homeschooling now” form. Some states require it every year, some only once, some never.

Umbrella School / Cover School

A private school that lets you enroll under them so you don’t have to deal directly with the state. Common in stricter states (PA, NY).

IHIP (Individualized Home Instruction Plan)

In most simple terms this is a syllabus you submit every year.

Quarterly Reports

You share what you did the last three months. The depth of this is determined by the state you’re in.

Portfolio Review

Some states want to see samples of the work accomplished at the end of the year. Again, how in depth this goes is determined by your state.

Standardized Testing

Required in some states, optional in others. CAT, TerraNova, Iowa, Woodcock-Johnson, etc.

We live in Mississippi where all we have to submit is a Letter of Intent at the beginning of the school year. This is as simple as stating our school-age children’s name, age, parent’s name, home address, and the curriculum to be used. And best of all, this last section is as simple as writing, “age-appropriate curriculum.” That’s Mississippi though, others have much more oversight so check out HSLDA.

Most of All: You’ve Got This

Eight years in, I’m still eclectic. We have a loose rhythm, a morning basket that sometimes happens at 3 p.m., traditional workbooks when it comes to foundational skills, heavy literature, some classical memory work, and huge unschooly rabbit trails whenever someone gets obsessed with something. We’re year-round, five-day, and most importantly flexible.

In other words: normal.

There is no perfect homeschool method. There is only the homeschool method that lets your children become who they were created to be while keeping you sane enough to enjoy them.

So take a deep breath. You don’t have to have homeschool all figured out today. You just have to start.

You Don’t Have to Speak Fluent Homeschool Yet

Take a deep breath, friend. You don’t need to have a “method” label taped to your forehead tomorrow morning. You don’t need to decide today whether you’re classical or unschooling, year-round or summer-off, boxed curriculum or strewing unicorn books about quantum physics. You just need to love your kids and keep showing up. Because guess what, even after you choose what is beautiful to you and will assist in goals being accomplished … the changing of your current season of life and the age of your kiddos may cause you to rethink your strategy of method or schedule.

The homeschool terms are tools, not tests. They’re here to serve you, not to measure you.

One day you’ll catch yourself casually telling another new mom, “We’re mostly Charlotte Mason-ish but with some unschooly rabbit trails and a four-day loop,” and you’ll smile, because you’ll realize you’ve become one of those people who knows the secret language—and you earned it by simply walking the path, one ordinary, coffee-fueled day at a time.

You’ve got this and now you’ve got the dictionary too.

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