DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOUR FAMILY

What works for your family as far as education goes will not be the same as everyone else - and that is the most normal thing I can imagine. I can’t think of one area in which what works for my family is just the same as another. That isn’t to say you can’t get a TON of ideas from other homeschoolers/unschoolers. I LOVE talking to parents and kids - no matter how they are doing school or life - because there is so, so much to learn from everyone. But that doesn’t mean we have to incorporate every trendy thing into what we do. (To stay sane, it is actually pretty important to identify what is important to YOUR family and child. Then actively avoid taking on many other things.) 

I encourage you to pay attention to how an approach or method FEELS - to both you and your child. For example, just because some math curriculum is supposed to be the ‘best’ or it worked ‘magically’ for someone else does NOT mean it is the best for your child. Over and over in my years of teaching I have seen how a particular explanation works wonders for one student while another needs a completely different approach. I haven’t found a good way to know which approach is best for which student ahead of time - I just have to try things until something clicks. 

Ok. This next bit is going to be really easy for me to say as a parent of an only child. But here it is: it is ok for different kids in the same family to do things differently. There is nothing that says siblings will always learn in similar ways. Different learning styles and personalities can absolutely be accommodated at once. (As a bonus I think this is a good place for the discussion that ‘fair’ doesn’t mean ‘the same for everyone.’ Fair in education means kids get the support they need to thrive. That WILL likely look different for different students.)