Archive for June, 2011

Home School Vs Traditional School

There is a debate between parents who choose to educate their children at home instead of installing them into a traditional school. Parents who home school their children feel that is the proper way to educate them on the things they’ll need to know in life, while parents of traditional schooled children feel that homeschooling is not in the “norm” and they won’t get the same quality of education in the home.

If you have children that are reaching the age of attending school, here are some things you may want to think about if you are entertaining educating them in the home.

Your life: Homeschooling your children is a 24-hour, 7-day a week job. Plus you have to find time to maintain the house, run errands, grocery shop, etc.. It can be very tiring and demanding. If you are not dedicated enough to commit to that type of schedule, you may want to consider alternate forms of education.

Their lives: Homeschooling can be great for children, especially if they’re not “morning people”. No need to rush around in the morning, quickly eat breakfast, and then hurry to make sure you make the bus. They can even attend class in their pj’s if they’d like. However, as a child, homeschooling can place them apart from other children their age. Children can be cruel at times and may look down on your child and make them feel like social outcasts because they don’t go to school with the other children. That’s why it’s important to keep your child in a variety of social extracurricular activities on top of their schoolwork.

Overall: Homeschooling has advantages and disadvantages. Most homeschooling parents choose to teach their children at a more open schedule unlike a traditional school with a set schedule. However while this does enable you a bit of freedom, you will find that your teaching hours can go into the evenings or on weekends to make sure you fulfill state requirements. On the other hand, this also gives you the opportunity for field trips to museums, aquariums, art galleries and more, without the parental permission slip.

Top Homeschooling Tips

As a parent who wants to homeschool their kids, you need all the help and information to make it a successsful venture. Apart from informing you of tips that will help the education of your children, we also help you cope with this new role that you will be playing. These tips have been collected out of experience and feedback of hundreds of successful homeschooling parents. Now, the tips.

The seven best homeschooling tips are:

1. Before starting homeschooling, check the local laws and regulation to see if you are required to do any paperwork or pay any fees due to it. These laws vary from state to state.
2. As a parent of a homeschooled kid, you need to have knowledge of basic educational skills. Reasonably good writing, reading and mathematics are essential for a good quality education of your children. If you need to catch up on these, take some adult classes to improve these skills of yours. Most of the time it is not knowledge as much as teaching ability that you need.
3. Having a good working relationship with your child will go a long way in making homeschooling a success story. Good communication and ability to engage your child’s attention too will help you a lot in your new role as parent-teacher.
4. Many people do not know the advantages of homeschooling, or are otherwise biased against the idea of homeschooling. You will hear a lot of criticism and negative comments from such people, something for which you should be prepared. As part of your reply you can refer to them the test results of homeschooled kids, which consistently show that homeschooled kids score much better in tests than kids who have attended public schools.
5. As a sole supervisor, or as a team including your spouse, of your children’s education you need to be very sensitive to their need and feelings. I there is anything amiss in their educational development, recognizing that early on will help you to do course correction before it is late.
6. A good sense of humor will be very useful to stave of stressful situation. Add to it that it will make the class environment a fun place to be, and make your child enjoy classes as much as sport.
7. Time management and organization will help you immensely in organizing all the activities of homeschooling – lesson plans, daily schedule, family time and all the other household chores that are anyway your responsibility as a parent. If you think you need to improve on this, it is a good idea to join some local course and learn from the experts.

Hopefully you will put these homeschooling tips to good use, you will not regret it.

Best Homeschooling Advice I Can Give

I was recently interviewed for a homeschooling program and asked if there was anything I would do differently after 10 years of homeschooling and graduating 2 homeschoolers to college and beyond. The answer is YES! And it got me to thinking about the best homeschooling advice I could give to someone who might be starting out or in the middle. Here’s what I would say:

Homeschooling Advice #1 – Be flexible!

I began my teaching career as a public school teacher, and to be honest, I do not think I ever finished a textbook. And we all worry about that, even in homeschooling. We think, “I have two more chapters I have got to finish.” But why? Why should you be putting so much pressure on yourself and your children?

Do the things that are important to you. Talk to your spouse and find out what is important for you to accomplish this school year. There are certain things that are important to your family, and you might make a list of your top three priorities for this year.

And it may be that your 8 year old can read a certain book by the end of the year. Or it may be that your 8 year old could write a 3 or 4-sentence paragraph. Or it may be that your 8 year old enjoys nature and keeps a nature book where they go out and draw pictures and they find something they like. Then, they go look at the handbook of nature study and discover that and maybe do some kind of unit study. I just think you need to do what is best for you. Look at your goals. We say to ourselves, here is what I am going to do, and whatever happens happens.

Homeschooling Advice #2 – Set goals

This might seem like the opposite of what I just mentioned, but the truth is that you have got to have a vision for your home school and for your family. I hope you and your spouse have some sort of vision, some sort of goal for your kids this year. And I would write those down. And it may be two academic goals and a spiritual goal and a relationship goal that you are going to pray about.

Then, whatever you do in your home school is what gets done that year to meet those goals. And when you do have a busy day or busy week, you can make choices wisely. If you have to drop something, you drop something that is not meeting one of those top goals.

Homeschooling Advice #3 – Educate YOUR child

Our kids all have strengths and weaknesses. For example, our middle child could not get her times tables. So I bought every contraption there was for her to learn those times tables. And she did not like math. So around 6th grade, we had some company staying with us at our house. The next day, the mom watched as we did our homeschooling for the day, and she asked me, “Why are you making her do that (referring to her times tables)?” I did not really know WHY. I just thought she needed to.

I took her off math for that year. Absolutely no math to try to get a better attitude about it.

And when we started it again, I said, here is a times table. You can use it anytime you want to. And that was it. I am serious. We had software, we had buttons, we had games. We had everything. She still could not learn it. Within a year, she knew all her times tables because she learned it on her own.

And would you believe that she actually has tutored kids in college with their math? It is still not her favorite subject, but she has definitely learned her times tables and beyond.

Every kid is different. And the benefits of homeschooling is that you can address the individual needs of your child. Your homeschooling curriculum can be a tool and serve you and not the other way around.