Archive for June, 2007

by Darren Lintern
Parents will opt for home schooling for several reasons from a wish to instil particular values to the desire to remove a student from an unsafe public school setting to the aspiration to offer a better quality education. But the most general, basic reason for many is the well established belief that home schooling is ultimately healthier for their child.

‘Better’ can imply an assortment of things, but it includes as many deficiencies as it does positives. The omission of bullying or peer pressure are two major features of public school that many home schooling parents aim to remove from their child’s life. But the positive side is as equally important. It has been well studied that an improved education can be achieved by home schooling over public or even the modern private schools.

And the research undertaken largely agrees: home schooling is superior for education in the vast majority of cases.

There are numerous individual achievement stories. Winning student of the 1997 National Spelling Bee contest was home schooled. Four sisters went on to achieve Master’s degrees from an Ivy League university after being home schooled.

But cases like this might be dismissed, declaring that these students, and their parents, were unusual. Also the numbers indicate that the typical home schooled pupil is within the 60-70th percentile by 12 years of age. From this, on average, they are a grade in front of their public school peers.

The figures for the elder children are often even more notable. After the average home schooled pupil reaches the equivalent to 8th grade, he or she will likely be four grades ahead of their peers. That’s to a great extent due to the poor results of some public schools as it is great results of home schooling. The figures are based upon research not purely by home school supporters, buy also by the U.S. Department of Education itself.

Although, as most home schooling tutors are aware, nothing good will come easy. Parents can feel the effects of burnout, especially when first beginning with the home schooling. As with any new assignment, it will need time to gain the knowledge require to instruct a child everything needed to develop suitably.

In accordance with a well established home school philosophy children are natural sponges for soaking up knowledge. But many home schooling tutors will feel the need to study the curriculum options, guide children, define goals, and several other duties.

But are the results from home schooling worth the effort? If the desired outcome is a keen minded, well-adjusted student ready to begin life’s challenges, for many parents that will be a simple question to respond to.

Darren Lintern writes extensively for www.andallabout.com, a popular informational website that provides helpful advice on many home schooling topics including Home Schooling Programs, and Home Schooling Curriculum

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by Donald Saunders
There are almost as many approaches to homeschooling as there are parents undertaking homeschooling but over the years several general approaches have appeared. Here we look at just three of these.

The first approach is known as School-At-Home. This is perhaps the most commonly seen form of homeschooling and is the approach that most parents will try first.

Because the majority of parents have no experience of schooling children at home they turn to the ‘experts’ to design a curriculum for them and to supply them with the necessary teaching materials. The affect of this tends to be to simply transfer teaching from the pubic school classroom into the home.

Although this is not a bad starting point, parents often find that this approach is very hard on them and they struggle to cope with the amount of work it entails. They also find that teaching in this manner is not as easy as they thought it would be and find themselves uncertain of how to move forward so that progress is slow and frustration sets in quite easily.

In addition, where parents have removed their children from the public school system to continue their education at home, they often find that the teaching materials used in the School-At-Home approach are essentially the same as those which may have contributed to their child’s lack of support in public school.

The second approach is known as Unit Studies. The principle here is to focus attention on the natural interests of the children and to build your teaching around these.

From our very earliest years we have a tendency to show an interest in certain things and to express our dislike of, or boredom with, others. We might for example express an interest in mathematics and science and boredom with literature and poetry. Similarly, we might demonstrate a love of nature and of being outdoors and a dislike of organized games and sport.

Unit Studies allows parents to take advantage of a child’s interests and to structure a curriculum centered on these and which also incorporates these into subjects which are of less interest, but which are nonetheless necessary to ensure a rounded education.

The third approach is that of Classical Homeschooling. This is similar in many ways to the School-At-Home approach but makes use of superior teaching materials and is grounded in the classical methods first developed during the Middle Ages in the monasteries of the day. This is not to say however that this method today is centered on religion.

Classical Homeschooling aims to teach children to think, and ultimately to learn, for themselves and contains a great deal of what most parents will probably remembers as very dull rote learning. Nowadays techniques have been developed to remove much of the boredom from rote memorization and this is also helped considerably by allowing a child to learn in an ordered fashion.

Whatever approach you adopt you will almost certainly find yourself struggling a bit at first. However, with a little bit of trial and error you will be surprised how quickly you will find a method which suits both yourself and your child.

Parenting4Dummies.com provides information, advice and articles on all aspects of parenting including homeschooling covering everything from how to start homeschooling to homeschooling law.

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by Donald Saunders
The prospect of homeschooling your children can quickly overwhelm you as you realize that there is so much that you need to learn yourself before you can begin to teach your children. However, as with any other large and complex endeavor, if you break it down into its component parts it becomes a much easier problem to solve.

Every parent will have his or own set of skills and experience, so that defining a starting point becomes difficult. However, the real secret lies in doing some basic research and then matching what you find to your own skills and experience to produce a homeschooling action plan.

Before you do anything else however it is a good idea to know the rules of the game and that means acquainting yourself with the law. Homeschooling is legal throughout the United States but is not governed by federal law but by a set of state regulations, which vary considerably from one state to the next. In many cases there are relatively few restrictions, while in others the state chooses to make life much more difficult, but certainly not impossible, for the homeschooling parent.

A good place to start your search for information is through the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) which not only provides an excellent source of information but also actively pursues cases on behalf of parents when they fall into conflict with individual state boards of education.

The next port of call should be one or more of your local support groups. Homeschooling has been practiced throughout the United States for more than forty years now and in this time hundreds of support groups have sprung up covering every state. What for you may seem a daunting prospect is now a part of daily life for millions of others and you will find that they are only too happy to provide you with both advice and often practical help.

There are also many books available covering every aspect of homeschooling and an excellent starting point are the books of John Holt from which you can learn a great deal about the philosophy behind homeschooling. John Holt wrote extensively on the subject from the mid 1960s through to the mid 1980s and one title, ‘Teach Your Own’, which was updated by Patrick Farenga in 2003, is still very widely read even 20 years after John Holt’s death.

In addition to the many books available there are also a number of excellent magazines published, most coming out bi-monthly, and these provide a very good way to gauge current thoughts and ideas and to keep up with what is going on in the world of homeschooling today.

Finally, there is of course the Internet, which not only provides you with an excellent research tool when looking for information about just about any aspect of homeschooling, but will also be one of your most valuable tools when it comes to tracking down teaching materials later on.

Some initial background research and reading will soon point you to the areas that need your attention and will help you with a whole range of different aspects of homeschool planning from the legal requirements of your state, through designing a curriculum to sourcing teaching materials.

Parenting4Dummies.com provides information, advice and articles on all aspects of home schooling including such topics as homeschooling law.

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by Donald Saunders
Homeschooling is not an easy option at the best of times but if you are a single parent then you may well be tempted to simply dismiss the idea as being impossible. Before you do so however you should know that there are literally thousands of single parents of both sexes homeschooling their children today and doing so very successfully.

For most single parents the biggest problem is simply one of finance because their primary goal has to be to get out and earn a living to support both themselves and their children. Surprisingly enough however the real problem is often not money but time.

We tend to think of homeschooling as being a full-time job along the lines of eight hours a day five days a week but in reality it is far from that. To begin with the normal public school day in most counties is just six hours and this includes such things as lunch breaks, breaks between classes and a lot of time spent sitting around doing nothing of any real value, bringing the true ‘working’ day probably down to no more than about four hours.

But that’s not the end of it because you also need to figure in such things as weekends and school breaks, including the long summer holiday. Spread this out across the year and you will probably be amazed to find that your child is only studying for an average of about two hours a day.

Against this background it is easy to see that with the right time management it might well be possible to fit in both a job and homeschooling. You may still feel however that this is going to leave you with no time for anything else and feeling more than a little drained at the end of the day. Until you consider just what homeschooling entails.

The majority of homeschooling parents do not follow the tradition classroom teaching approach but center learning very much around the child and his or her strengths and weakness and likes and dislikes. And here we see one of the surprises for many homeschooling parents.

Children who are given the resources and guidance but otherwise left largely to pursue the subjects that they enjoy at their own pace will, in most cases, develop an enquiring mind and a love of learning which will allow them to study very effectively and very successfully on their own. They will of course need your help and you will have to check over the work and provide correction and on-going guidance, but this can often be done quite easily and quickly in the evening and at weekends. Above all, you will find that there is certainly no need to sit with the child while he or she is studying and the child can simply be left to get on with the necessary work.

If this seems a strange thing to say then believe me it’s quite true. Many studies have shown that home schooled children are on the whole extremely responsible and adopt a very mature attitude towards learning.

But that of course this not the end of the story because the other thing that you need to consider is the fact that you don’t have to tackle homeschooling on your own even if you are a single parent.

Many parents, single or otherwise, make use of tutoring services and, while this is a subject in itself and not something to get into in this article, tutoring services range widely from employing in-home tutors to using online Internet tutoring. Costs also vary widely but a tutor can often cost little more than day care and indeed can often be combined with day care.

Another option for many single parents is to elect to work at home. This could be as simple as running your own business out of your home or looking for a job that allows you to work at home. Many companies nowadays employ telesales or customer support staff who are able to do their job over the telephone from their own home. These options won’t suit everybody of course, but they are an option worth considering.

And how about running your own Internet business? If you are starting from scratch then building an online business is not perhaps as easy or as fast as many people would have you believe and is certainly something that needs research in terms of both the investment required and the time that it would take to get up and running. Nevertheless, there are many thousands of people making a part or full-time living online.

Homeschooling undoubtedly presents its own special problems for single parents but as you can see from just the few examples given here there are ways to overcome these difficulties. In some cases it may be just a simple matter of organizing your time while in others you may need to consider tutoring or getting together with other homeschooling parents in your area to pool your time and resources. Whatever your particular problem though you will find that there is almost always a solution which will allow you as a single parent to give your children the homeschooling education that will set them on the right path for their future success.

Parenting4Dummies.com provides information, advice and articles on all aspects of parenting including parenting teenagers and many parents consider it their best homeschooling resource.

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by Donald Saunders
Despite a commonly held belief that taking your children out of school and teaching them at home is likely to run you into trouble with the law, homeschooling is in fact completely legal. There are however laws governing homeschooling and you need to familiarize yourself with these before you start.

The Constitution does not cover education and, while the Department of Education plays a large role in defining the rules governing the provision of education services, the laws covering schooling are established by each individual state and vary considerably from one state to the next.

When it comes to homeschooling, although it is legal in all 50 states, some states adopt a fairly relaxed attitude while others have very restrictive rules. For example, Idaho and Texas place very few restrictions on parents while Massachusetts and New York adopt a very heavy handed approach and require such things as state approval for a student’s curriculum and submission of student achievement test scores. They may even carry out periodic home visits. Other states, such as Pennsylvania, require parents to submit teaching materials used for homeschooling to the local school district for approval.

Over the years there have been many attempts to stop the practice of homeschooling and many parents worry that, even if it is legal today, there is a chance that it will be outlawed in the not too distant future. This is however extremely unlikely and for many years now the courts have consistently ruled in favor of homeschooling. Indeed, in one quite recent case which was taken to the Supreme Court for a ruling the Court reaffirmed the fundamental rights of parents and confirmed the view first expressed by the Supreme Court as far back as 1925 that education is the responsibility of the parents and not of the state.

For parents who are concerned about the legal aspects of homeschooling (or who get themselves into a legal dispute with state authorities) the Home School Legal Defense Association was founded in 1983 and is not only the fount of knowledge on all matters pertaining to the legality of homeschooling, but has also fought many battles on behalf of homeschooling parents.

If you are considering homeschooling then you should certainly not be put off by concerns about your legal position but you must know that there are laws which govern what you can and cannot do and you should acquaint yourself with these.

Parenting4Dummies.com provides information, advice and articles on all aspects of parenting including parenting teenagers and many parents consider it their best homeschooling resource.

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by Donald Saunders
While a very small number of parents do homeschool there children at college level this is not a common practice and it is the aim of most homeschooling parents to prepare there children for entry into college.

There are many reasons for homeschooling a child but one common theme is dissatisfaction with the public, and indeed private, school system. To some extend this also applies to our colleges but here at least we are still fortunate enough to have many fine colleges to choose from, including of course a number of Ivy League colleges.

Because many home schooled students excel, both in terms of their level of achievement and eagerness and ability to learn, it is not uncommon for such students to want to enter college in their mid or late teens and getting into college is not always easy.

The first hurdle of course is the lack of state, or licensed private school, transcripts. This however is not too difficult an obstacle to cross as long as homeschooling parents are aware of it and take the time and trouble to compile a record of the child’s progress, including examples of the child’s work and grades achieved. Records compiled by homeschooling parents, providing they are prepared with care, will be taken seriously and given due weight by the majority of colleges.

In addition to a student record of achievement, which will be required in almost all cases, there will be other entry requirements and these will vary from one college to the next. It is a good idea therefore to start early and to select a number of colleges (perhaps half a dozen) to which you would be happy to send your child and which your child would be happy to attend.

Having drawn up your short-list you should then approach these colleges and ask the admissions department officials to let you have details of their requirements. You should also make it clear to them that you are homeschooling your child and ask if there are any special requirements as a result of this. The college might for example have specific rules which apply to transcripts for home schooled applicants.

One of the commonest ways to judge an applicant’s suitability is through one or more standardized tests, such as the SAT or ACT. Home schooled students are free to take these tests alongside their public and private school peers and, on average, tend to produce much higher scores.

Even with all of this data, many colleges will still have their own admission tests and it is not uncommon for colleges to ask applicants to write one or more essays on a wide range of topics set by the college. This gives the college the opportunity to gain a wider view of the applicant and his or her ability. This is one area in which home schooled applicants typically excel as it gives them the opportunity to talk about their particular interests and talents and convey their level of interest in learning and their relative maturity.

One other valuable tool open to homeschooling parents is provided through a range of advanced placement courses, many of which can be taken by independent study. These courses can help to add to a child’s transcript and can also offer accelerated learning, providing students with material that is advanced for their age group.

There is no reason at all why the home schooled student should not find entry into college a relatively simple matter as long as homeschooling parents do their own homework and prepare the child correctly. At the end of the day colleges are only too happy to accept students of ability who are going to benefit from a college education and also bring something of themselves to the college.

Parenting4Dummies.com provides information, advice and articles on all aspects of parenting including parenting teenagers and many parents consider it their best homeschooling resource.

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by Donald Saunders
Many parents feel very strongly that they wish to opt for homeschooling but also feel that it will be difficult to cope with teaching their children alone. In addition, there are often areas in which they simply do not have the knowledge or skill necessary, typically in subjects such as music or languages. There are of course many solutions to these problems but one is to hire a tutor.

Before you throw up your hands in horror and dismiss this idea as being far too expensive, this can of course be an expensive option but it does not have to cost you an arm and a leg.

The first thing that you need to do is to consider the type of tutor you are looking for and this will vary according to the style of homeschooling that you wish to adopt.

If you decide to adopt a classical approach to homeschooling, based on a tradition of monastic education, then you will need to find a tutor who is highly educated, has a keen mind and a wealth of experience and who will be able set your child a rigorous set of challenges and stretch his or her mind.

By contrast, if you decide to adopt an increasingly popular style such as that devised by Dr Maria Montessori in which education is very much a matter of focusing attention on and observing and reacting to the child, then you need to find a tutor who is far more flexible in his or her approach and who is innovative by nature.

Whatever approach you adopt the important point when it comes to finding a suitable tutor, regardless of the area or areas of study, is that the style and approach adopted by the tutor must match your own desired teaching style and the needs of the child.

So where do you start your search?

One good place to start is in your own local area because you will certainly not be alone in looking for a tutor and local homeschooling groups and other homeschooling parents in your area may well be able to offer you advice and even to recommend individual tutors to you.

Your next port of call might well be the Internet. The Internet has grown considerably in recent years and now provides one of the finest research tools available. Indeed, many homeschooling parents find the Internet is invaluable for sourcing teaching materials and researching topics when preparing their lesson plans. Start your search by simply typing in ‘homeschool tutor’ and you will find a wealth of information and avenues to explore.

As with hiring a stranger for any purpose however you need to exercise care and judgment and take your time to check out anybody who might at first sight appear to be suitable. You’ll find that this is not as difficult as you might think as the Internet provides many online community sites and forums these days where people will post details of their own experience and where you contact people directly to ask them about their experience and seek recommendations.

The Internet has also provided an ideal vehicle for tutoring in many subjects with tutors providing lessons and teaching material online and communicating with students by email. Indeed modern technology now allows for the use of video lessons and even interactive video conferencing. Perhaps most importantly from the perspective of the homeschooling parent, the Internet can provide an excellent and low cost solution to tutoring needs in many subjects.

Homeschooling is not necessarily an easy option but Internet access has certainly made it a lot easier than it used to be and places an amazing array of resources, including tutoring, with the reach of homeschooling parents at a cost which will not break the bank.

Parenting4Dummies.com provides information, advice and articles on all aspects of parenting including parenting teenagers and many parents consider it their best homeschooling resource.

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by Lill Hawkins
Well, a lot of people predicted it and now it’s happened. My daughter’s unschooling has led her to a dead-end job at low pay. Yup, she’s a hired hand on a farm. She didn’t tell me that she was taking the job. I found out about it when I came across a list of her chores that she’d written out. In addition to feeding the pigs, chickens, horses and cows, she has to haul water, milk the cows and even chop wood! And for all this, she only gets room and board!

Okay, so she’s just pretending that she’s a hired hand like Nellie, a character in one of the American Girls books that she’s reading her way through. We seem to be unschooling history at the moment. Last month, Daughter was mostly interested in scientific subjects, so her library books were heavy (literally) on evolution, animal habitats, and food chains. Most of them seemed to have apes on the front and that may be why Daughter went through so many banana sandwiches for snacks, I dunno.

Then she went on a fairy kick and every book she took out or bought had a pink or purple cover that glittered. (Whose idea is this glitter business anyhow and can’t they use better glue? I got really tired of getting a “fairy dust mustache” because my first cup of coffee had glitter in the bottom.) We built a fairy house and, for days, she drew nothing but fairies, although a lot of them were animals. I didn’t even know there were elephant fairies. (They hold their wand in their trunk and have really, really big wings. Two sets.)

We read a couple of the Disney Fairy books, which reaffirmed my childhood belief that Tinkerbelle was a tiresome, self-centered little snot with anger management issues. (I admit it. I didn’t clap when the book told me to when I was a kid. ) Even at that age, I sensed that fairies weren’t something that should be encouraged. Much later, I read Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies and found out that elves were no better than they should be either. (So that’s why they’re always hiding under those leaves. ) I’m kind of glad that fairies and elves have faded into the background somewhat this week.

Penguins are still top of her list, especially the ones at Club Penguin, where she hangs out for an hour or so most days. From what I’ve seen in passing, the big deal at CP right now is talking baby talk so that a big penguin will “adwopt you” and put you in a “cwib”, which they make by buying two couches and putting them together in their igloos. (I admit that this “too twee tween twerpery talk” gets old fast, but I imagine it’s payback for the Pig Latin I used to drive my mother crazy with when I was 9. ) It seems to be basically playing house online. With penguins.

We used to play house under the lilac bushes with stones for dishes, sticks for silverware and our jackets for furniture. I found it boring, but most of the little girls in the neighborhood loved it so I went along with the wheeze for awhile and then took off to climb a tree so I could read in peace. (There’s nothing better than having a tall leafy tree to hide in, so that you can read as parents call you and think that you’re out of earshot. I was practically arboreal when I was young.)

Do kids climb trees anymore? I never see any up in trees, now that my son has outgrown it. Daughter has a fear of heights, so she’s not a tree climber. I have a fear of widths, which is why I’m usually trying to lose weight.

Daughter gets a dose of geography everyday when she checks the analytics on my blog with me to see where the traffic has come from. She’s able to find most of the major nations on the world map and is zeroing in on some of the smaller ones. If you know anyone in Burkina Faso, Sao Tome or one of the obscure island chains, send them my link so she can improve her map skills. She helps plot out our routes, too, when we drive to places we’re unfamiliar with, which sometimes adds a little to our drive time, but it’s all a learning experience. (We’re learning more than I want to know about gas prices too.)

I was thinking today of how so many people ask me how I can be sure she’s learning without testing her. For me, it’s just something I know from being with her, but actually there are concrete ways to tell. She reads the instructions on packages, in books and online now. She used to ask me to read them or she’d read them too quickly and miss things, or say that they were too complicated for her to follow.

She reads signs and often catches something that I miss like, “Please use other door”. Oof! (No wonder I almost broke my arm trying to open the darned thing.) Or we’ll be looking for something in a book and she’ll find it before I do, because she’s gotten very good at scanning with purpose.

She sometimes does a page in each subject in a workbook once or twice a week now, just because she wants to know what the kids in school know, she says. She whizzes through it in a half hour and then goes back to what she really likes to do. Riding up and down the driveway on an imaginary horse, whinnying. Throwing tennis balls for the dog and shooting baskets with her brother at the same time.

Drawing page after page of Neopets and Pokemon and animals with high-fashion outfits and purses and high heels. Drawings that have so much personality and attitude that they almost jump off the page. And connecting with nature by observing, exploring and bugging me to pick violets before they’re all gone, which is where we’re off to now. Soon, we’ll have more sweet smelling bouquets in the little clay vases that she makes. Each one is unique, just like the little flower child who made it. What makes your child unique? Do you pick flowers together or gather shells or draw together? If you’re a home schooler, how do you think your child would be different if they went to school?

Lill Hawkins lives in Maine and writes about family life, home education and being a WAHM at http://hawkhillacres.blogspot.com Get the News From Hawkhill Acres: A mostly humorous look at home schooling, writing and being a WAHM, whose mantra is “I’m a willow; I can bend.”

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by Lill Hawkins
When I was about five, I developed an unfortunate habit of repeating the same word over and over again. I’d hear someone say “glowering” or “diesel” and the sound would appeal to me, so I’d say it to myself again and again as I went about my business. At the time, my business was playing in the yard and at my parent’s feet, so they got mighty tired of my little habit. One day, as I played near my mother’s rocker, I started to repeat the latest word to tickle my fancy: trollop.

I probably thought that it was a sea creature or a method of transportation, but whatever it was, I liked the way it sounded. My mother, however, did not. She picked me up by the shirt, put me over her knee and paddled me. Then she told me that she never wanted to hear me say that word again and sent me to my room, where I spent a few minutes with the large dictionary that I kept under my bed for just such exigencies as this. I learned a lot that day, although much of it went over my head until later.

Do we even have trollops anymore? How about buffleheads, knuckleheads and dunderheads? Floozies, fleabags and flibbertigibbets? Back in the 50’s and 60’s when I grew up, all of these terms were pretty common and so was scaring kids into behaving.But what term do modern mothers use to describe what people will think of their daughter, if she strays from the path of virtue by shaving her legs too soon, wearing her dresses too tight or wearing lipstick before she should? (Of course, nowadays, the age for all that is probably as soon as the kid is dry through the night, but still.)

If boys don’t play “fast and loose” with girls anymore, what do they do? “Hooking up” just isn’t the same thing, because the girls are playing fast and loose too. Juvenile detention center just doesn’t have the same ring as “bad boy” or “bad girl” school used to when my mother predicted that I’d end up there for sassing her. Bankruptcy laws and Ronald Reagan just about did away with poorhouses and madhouses, so they’re no longer destinations to threaten your offspring with.

Telling your kid she’d end up in the poorhouse if she kept spending her allowance on Almond Joys was a real threat to a kid who read Dickens like I did, believe me. Then I saw The Snake Pit and saw what happened to women who weren’t content to just be wives and I really got worried. I wanted to be a writer and I’d read about what happened to the Fitzgerald’s, Poe, Sylvia Plath, Hemingway and many others. Ending up in a madhouse wasn’t just a hollow threat when my mother held it over my head in order to get me to stop watching horror movies which would give me nightmares and drive me insane, according to her. Nowadays, 3 yr olds watch Jurassic Park and cheer for the velociraptors.

So far, I haven’t come to a bad end, although some people would say I’m working on it what with being a home schooling parent and all. I guess this is what comes of buying Almond Joys instead of putting my quarters into my piggy bank, and reading Mad Magazine and watching Rocky and Bullwinkle instead of learning Latin and Algebra.

Mind you, I’ve found a lot more use for what I learned from the former two than from the latter. Who could read Spy vs. Spy and not see the stupidity of the Cold War, for instance? Latin and algebra I can figure out with a dictionary and a calculator, although I rarely need to, but learning to see through propaganda and hypocrisy is much more useful. That’s why I was glad the other day when my daughter, who was supposed to be cleaning her room, sat down with her brother’s latest Mad magazine and started chortling. I was beginning to think that I’d have to threaten her with growing up to be a Republican or a Wal Mart greeter to get her to read a good book.

Lill Hawkins lives in Maine and writes about family life, home education and being a WAHM at http://hawkhillacres.blogspot.com . Get the News From Hawkhill Acres: A mostly humorous look at home schooling, writing and being a WAHM, whose mantra is “I’m a willow; I can bend.”

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by Rebecca Walker
Home schooling is popular among parents and children alike. Unlike traditional schooling, home schooling allows for a more personal curriculum to be formed which suits the exact needs of the pupil. Further more, it also allows for a pupil to gain more time with their teacher than would ever be possible in larger classes, which are the only economically viable solution, within schools.

Focus on a Childs Competencies

When a child shows a particular ability or passion towards a certain subject area, it can be beneficial to teach them beyond the level that would normally be necessary. Not only does this equip them for further education or employment, it also allows them to enjoy their education more.

Within schools it is not always possible to notice, let alone allow a child’s passion for a certain area to be capitalized on. It is also the case that teachers are pressured into sticking to a particular curriculum that suits the needs of the broader demographic of the class. This means that the teacher has to meet a middle ground in terms of helping those that are challenged, and allowing more gifted pupils to take their learning further.

The Attention They Deserve

With larger class sizes it is impossible for a teacher to be able to give children the attention that they deserve. The pupils that are particularly capable are not pushed far enough by their teachers, and those that are having problems at school are not able to be given the attention they deserve. For those that are not given the attention they deserve when they need it most, they may not have the foundations in place which are needed in order to understand later parts of their courses.

Flexibility

Home school learning is increasing in popularity year on year, and the added flexibility that it provides cannot be ignored as a potential bonus of this for some people. For those that live far away from a state or private school, home schooling can be the only practical alternative to long journeys every day. Many parents also need to travel for a variety of reasons; with home schooling you can take the class room with you.

A Parents Motivation

Nobody wants a child to succeed more than their parents. With home schooling the parent is the teacher, and therefore they truly have the child’s best interests at heart. A parent is also able to take a far more insightful perspective on any problems their child may be having, as well as what it takes to get more out of them.

Bonding

Home schooling provides an opportunity for a parent to bond with their child and spend more time with them. Evidence suggests that a parent who helps their child with school work is more likely to have a better relationship with their child in later life. If you help your child with their school work, you also have a more open relationship with them through the very essence of knowing how their education is going.

The author Rebecca Walker writes articles for childfont.com. He also gives valuable information about child development, home schooling & reading, child development & learning to read, active white board are accessible on the internet.

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