Homeschooling is fun and we are enjoying it since we started homeschooling with the kids. Life has never been the same again. We consider this our best decision. But deciding about homeschooling wasn’t easy. Even though I am a teacher by profession and knew about all the problems of the system. Still, I was a bit reluctant to jump on to it. The main reason was fear of the unknown and it wasn’t the norm back then.
When I tell most people that I do not send my children to school, then I am constantly met with the question, Why did you decide to homeschool your kids? So in this blog post, I would like to share why you should too homeschool your kids rather than sending off to school.
So here are six reasons we homeschool our children and why I think I can teach my kids better.
1. You can choose your curriculum
Do your kids like Astronomy? Yes? Cool, go forth. No? No big deal, study birds.
Do your kids like Ancient History? Start with Ancient Egypt and dive into the mysteries of the pyramids. No? Try something a little more modern like the Renaissance.
Get it? You can start wherever you want. If you are studying Ancient Greece, it is a great time to study mythology, anatomy, and the inventors of the time. You can dive in as deep as it holds your children’s interests or just skim the surface.
Does your child struggle with reading? Focus on stories or subjects that interest your child to enhance reading skills and foster a love of reading.
Show your kids how you apply skills in cooking. Use Legos to build a bridge or an aqueduct. You can go as far as your imagination leads you–it is your homeschool!
2. You’ll be able to focus on your kid’s needs
My eldest son is in third grade. He struggled in math. He thought he was dumb because he just “didn’t get it.” This was so sad for me because I am a math nerd. I love math! (I told you I march to the beat of my drum!)
I tried to help him. When he struggled with adding large numbers and the teacher’s methods had so many steps, I taught him how to stack the numbers. After a few times, it clicked! It made sense, even if it was “the old-fashioned” way. (Come on! It wasn’t that long ago!)
Unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed to stack the numbers on his assignments and receive credit. I was dumbfounded. He didn’t understand the teacher’s method, he understood stacking and could get the right answer, but that didn’t matter.
When we started our homeschool this was one of my goals, to help him enjoy math. We started with Singapore Math. It was affordable and appeared to be ststraightforwardThat was a good place to start. He gained confidence in doing math in his head, even big numbers. Then we found Beast Academy books and we were sold!
3. Flexibility
Can I just tell you how great it is not to be tethered to school bells? It is pretty amazing. What was once a rush in the morning, a long list of to-dos: eat breakfast, get dressed, pack lunch, brush teeth, style hair, find shoes, grab backpack whew, is now a relaxing routine.
When we started to homeschool, things changed in our home. The kids wake up when they have had enough sleep. We have breakfast together. Then we start on our school subjects.
No more fighting, no more lectures to my boys about moving faster in the morning, no more worrying about what was forgotten, no more running a forgotten lunch back to school, and no more cranky mornings!
Life is just simpler now!
4. Save Money
Okay, so this one may seem out of place, but hear me out first!
Have you thought about how much you pay for school supplies? And what about the classroom supplies you are providing? Then there is the book fair, fundraiser, field trips, afterschool clubs, and sports. Don’t forget exam fees, extra-curricular fees, and so on. Have I made my point yet?
The amounts add up to a lot. Not to mention the gas driving to and from school. Sending your kids to school can cost you a lot of money. Instead of sending your money to the school for them to spend, you get to decide how to spend your money. Novel idea, isn’t it?
You get to choose your curriculum and your field trips. You get to choose what interests your kids. I don’t know about you, but I like to feel a little more in control of my finances instead of handing over my purse strings to someone else.
5. Individual attention for the child
Even with multiple children, you can give your child one-on-one time when you homeschool. This will help your child get what he or she needs. If your child doesn’t have legible handwriting, you can work on that together. If your child struggles with an attention span, you can brainstorm together ways to overcome that.
If your child becomes obsessed with sharks, you can check out all the books at the library, watch every documentary on YouTube and Netflix, intensely scrutinize Shark week, and visit the local aquarium, until you know way more about sharks than you ever cared to know.
Do you see what I am getting at? These are some great reasons to assure you that your reasons are completely valid because you are doing all you can to give your child the best education they could get.
6. Not depending on a mediocre system
When it comes to the traditional school system, was designed to educate the masses. It is kind of like a factory. Several kids are in the same classroom, even more in the same grade and they are all on the same schedule to learn the same thing at the same time. But what if that doesn’t work for everyone? Doesn’t matter.
That is how the system is set up so that it can churn out more and more products with the least amount of effort. Doesn’t that sound familiar? This is how a factory works. So the current system doesn’t create humans but products.
Does it work? Sure, for most people. But I don’t want to be most people. And I don’t want my kids to be most people either. I like to be different. I like to march to the beat of my drum.
You can provide your child with a better education than a traditional school simply because you care for them. You can take care of their needs better in most cases whether in academics or otherwise.
7. Not agreeing with what’s being taught
Another traditional reason for families choosing the option of homeschooling was a fundamental disagreement with what was or is being taught in other schooling environments. Chief among this group are families whose religious beliefs clash with the prevailing educational methods.
Families who choose the option of homeschooling are not subject to the rigid curriculum of established schools, and there are many options when it comes to homeschool resources that can offer as wide or as narrow a field of study as far as worldviews that the parent wishes.
8. To avoid bullying
Hand-in-hand with the safety issue is a concern for the child’s self-esteem. Bullying is a common issue within any school system, as any parent well remembers from their own school days. Many parents cannot bear the thought of throwing their children into the kind of system that breeds a pack mentality and is choosing instead to have them educated at home.
9. Because you simply can!
Finally, parents may choose to homeschool their children because they simply feel they can do a better job than any educational system. Parents of gifted children do not want to see the child wasted in the hard-pressed for both resources and qualified teachers system that public schooling represents, and private schools are becoming increasingly unaffordable for the average family. Parents who believe their children need the advantages of a more intimate education are therefore turning to the option of homeschooling.