With mounting concerns about overcrowding and the quality of public education, parents are increasingly considering the home schooling alternative. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the number of students being home-schooled is about 1 million and growing.
While there are many philosophies and approaches to home schooling, all parents want to see their children reach their full potential. Here are some tips from SFK Media Specially for Kids Corp., the company that developed the ReadEnt at-home learning program.
The Perks Of Home Schooling
The key to getting homeschooling ‘free’ is taking advantage of the resources around you.
The most obvious obstacle in beginning to homeschool your child is the need to create your own homeschooling cur…
The fact is, you can actually design your homeschooling program in order for it to come free. By ‘free’, we mean that you won’t be spending an extra buck aside from the regular crayons and pieces of paper that a regular school kid would need at the start of a school year.
The key to getting homeschooling ‘free’ is taking advantage of the resources around you.
The most obvious obstacle in beginning to homeschool your child is the need to create your own homeschooling curriculum. You may opt to purchase your own books to go over possible material, hire a professional to assist you in the creation of this curriculum, or better yet, go online and find a suitable free home schooling curriculum. Online home schooling support sites actually have various options for home schooling curriculum for you to choose from. Because these are all online, you are not likely to spend on transportation, professional fees, and even purchase of books you may not use when you decide you don’t want them in your curriculum.
Carrying on with a homeschooling program does not have to be expensive either. If you prefer buying books, you can contact local book dealers. Dealers of book sets have various discounts for home schooling parents like you. The benefits of getting your own book sets include the convenience of having these books in the comfort of your home. The costs of purchasing the books will be well worth it because your succeeding children can make use of these same books when they reach the same educational level.
Otherwise, you can opt to take advantage of something closer to home—your town or city library. Your library will likely carry a huge wealth of books (some may no longer be sold in your regular bookstores!) that you can borrow when you need them.
Your regular school field trip can easily be replaced with the fraction of the cost. You can opt to see sites within the proximity of your home. Your city and your state may offer you a rich array of cultural and historical sites to visit. You can also opt to tie in education with whatever family trips and vacations you’d be making. Taking a trip to Lourdes? Build a lesson around the family trip so that you can use this time and the money you spend in homeschooling your child as well.
With some careful thought and innovativeness, you can easily make home schooling free—both financially and effort-wise. Don’t be afraid to ask around and look for ideas online from other homeschooling parents.
The Best Information On Home Schooling
Homeschooling could be the most feasible option for parents who want to educate their children but cannot afford the expenses in a typical school.
With homeschooling, parents can still have the best education for their children without having to resort to expensive everyday expenditures of sending children to school.
However, one should bear in mind that homeschooling is not for everybody, and not all homeschool curriculum are appropriate for everyone.
Learning through homeschooling may differ from one person to another. This is because in homeschooling; the traditional aspects of learning are not present like the typical classroom setting, the fixed schedules, etc. This goes to show that parents may opt to change the program in order to fit the needs of their children.
In homeschooling, the parents are the ones who teach their children. They just have to buy a particular homeschooling curriculum that they think would best work for them. In this way, the parents are able to educate their children on their own free will and without the influence of a typical “school system”.
With its many advantages, homeschooling is now recognized as a legal educational system in all of the states in the U.S., though each state has its own set of rules and regulations regarding what and how homeschooling should be executed.
However, many people question the reliability and efficiency of homeschooling. Many are still wondering whether children can really learn form this type of education. Statistics show that students who had their basic education from homeschooling, were able to do very well in college.
Most experts contend that the data and the assertions are true because with homeschooling, the parent-child relationship is a very effective tool in educating an individual. This is because children in a homeschooling program are less pressured and less tensed because it is their parents who do the teaching and not somebody else; therefore, the inhibition is lessened.
In this manner, learning is more interactive, more comprehensive, and more properly initiated as long as there is a good curriculum that will serve as a guide.
In order to know more information about homeschooling programs in your community, it is best that you consult your state’s laws on homeschooling. Each state has its own set of rules, hence, what may work for one state may not be applicable to the other states.
Just keep in mind that it is important that you and your child are comfortable with the program in order to make homeschooling effective.
Read Widely And Become Better At Homeschooling
For many people, homeschooling is a desirable alternative to the education offered by the public and private school systems. When you homeschool your children you have the flexibility to create an educational curriculum more suited to their needs. Homeschooling also makes economic sense, especially when you consider the costs involved with sending multiple children to a private school. If you’ve made the decision to homeschool your children, the first step in establishing a viable curriculum is to read widely.
To begin with, you have to ensure that you educate yourself on a wide variety of topics. While it may be tempting to focus exclusively on books teaching you how to homeschool your children, you shouldn’t rely on these too heavily. Keep in mind that pedagogical method is only as important as your knowledge of a subject, and focusing your reading entirely on how to homeschool your children will leave you lacking in the practical knowledge necessary to execute it.
At first, the reading required in order to homeschool your children may seem daunting – after all, a teacher is only required to be knowledgeable on the subjects they teach, but you’re going to be teaching all of the subjects. Keep in mind, however, that you needn’t be an expert in every subject – one of the great things about homeschooling is that you can learn together with your child. Instead, it’s more important that you have a good general knowledge of the history of the subjects being taught.
In most cases, a good “history of” on the subjects you plan to teach should be sufficient. Because it is impractical to read an entire bibliography for multiple subjects, you want to instead read a couple books on each subject that provide you with a good homeschooling starting point. In other words, you’re not going to be an expert, but you’re going to know the general concepts and be able to answer basic questions. Most importantly, you’ll know which writing to explore further if you and your child’s interest takes you in that direction.
The amount that you have to read will depend of course on your child’s age and the level and depth of the subjects you’ll be teaching, but a good starting point is to read a standard book that a high school student would have to read for a given subject. Remember that specific areas of a subject can be explored as you go, so you needn’t be able to answer every question your child might have in depth before you start. Instead, you need a good knowledge of the history of the subject, so you can arrange a curriculum that makes sense in a liner way: you want to know how the subject works, and how it is taught. You want to know the “building blocks” – what concepts to teach first, and how to build on those first concepts.
By reading widely in this way you’ll arm yourself with the necessary tools for homeschooling your child effectively, and provide yourself with the basic knowledge from which you and your child can explore particular areas of subjects further.