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Archive for the ‘Home Schooling’ Category

Establish program details including the time you can spend working with your child, the time you want your child to work independently, the books to use as a part of the curriculum, field trips and curriculum with lesson plans. Follow a schedule and have tests regularly, if structure and discipline are your top priorities. Allow flexibility, if you value developing creativity and learning more. Use the “Approaches to Learning” chart to identify the best homeschooling approach that works for you. Remember, traditional, Charlotte Mason, classical, unit study, unschooling or relaxed homeschooling, independent study, eclectic and umbrella program are the most popular approaches to homeschooling.
Review your competency and confidence, time available for planning and preparation, budget and other influences. Review FAQs, homeschooling issues and concerns, and online journals to learn and connect with other homeschoolers. Approach your homeschooling program based on the assessment and your convictions, values and needs.Write the goals for each course. Select content and methods based on your child’s learning style. You can download course goals from the internet and modify them. Using standard goals will help you to exceed the state standards. Fine-tune the curriculum to suit your child’s learning style. Follow teaching guidelines based on good practices during sessions. Check your progress and assess year-end accomplishments.

There is an endless number of approaches to designing a homeschool program for your child. They vary from extremely structured courses to completely unstructured. The past few decades have seen many different teaching styles emerge and have acquires some common names. Three of these, school-at-home, unit studies and classical homeschool are three of the more popular types of homeschooling.

School-at-Home

School-at-home is a general term for the approach that many parents will attempt at first. Because they do not really know what to do, they will turn to experts to design the curricula and supply the materials. Basically, everything that is done in public school classrooms is done in the home. This approach has study schedules, textbooks and recordkeeping.

While this is not a bad first step, this approach to learning has two drawbacks. First, parents will often burn themselves out because of the massive amount of effort that is required to carry on all of the tasks. They soon discover that teaching is not as easy as it may have initially seemed. Eventually, they slack off, become impatient and lose the passion which inhibits the child’s motivation. They are unsure of how to proceed and become frustrated when the progress is slow. Both parent and child suffer and the whole goal of homeschooling begins to unravel.

Second, the soon realize that the materials are usually a good reason why their child was not doing well in public school. There are many hard working public school teachers who truly love to teach, but they are encumbered with materials that are difficult or even substandard. However, parents often do not know what materials would be any better. This is frustrating and again the child’s progress is slowed or even halted. It is often at this point that parents seek an alternative to homeschool or just give up altogether and send their children on to public school anyway.

Unit Studies

The fundamental concept of the unit studies method of learning is that it uses the child’s natural interests as a starting point. This is based on the basic observation that people are interested in certain things and are bored with other activities. This is often displayed very early in life. Some people enjoy drawing; others prefer working math problems or studying science. Some people enjoy being outside running or exploring nature while another prefers the indoors, reading or working on the computer. These value preferences surface at around age two or even younger. By utilizing these preferences instead of fighting them, parents can tailor a homeschool education that is perfect for the child and embraces the fundamental idea of unit studies.

This I also one approach that public schools are never able to achieve because of their one size fits all mentality.