Homeschool Fever

So you want to learn more about homeschooling?

Here is a general overview of what you need to study up on.

Educational Beliefs / Philosophy of Education

Why do you want to homeschool?  What reasons do you have in mind?  Are you looking for a quickfix for an attitude problem or do you firmly believe in home learning?  How do you view standardized testing?  Do you have a good grip on how your child learns best?  Do you see value in worksheets or see them as busywork for the classroom?  Answering these questions will get you started in formulating your own educational philosophy.

Remember, not everyone is cut out to handle homeschooling.  Homeschooling - life learning - takes strong dedication to not only your family but also in the face of criticism.

Methods

Once you determine what your educational beliefs are, you should review the many different method theories there are out there when it comes to learning at home.  Each method has a huge amount of viable truth in it, although some of them will contradict each other in practice.  Your should become basically familiar with each method and get a feel for which one would work best for your own family situation. 

Note: homeschooling does not mean “school at home” although some set their environments up in such a manner because it is the only way they know how due to how they were educated themselves.  There are many ways to go about homeschooling your children outside of throwing a desk and chalkboard up in a spare bedroom-turned-school-room!

Styles

When employing methods, you will typically find your comfort level in either a structured style or a developmental style of learning.  The various methods can usually be categorized as needing either one style or the other to be fully effective.

Structured styles are those which adhere to a more formal daily plan of learning.  Families who make use of full curriculums of textbooks, lesson plans, or correspondence schools typically follow a more structured day, similar to the one the public school sytems use.  For instance, Bible at 8 am, Math at 10 am, and “Recess” at 11 am.  The Classical Education method also requires more structure than most.  Generally, it is believed that the older a student gets, the more he is apt to require -and want- a structured educational style.

Developmental styles lean more towards freedom, active learning, movement, unstructured days, and a following of interests throughout the whole course of the day.  Activities abound, work can be performed at various times during the day, and a strict time table is not usually followed.  Methods that work best with the developmental style of active learning include unschooling and unit studies.  This style is especially well suited to younger children (under 10) who are still in a concrete mental stage of thought and don’t do well with formal academics.

Curriculum

The totality of sources from which you will obtain your educational knowledge is your curriculum.  Most homeschoolers make use of some form of curriculum base, whether it be as complicated as full mass-marketed learning packages for each subject or as simple as weekly trips to the library to select books on specific topics.

Your “curriculum” can be comprised of packaged sets, living books, workbooks, textbooks, encyclopedias, magazines, videos, manipulatives, articles, internet websites, and more.

For those of you who prefer a full packaged set with laid out lesson plans, mass publishers can be found for any subject imaginable.  Some of the most popular curriculum publishers include Saxon (math), Bob Jones & Abeka (Christian based), Veritas Press (classical education), and Sonlight (packaged “living books”).

Experiences

What remarkable freedoms homeschooling allows!  Instead of being tied to a public school calendar and daily time table, you have the freedom to expose your child to the “real world” during the adult business hours.  Must-do experiences include trips to the local farmer’s market, post office, grocery store, police department, fire department, factory, television station, nursing home, radio station, museum, river, lake, planetarium, and much more.  Your child will benefit wildly from participating in community events and going about daily life by your side.

Online Learning

Finally, you should invest in learning about online learning.  The internet is a vast tool to use in your homeschooling endeavors.  Millions of sites on any topic imaginable exist, along with sites on homeschooling, scheduling, and notebooking/lapbooking ideas as well as sites for free worksheets, free curriculum ideas, free printables, free educational downloads, and free ebooks.  And probably best of all is Project Gutenburg, a volunteer project library of thousands upon thousands of public domain free ebooks (including many popular classic works).