The Advantage of Homeschooling your Child

One of the biggest advantage of homeschooling is parents have far more input in their child's education. There is overwhelming evidence to support the claims that there are numerous advantages to homeschooling. When you incorporate conscious learning into your homeschooling efforts, you are certainly giving your children lessons that they can never learn in a conventional classroom. One of the major benefits to homeschooling is having the flexibility to follow the child's interests and energy. (And of course your own!)

Most families homeschooling are still following a curriculum, and there are many, ranging from Christian based, to external curriculums, still based on the school curriculum in your Country. Parents range in how flexible or relaxed they are in how they deliver the material. Many parents are more comfortable just following the guidelines and activities, some parents love preparing ideas and activities themselves. Then of course there is Unschooling, which generally does not use a curriculum at all. The advantage of homeschooling is you can decide what suits you and your children.

When homeschooling your children, there are several things to keep in mind. Keeping a balance between a well planned activity and being able to follow a child's interest in a topic can be a bit of a juggling act. Having some sort of overall plan can ensure that you make use of the advantages of homeschooling, but still gives your child a wide ranging education. If you are too highly planned you will be too attached to your program and won't have the flexibility to expand or explore the direction the child is going. But on the other hand if you are totally unstructured, you can miss out on the benefits of activities that do require some pre-planning.

What are the Cons of Homeschooling?

To enjoy the full advantages of homeschooling it is important to make provisions for the cons of homeschooling. One of the disadvantages of homeschooling is the fact that parents have the total responsibility for planning and implementing the activities.

I really looked very seriously into homeschooling when my children were small, but back then there was very little support and no Internet. Now, particularly with the Internet, there are a wealth of resources available for parents, from specialised curriculums through to peer support forums and ideas. It is really important that you don't set yourself up to have a battle with your child's learning. For homeschooling to be effective you want to be working with the child's energy, not trying to force them to sit down and do their math!

Social isolation is another thing many parents consider is a con of homeschooling. However many areas have homeschooling networks where you can link up with families in the same area and share ideas, outings, activities. Even if there is not a homeschooling support group nearby, you can still use after school activities for some group interaction (and some time out!) or make sure your week activities include other children and family interaction.

Home schooling does require some creativity on behalf of the parents, but the biggest advantage of homeschooling is you have so much flexibility to set up whatever suits your situation.

Here in Australia, because of some of the remote living conditions, we have some wonderful online distance education (used to be school of the air!), with lots of interaction via the Internet of kids working together and access to teachers. This is still using the conventional school curriculum however. But many families find they can get all the schoolwork out of the way in the morning, leaving the afternoons free for farm activities.

Share your experiences of homeschooling or ask questions about the pros and cons of homeschooling.

Advantage of Homeschooling:
Your child's Learning Style

Another of the advantages of homeschooling, is you can take advantage of your child's style of learning. Schools simply don't have the flexibility to cater to children who are very physical (instead they get labelled ADHD!) If your child is very active, you can do heaps of learning activities outside, spacial games, maths, words in the sand, having short bursts of activities followed by a run around the outside of the house for ten minutes will be far more productive than trying to make a child sit still at a desk for an hour.

If your child loves cooking, you can incorporate heaps of maths activities - measuring, counting, size, shape, multiples. And language - reading recipes, making up a recipe, building favorite recipe book, cutting out pictures, taking photos. The advantages to homeschooling is you can use anything the child is currently interested in as a learning experience or theme. Dinosaur cookies, Dinosaur skeletons; Maths and spacial, or counting activities based on Dinosaurs; Stories and language, visits to the library to find as many books as possible on Dinosaurs!

For a child crazy about Dinosaurs:

• Bake Dinosaur cookies
• Explore Dinosaur skeletons and fossils
• Base Math around Dinosaurs: Counting, spacial and size activities, shape
• Read stories, collect all the books from the local library on Dinosaurs
• Write stories, get children to make their own books
• Art Activities, build a papier-mache Dinosaur, make cards and illustrations for their story
• Visit the Museum and look at extinct animals or bones
• Exploring questions - why did the Dinosaurs disappear?
• Make Dinosaur footprints down the beach (you could even make Plaster of Paris imprints)
• Dinosaur Diets

Get the idea? Anything a child is interested in or curious about can become a learning activity. One advantage of homeschooling is you can follow all sorts of spin offs - like from Dinosaur Diets, could be all sorts of food activities, or dental/teeth or health activities.

Share your homeschooling activities here!
What homeschooling activities other parents doing with their children. Get inspiration and share your success stories.

The Secret to Successful Homeschooling?
Flexibility

The most important thing to keep in mind is staying flexible. Leaving plenty of space to be able to follow up on what takes your child's interest.

A walk around the garden with a magnify glass might lead to finding out about lady bugs. A trip to the supermarket is an opportunity to read, make lists, budget or use money. Seeing someone in a wheelchair might lead to finding out about people who are differently abled, or a trip to a nursing home. Keep your attention out for ways you can extend your child's horizons.

Just use the questions children ask as a bouncing off point and keep asking more questions. A child who knows how to ask, and how to find things out, will always succeed. A focus on scores and tests and pass or fail, with the standard school system focus does not set a child up to be a lifelong learner who is curious and excited to learn. It simply teaches them how to pass (or worse, fail!) tests.

Have some easy activities up your sleeve that don't require a lot of input from you that you can do on days when you are not feeling very inspired, or you want to focus on something for yourself. But of course, being a more conscious parent, another advantage of homeschooling, you can follow your own passions and there will be lots of opportunities to build activities for your children! If you love the beach, do heaps of things down the beach, if you love art, work alongside your children, or visit galleries and exhibitions.

Benefits To Homeschooling

Another advantage of homeschooling is you can teach your kids all sorts of personal skills, probably not covered in conventional schooling. Activating success consciousness and prosperity or financial training. You can encourage your children to focus on what they DO want, and finding ways to make it happen, doing dream build exercises and helping them to be pro-active about learning and developing the skills to reach their goals.

Our Super Skills 4 Kids home study course designed to help young kids set goals, envision the future they want, and achieve anything!

Super Skills 4 Kids is packed with tools and resources that equip kids with the skills to solve problems, set goals, and celebrate their achievements. It also comes with a bonus workbook. I've had many parents say they use many of the techniques for themselves, and it is an ideal program for homeschoolers!

Summary Of The Advantage Of Homeschooling

• Specialized attention
• Kids learn at their own pace
• Parents have far more input into attitudes, topics, ideas your child is exposed to
• Flexibility - the only limits are your imagination!
• Exposure to varied interests and topics
• The whole world is your classroom
• Life is a lesson - use events or family members as topics to expand
• Family and friends can contribute - i.e. visits to workplaces or special activities
• Increased closeness and building great communication with your children
• Ability to follow the child's passions and interests

You owe it to your child to give them the best education that you possibly can. If you think it is something you could try, even if you can only homeschool part time, or for the early years, it is well worth the effort!

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Other Education Articles

Unschooling, a more radical advantage of homeschooling
This article explores Unschooling and how it differs from more conventional homeschooling.

Information and tips about Young Kids
Despite the advantage of Homeschooling, of course it is not suitable for all families. This article looks at general developmental stages for school kids and tips for supporting them in school.

Information and tips about Pre teens.
The Pre-teen stage is a transitional one. Lots of ideas and tips in this article.

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