| Wednesday, May 31, 2006 |
| Establishing Ground Rules For Homeschoolers |
By KB Lim
When you are homeschooling your children, maintaining discipline becomes ever more important. Since a child goes not need to go to a public school and stays home all the time, he/she may mistake the freedom he/she gets and feel that homeschooling is like having summer holiday all year long.
Homeschooling provides a deal of flexibility and sometimes this can be a double edge sword. Managing the time you have for homeschooling your kid can be a major problem and needs to be disciplined right from the start.
There's a saying where more freedom means more responsibilities. That certainly is true for homeschooling. Homeschooling provides you and your kids a great deal of freedom and flexibility in deciding where to learn, how to learn and when to learn.
The decisions you make should be from the beginning. If your kids are older, get them involved in the decision process and plan out each day's homeschooling routine at least one month in advance. Getting your kid's involvement let him/her know what's he/she going to learn in advance. More important, it teaches kids the importance of planning.
From experience, homeschooling can get easily sidetracked at home due to many distractions, therefore a time-table that you rigorously follow is of utmost important.
Another part of homeschooling is homework. Once lessons are taught to the child, he/she should be allowed to do homework without your assistance. Also, set a dateline for completion to educate him/her about punctuality.
There are also other aspects of discipline such as the child's manners,courtesy and character developement. It is best to educate your child about such things right from the beginning and continue through his/her homeschooling education.
It takes time to educate your child regarding these virtues.
I always advise parents considering homeschooling to set aside a room for lessons and homework. Conduct all your homeschooling in that room. Through time, the child knows that room is meant for studying and not a playground.
In spite of all the steps and precautions you take, there will be times when your child may be difficult to discipline and get him/her to listen to you. When this happens, think out of the box. Try something new or different. Take a break once in a while to take a breather.
Homeschooling is not easy and is destined for failure if you do not have the patience and time. It requires a lot of hard work and planning.
By establishing ground rules from the beginning for your child and strictly adhering to these rules, the chances of a great homeschooling experience are better.
I hope this article has provided you with some pointers on how to maintain discipline homeschooling your child.
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posted by All About Home @ 5:02 PM   |
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| Tuesday, May 30, 2006 |
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The Gift of Homeschooling By Pamela Connolly
I love being a homeschooler. I am proud of my lifestyle. I love my family and am willing to make sacrifices to insure that my values and priorities are evident in everything we do.
So, why do I feel defensive? Why am I apprehensive at times to discuss my chosen lifestyle with those who disagree? Why should I care about those who don't share my philosophy and are suspect of the sacrifices I make? Well the short answer is most of the time, I don't! But faced with the barrage of criticism from all sides, there have been times when I questioned my decision to homeschool and wondered if it's worth it.
I started homeschooling 15 years ago when it I saw what was happing to the public schools. Private school were too expensive. At that time I was viewed as a weirdo, as an "overprotective" snob, and as someone raising socially deviant antisocial misfits. I was constantly justifying my position to people who just did not get it! It was difficult to constantly have to explain and defend my priorities to those who, I felt, abdicated their responsibilities to others they know nothing about.
I felt then as I do now that homeschooling is the best world for my children. The woman's movement of the 70's created unnecessary confusion for many women. Men always knew their identity was in their career. I knew woman could do anything, but timing was key. It was obvious to me that my children would be my career. Like any other profession, homeschooling required education, commitment, dedication, patience and creativity. We, as homeschooling pioneers, steamed forward and professed that our families were our careers and they would get the benefit of our education and training. I do not feel I wasted my 17 years of education.
This commitment to the family started a ground swell and now millions of families teach their children at home. We all know how students and teachers behave in the public schools. The metal detectors, DEA agents, police, gangs, riots, barbed wire, lock downs and random searches tell the sad story. I empathize with the innocents who are subjected to this cesspool daily.
Homeschooling is a gift I give to my children without reservation because they are special and deserve the best. The business world never missed my creativity and energy, but my children would have.
Pam Connolly is a professional educator with the San Diego School District. She has been teaching kids how to type for over 11 years. To teach your child typing, visit www.1stoplearntotype.com. |
| posted by All About Home @ 11:03 PM |
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| Monday, May 29, 2006 |
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Home Schooling: The Advantages And Disadvantages By James Masterson
People new to the idea and concept of homeschooling often have a thousand of questions to raise. Here is some helpful information to guide you in weighing things out:
Some homeschooling advantages:
1. Allow quality time, providing individualized attention and instruction. Homeschooling parents can better understand their children; observe how kids progress, what areas they find difficult and help them out.
2. Children learn in their own pace. At homeschool, children can advance at any time, not waiting on others or if the kid is a slow learner or having difficulties in a certain subject area, she/he can remain to focus on that area without pressure that others are already moving on.
3. Parents pattern their teaching style and curriculum in accordance with the child’s learning style, allowing him/her to successfully understand the subject matter, thus better results are achieved.
4. No peer pressure. At a homeschool, age classification is not a factor, therefore children not only associate with children their same age level, but with children of different ages and adults as well, so they can decide on their own without the influence of peers.
5. “Hands on learning”. Activities which are outside the context of books are very much essential to the child’s learning process. Trips to the park, the museum, the zoo, going fishing with mom and dad can be a great time to spend an afternoon educating your child.
Some homeschooling disadvantages:
1. For the homeschool parent, much time and effort is required for preparation of teaching materials, lessons and managing the child’s opportunities in order to cultivate friendships and expand on the child’s interests.
2. Parents who homeschool do not have enough time to spend for themselves when kids are constantly at home. This frequent time of being together can be at times suffocating and, therefore, can not work in certain families.
3. Homeschooled children do not have a lot of opportunities to bond and develop friendships with peers. For many families, this really is not a problem and is supplemented by taking the kids out to play in the park, attend lessons in ballet, jazz, etc. However it takes a lot of effort on the part of parents to insure that their kids have these opportunities.
Whether to homeschool or not, it all depends on you, as a parent, on how much are you willing to give your child. On top of all the learning materials, the field trips, home schooling entails a lot of love, patience and encouragement.
It doesn’t matter if you just want to explore home schooling possibilities or have made the decision and are looking for a guide to point you in the right direction, "The Parents Guide to Home Schooling" will provide you with the information you require. www.free-online-course.com/homeschool |
| posted by All About Home @ 7:52 PM |
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| Sunday, May 28, 2006 |
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Your Home School and Family Style By: Pamela Connolly
Organizing a harmonic relationship between home and homeschool requires thought and prioritizing. Determine what is important to you and your family and set the goals you want to achieve before you start.
When setting up your home along with your school, determine what values and priorities will govern the environment. Do you want clear cut and predictable tasks? Or do you want a free-flowing style?
Make a list of what's important to you and your family and lists the items in order of priority. When you list and prioritize your values, you declare and acknowledge your family style and create a lifestyle that accommodates and reflect your values. Take this task seriously, as it is the first and most important step in creating harmony in your family. Blend together your life requirements along with the education of your children with clear cut modes and responsibilities for each. When you synchronize your values with your lifestyle, you will have a perfect environment in which all participants will flourish.
To avoid conflicts between your home and homeschool, you must establish and adhere to a family style, so that roles, expectations and requirements will be understood by all.
Here's some examples of family styles. If you value traditional methods with a focus on manners and respect, then your family style will require that the whole family spends a lot of time together learning and reinforcing behavior. As you know, you can tell your children over and over to behave a certain way but if that behavior is not modeled by you, the parents, you are wasting your breath. The old saying "do what I say, not as I do" never works! On the other hand, if creativity and self expression is your valued goal, your family and school style should be relaxed and free flowing, which requires independent play and unconventional teaching methods.
Remember to keep it simple. Organize all spaces to reflect your style while still promoting curiosity and energy. Make your home and homeschool a respite from the confusing and demoralizing outside world. Create a pleasant place to live, educate your children, share meaningful experiences and create permanent bonds. Make it a place that everyone truly enjoys. Others will see how you live and learn in harmony. They will take note of your calm and purposeful environment and want to emulate it.
Put harmony into your family life by defining the values and priorities of your home style. A well-organized home and school provides a harmonic foundation in which your family will flourish. This harmony and peace will affect everything you do. Your family will work, rest and play with clarity and purpose. When you organize your homeschool around your values and priorities, you will reduce stress and achieve cooperative behaviors. Everyone will feel more self-assured as they live and learn.
Next, organize your space to reflect your individual family style. Streamline distracters to create functional order, and most importantly, eliminate clutter. Your home and school should be clear and purposeful.
It will take planning and thought at the beginning but I assure that you and your family will be better for it. Do it and you will feel like a million dollars!
Pam Connolly is a professional educator with the San Diego School District. She has been teaching kids how to type for over 11 years. To teach your child typing, visit www.1stoplearntotype.com. |
| posted by All About Home @ 11:20 PM |
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| Saturday, May 27, 2006 |
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An Introduction to Homeschooling Laws By: David Dunlap
Numerous parents, for several different reasons, make the decision to homeschool their children. Homeschooling allows for a particular educational experience intended to fit your child's specific needs and, in numerous cases, goes above and beyond what can be achieved in a public or private school system. If you make the decision to homeschool your family, it is important that you do so legally, and recognize the laws in your area. It is absolutely crucial that you do this, because if you fail to meet statutory standards when homeschooling your children you will inadvertently rob your children of postsecondary educational opportunities.
Homeschooling laws vary from situation to situation, so you have to look up the precise laws in your home state. The foundation of state laws on homeschooling is the result of truancy laws that order children to be present in a day-school. The fundamental idea is that these laws prevail to tell apart a homeschooled child from a child that is merely not going to school, which is of course against the law. Ordinarily, states will require that you submit a "notice of intent" to homeschool your children before the upcoming academic year. The state will then respond with the proper paperwork for you to fill out.
Besides familiarizing yourself with the particular laws of your state you should also consult a homeschooling organization for advice. In various cases parents will be dealing with school officials who want to dishearten them from homeschooling, and in these situations it is important that you understand your rights. In the state of New York, for instance, parents are not required to meet with school officials. School officials may request a meeting with the parents in order to consult on homeschooling, but the state may not revoke the right to homeschool if the parents refuse this meeting.
It is also required that your child take standardized tests. This is so the state can legally allocate your child to a given grade level. The laws vary from state to state but in most cases you will have a certain amount of leeway in non-standardized tests. New York allows for non-standard tests every alternate year between grades 4 and 8, for example.
Though it may seem intimidating at first, homeschooling your children legally is, in the end, not that complex. You just have to make certain that you follow every step, and don't neglect any paperwork. While several state restrictions or protocol may seem unnecessary or cumbersome, in the long run you'll save yourself a ton of headaches if you fill everything in properly and on time.
The first thing you can do when you start to homeschool your children is to consult different homeschooling parents and advocacy groups. Looking up legal vernacular online can be confusing, but any homeschooling group will supply you solid, plain-English advice on how to properly and legally set up homeschooling for your children. Remember: it's impossible to overestimate the importance of studying your state laws in regards to homeschooling - if you overlook or disregard any of them, you could lose your right to homeschool altogether.
Article Source: http://www.articleteller.comHomeschooling Info For You is designed to be a supplemental resource guide for parents who have made the decision to homeschool their children. For more information, please visit homeschoolinginfoforyou.com |
| posted by All About Home @ 8:22 PM |
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Home Schooling; A Viable Alternative to Conventional Education By: Jay Stockman
Statistics show that elementary home schooling is the ideal time to start a home schooling program for a child. Children who enter home schooling during the elementary years are the students that tend to succeed the most. Throughout the course of their home schooling, these children will reach the highest level of academics when compared to the national average. Additionally, students who start young, often find themselves three to four grade levels above that of their public school peers.
On the other hand, high school home schooling can be extremely challenging. By the time a child reaches this level of education, they may be far too advanced in their educational needs to be taught by you. If that is the case, it will be necessary to seek out various resources that are available for home schooling. Online resources that provide both curriculums, and textbooks are available, which will allow a child to learn through the web. Classes can be held in a virtual classroom, students can use a web cam to participate, or they can be simply assessing lecture-based courses online as well.
Before considering a home school option, it is important to insure that the child’s current education is tested. This can be done right online through a series of tests. The tests will access the knowledge of a child, their weaknesses as well as strengths. This can then be used to help choose the right method and curriculum for a child’s needs.
There are many curriculums available for home schooling, and they can focus on the specific needs of the child. In the elementary levels, there is a wide range of course work. While it may be necessary to choose a program that fits with your state’s regulations, programs that are suited to what a child wants to learn should be considered as well. For many, this includes specific studies such as languages or Christian home schooling. It is important to take the time to choose the right home schooling package for you, and your child. This will allow you to learn more about the program, and to insure you know what is included as well as which methods are used for teaching it.
There are disadvantages of home schooling that must be considered. Many parents feel that the purchase of home schooling materials is too expensive. In some cases, the local or state government will help fund the home schooling, though this is not so in all areas. Some feel that the home-schooled child is not getting the social experience that they need to learn to work with other children and to then use later in life. While this is true to a certain level, it can be overcome by encouraging the child to play a sport or to be involved in community activity. Further, home school parents may end up feeling that they are not educated enough to teach their child. This apprehension is unfounded; there is a wide range of teacher resources to tap into, as well as forums. Besides, parents teach their children how to eat, behave, go to bed, it is an instinctive behavior.
Home schooling is an excellent bonding time for you and your child to share learning experiences together. The cons of home schooling do not outweigh the plusses. Elementary is the best time to get started with your child in the home schooling environment. They can reap the rewards of being at home with you, by working on a program designed for their needs and at the pace that they need, and they can find the value of all that home schooling can offer.
Article Source: http://www.articleteller.comJay B Stockman is a contributing editor for Eclectic HomeSchooling Resources Visit home-school-usa.com/ for more information. |
| posted by All About Home @ 6:06 AM |
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| Thursday, May 25, 2006 |
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The Basics Of Homeschooling By : KB Lim
What is Homeschooling? The word derived from home and school. It is a new form of education that fulfills the role of institutional education. Instead of attending school to get an education, your kids study at home to get their education.
Currently, there are about two million people in the country that undergo homeschooling and fast growing.
Currently, all fifty states legally approve the practice of homeschooling and is available to everyone. However, each state has specific laws regulating the homeschooling program. If you are unsure, it is best to seek advise from your local homeschooling authority.
The requirement for homeschooling varies from state to state. Some states do not require parents who want to homeschool to have degrees or high-school diploma while others require parents to attend a homeschooling training program before they can home school their kids.
So why is homeschooling gaining so much popularity nowadays? Some commons reasons are parents find the school curriculum questionable or have some moral issues with the curriculum. Class sizes increasing and cuts to funding thereby not optimizing the skills and potential of each child. Some are concerned with the safety and security of their local schools. Some parents enjoy teaching their children and want to be with their children all the time. Some children just do not fit in school so parents had to home school them.
But for whatever reasons, the decision to go homeschooling is not an easy one and should not be taken lightly. You may need to take the following points into consideration
1. Time Commitment
Homeschooling requires a great deal of time. It is beyond just buying textbooks and sitting down with your kids to study.
2. Personal Sacrifice
A parent has to sacrifice a lot of his/her personal time to homeschool their child. Typically, one of the parents has to homeschool fulltime.
3. Financial Commitment
Because one of the parents will not be working, it can placed great financial stress on the family. Sacrifice may have to be made such as having a long vacation once a year instead of twice a year.
What do you need to homeschool? Well, not much is needed actually. Simple household stuff can be used to demonstrate scientific principles. You can borrow books from public libraries or borrow tools from friends or neighbours. You can use the internet to download workbooks, worksheets and other stuff made freely available to anyone.
However, I do stress a good studying environment is needed. Examples are chairs, study tables, pens, markers and papers.
Once you embarked on the homeschooling journey, you will find it to be a very rewarding experience. It provides time for family bonding in a way that is impossible to do in a traditional institutional education. Remember that you don't have to be a genius to become a homeschooling teacher.
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| posted by All About Home @ 6:34 AM |
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| Wednesday, May 24, 2006 |
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Home Schooling May Be Right For Your Children
By: Ray La Foy
If you're fed up with your children being treated as a number and not as people, the home school route may be the best way to go. The decision to pull a child out of a public or private school and offer them lessons at home is a huge one. Inasmuch, it should not be taken lightly and it's imperative for parents to fully analyze the situation before rushing into a decision.
That said, the home school route is chosen by families all over the world for a number of reasons. And while parents will serve the role as full-time educators in addition to parents, this doesn't necessarily mean they need to be adept at every subject that will be presented.
Before deciding whether to pull a child out of school to go the home school route, ask yourself a few questions and be very honest about the answers:
* Are you willing to dedicate the time necessary to properly school your youngster?
* Do you have enough discipline to ensure that lessons are conducted on a regular basis?
* Are you willing to enforce the rules of the road to ensure you child's educational experience doesn't suffer? This mean "teaching" them and not doing their work for them.
* Do you and your child/children have the kind of relationship that lends itself to a home school experience? This means, in a nutshell, will your child listen to you, learn from you and actually gain from the experience?
* Can you afford the expenses that will go along with a home school education? Since you won't have an entire school at your disposal, there might be expenses in relation to books, lesson plans, learning tools and more. Consider this carefully before you jump in.
If you've decided you and your child can handle the home school route, the best places to turn for advice on getting started are local home schooling groups and the school district itself. You will need to know what your child must accomplish to be considered successfully home schooled by your state or local educating authority. It is imperative that your child be on par with the standards or future educational pursuits might be jeopardized.
Smart parents in a number of locales have banned together to make the home school experience better for themselves and their children. There are support groups and alliances available where parents can trade off teaching youngsters different subjects and also still make sure their children receive the socialization benefits they need. For example, one parent might be particularly good at teaching calculus while another excels in advanced composition. These parents can work with each other's children on these subjects. The children, too, will benefit from seeing other youngsters in an educational setting.
Home schooling is a route chosen by thousands of families across the country. It doesn't necessarily mean shutting a child off from the world or making sacrifices in socialization. Before diving in make sure you can handle the job and seek out what help and advice is available in your area. If handled properly the home school experience can be a great one for the child and the entire family that can lead to college and beyond for the youngster when it's completed.
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| posted by All About Home @ 3:36 AM |
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