Why Homeschool?
We all have different reasons for homeschooling.
Our belief is that this is the best way that we can impact our children. We think it is a privilege for us to educate our children and have the opportunity to impart into their lives key principles that will help them weather the storms in life when they have to face the world on their own.
Life should not stop from us parents pursuing our dreams. We are more than capable of designing the life we want weaved around a homeschooling schedule.
A few short years of schooling, say 8-10 years, go by so fast. There’s always a new life that can be birthed when the kids are off to college.
How to Get Started
1. Pray
You can’t do this alone!
2. Prepare the environment
Dedicate a particular area of your conducive to learning. Consider painting the walls with bright and happy colors.
3. Select an excellent curriculum
If your child is coming home from having attended a private school, don’t water down their schedule or education. If your child is coming home from a public school setting, don’t be afraid to bring their level of education a few notches up. It will do them good. Children are like a sponge and they ARE smart.
Those children labeled with ADD and other disability labels are NOT dumb children. They simply learn differently. Don’t be afraid to customize your environment and education according to HOW your child learns. We all learn differently, and the “one-size-fits-all” approach that exists in the current educational environments do not lend themselves for children to acquire information in the best way he/she retains it best.
4. Prepare a schedule
Your child’s life and yours will be much easier when you have a schedule to follow!
Curriculum Review
We use Abeka for our school curriculum. Yes, it is intense, but students can keep up. They’ll surprise you! The style in which your child learns is what you need to work on. Some children are more visual than others. That’s when we as homeschool parents need to use our creativity to explain difficult concepts using every-day things around the house.
For instance, I used marbles to explain to my 7-year old how to multiply. I used an egg carton and inserted the number of marbles in each egg space to show that multiplication is really addition. We used the egg carton and marbles to learn how to multiply. I then used index cards with to the show the multiplications for each of the numbers we had to learn this year. This was much easier for her to grasp because she had learned the concept through the marble/egg carton lessons. She now knows the 1 through 5 times table, including 10 and 11. We only have 6 through 9 to go which she will know by the end she completes her 3rd grade.
