Teach Us At Home

If you feel that your child suffers from a disability that seriously hampers his ability to stick to a routine, then homeschooling is your best choice. The child will be constantly under your supervision. But he will be gaining a lot of quality education, in spite of his disability. This is rather surprising, considering how children with disabilities are stigmatized in public schools.

Goal setting is an important part of homeschooling a child with disability. Set the number of working hours per week for the child. A child with a disability may have his bad days. Structure the learning hours according to the needs and interests of the child. Use the computer. This way, he will have all the necessary information right at his fingertips while staying within the confines of his home.

Field trips and other educational activities are just as important. Get help from your support group. Visit places of interest and interact with other children in the group. Take your child out for some activities, so that he can socialize. Let him set his own pace with making friends. This will help in strengthening his self-esteem.

Always, remember that homeschooling is just the same, even when your child suffers from a disability. You will just need to look for the right opportunities and the easiest alternatives to achieve the same goals.

When the child stays at home all day, and mommy is the teacher, there are certain issues of discipline at stake. It is easy for he child to misconstrue the freedom he has at home and feel that homeschooling is just a long summer holiday. This is a potential landmine and children need to be disciplined right at the start.

Homework is also a part of homeschooling. What this means is that once lessons have been taught, the child should be asked to do some part of the course work by himself without your guidance. You will need to make sure that your child sits willingly and finishes his work.

Homeschooling gives you and your child a truly immense amount of flexibility. You and your child decide where to learn, how much to learn and when to learn. But,these should be decisions made at the beginning stages. If your child is too little to take an active part in the decision, chart out a few hours of the day for the various activities, and stick to it. When there is no outside agency to supervise and no exams to answer, it is easy to get sidetracked. If your child is old enough, consult him and find out when he wants to learn. Apply your parental discretion and come up with a timetable.

It is advisable to keep aside a particular room or a part of the room for your homeschool. The child should be expected to reach his desk at the appointed time, in proper attire with all the necessary material. It is easy to allow the school to become an extension of play if these ground rules are not laid out and followed. As the teacher, supervisor, principal and janitor rolled into one, you should also approach the study area with a cool professionalism.

Courtesy, manners and punctuality are some of the various facets of discipline that a child has to imbibe in the early years of his life. The school where he interacts with his peers, his seniors and juniors and his teachers mould these values quite automatically. At homeschool, the child should be taught the importance of speaking and behaving in a proper manner and appropriate corrections need to be meted out if behavior is unsatisfactory.

Homeschooling can fail without patience. In spite of all the precautions and steps one takes, it is easy for a child to get familiar at homeschool. At such times, it may be difficult to discipline the child and get him to listen to you attentively.

When this happens, switch to something new. Allow the child to take a breather and enjoy a break yourself. Homeschooling is not easy. It requires a lot of hard work and patience. The very informality of the whole procedure sometimes works against it by making it too easy. If you take steps to establish rules at the very beginning and adhere to these rules, your homeschooling experience will be a huge success.

When a parent takes the responsibility of educating their own children, there are many issues which can come in the way of education. In the broad sense it can be termed as burnout. . There are many reasons that lead to this burnout: an illness, a new baby, added responsibility, changes in routine etc.

The symptoms of this burnout can be different for different people but the common ones are lack of patience, overeating and crying for no reason. The burnout should not be so bad and should be taken as a wake up call and try and amend the way or reschedule.

If you can recognize the reason behind the burnout you can easily reverse it and get the home schooling back on track.

1) Do not have very high expectations and try not to be a perfectionist. You can take the middle path and need to take good days with the bad. Try being flexible where the studies are concerned. If you feel the way it is not working try to change the style of teaching. For instance, small children love to take on their spellings when they quiz an adult.

Do not pack too many activities and you should know that each child is different and the way of teaching your child can be unique and your way of teaching can be different from others. Get support from your spouse or a neighbor or a support group. Don’t try to achieve everything by yourself. Homeschooling means ‘happy schooling’ - don’t forget that.

If you are looking at Home Schooling and your kid is fascinated by the computers and like to play with the mouse and enjoys those blinking cursors you may want to start your child with the computers and make them do home schooling online.

All the course materials, details and test paper are available online and the parents do not need to wreck their heads on giving their children the test. Or take so much time to make a curriculum for them. Online they get all readymade stuff and the parents can relax.

Children love to sit on the computer as it makes them feel like an adult. It can be a good source to make the children learning in a happy way and the audio visual medium always easy way to capture the attention of the children. Every aspect of the study is made so easy and with the help of video and audio it becomes easy for the parents to enjoy learning experience more enjoyable. The colorful pictures, other techniques and easily understood video which remain in the memory of the child at all times.

Many online sites have fun testing centers which aim to measure the skills of the child. For them the complicated math and science problems become very easy and they can easily solve at fast speed and with accuracy.

For a child with enthusiasm for books they would easily love the e-library which can also be fun learning experience. Especially, when there is an audio clip that reads out the passage to you.

E-learning has just begun to revolutionize the world of studies. If harnessed properly, a child can assimilate n astonishing amount of information from that great resource sitting right there at your table - your P.C.

The home schooling is not all about the good things it also has the disadvantages. Like all the aspect of life there are advantages and disadvantages of the home schooling. It is one man’s bane is another man’s boon. These are very common reasons for concern.
The child’s responsibility lies completely on you and you cannot blame any one for the failure of your child. The child’s failure reflects badly on you as a parent and the educator.

The main problem you will be facing will be spending all the time with the children and giving up your social life with friends, shopping etc which can become frustrating at times. You need to have too much of patience and enthusiasm to work this out.

The parent who is planning a home schooling for his children he/she can not think of any other career. This means that one parent will only need to work to get enough income for all to survive. This may lead to problems with the finances in the house and you will face stress. You will need to cut costs at every possible point in life and run your life on a budget even if you are not used to it.

The break you look forward to yearly cannot be taken as you cannot neglect studies and this will give you guilt feelings. The child can take advantage of the situation and even if you give them some work to do regarding the school you will need to be around or else the child will take advantage of the situation and not work at all. This will mean you are on duty all hours and you always will feel to teach the child more and more.

The children studying in schools develop different directions but the home schooling child does not get such opportunity. To get that directions you will need to do a little extra and may be if you are not skilled in some of the activities you will need to enroll them in various activities which will prove to be too expensive.

The home schooling kids most of the time do not do well in their SAT exams and if they are unable to get their diploma they cannot get into government jobs.

If you are planning to enroll your child in the regular school, you may have a certain period of emotional and social adjustments. Where as a child if they are used to home and the freedom if they have to go to regular school may be distressed and can face emotional upheavals.

Dr. Maria Montessori’s teaching’s aim at using natural laws a child faces in life. The teaching aims at controlling the environment and not the child. It is observed that the child left free to interact with the environment develop self-discipline, love for others, and natural curiosity.

The Montessori Method is suitable to toddlers who are preschoolers and want to do everything themselves. Finding the ways, to involve the children in things which the adults do, like cleaning, washing, cooking and gardening. This gives them a chance to learn and boost their self-esteem or ego.

The culture, scientific and artistic activities are taught in the Montessori for 3 to 6 class. Here the child is left alone with the material chosen carefully and allowed to do their own things. They are not forced in any way to do what others are doing. They are not exposed to Junk food, Television or Computer. Here the teacher picks up the child’s mood and teaches whatever they want to learn.This encourages the natural curiosity of the child and he learns what he wants to. Since the child is never forced to learn what he does not want to he is happy with the environment. But when he comes to know why he should learn about certain things, he will love the learning and enjoy himself and pick things up fast. This helps the child to learn about the things fast and their learning process starts.

If you have a child who suffers from some disability or is disabled then the best choice for you would be home schooling. The child will be constantly under your supervision and he /she will gain lots of knowledge at home. Most of students in the school do not let the disable student study and try and show them down and pass some comments on the child which will be a problem if the child goes into depression.

Try and keep to the schedule you make for the child, he may have some bad days do not force him try and work around that times. Teach them on the computers and he will have all the information on his finger tips without going out.

Make frequent field trips as they are very important part of the study and the child’s interest will be fuelled into the subject. You can take your child with the group that way he can socialize and make friends with their own age group. This will bring confidence in them.

Always remember the home schooling is same for a normal child or a disabled child just allow the right opportunities and the alternatives to achieve the goal.

Once the child grows and reaches teens the parents wonder if they should discontinue the homeschooling program and put their children in the regular high school. Most of the parents fear that the college will not give the child an equal opportunity to study if they have studied under the homeshcooling method.

The parents can rest assured because most colleges do not require diploma for their degree courses. They are more interested in the childs knowledge and their behavior. Two children who were in the homeschooling method were able to get admissions in Harvard College. Similarly many colleges prefer the homeschool program children due to their diverse and rich culture which is brought into the college life.

Almost all the colleges have their own requirements for the admission whereas some need the SAT scores the others may not need any diplomas or tests. The different college have different method for admissions. Actually, the college courses do not require any special skills or training.
Many of the parents try and put their children in the regular schools once they grow up as they fear that their child may not get the admissions in colleges for further studies. But they do not know that the college admissions do not require school education and homeschool program is good enough for them to give admissions to the students who are good.

The children learn from the life itself and when we put them in the school they learn with all the children. But unschooling is not a very popular method of schooling as most parents fear that their child will not learn what the others learn in school. Basically, unschooling is the solution for homeschooling and it does not have a set pattern and the children are allowed to decide what they want to learn about. The unschooling also has some set patterns and if you adhere to that you will be doing the right thing by your child.

Find out what the child is more interested in and teach her the thing he/she is more interested in. let her/him select the topic he/she wants to learn like if the child is interested in learning about the flowers teach her all the aspects of the flower, the names of the various flowers, their functions and show the flowers. This process will go on till he/she does not get bored with the subject or at least for a month or a day or weeks. The child has a say in the matter how much she/he needs to learn.

The same subject you can make it interesting by showing them books, videos magazines, any games available in this subject, the puzzles. Take them for a field trip or visit a museum or park and show them which will be very interesting for a child and they will have a renewed interest in the subject.

Search for the learning in the day to day life if you are teaching about vegetables you can teach them about nutrients, the vitamins and you can broaden their learning process.

The parents are always worried that their child is doing less than their counterparts who go to school. The parents are always at the back of the child to open their books and study.
The home school has flexible hours and you can take it any time. But it is always better to stick to their schedules once made and this teaches the children to be punctual in their work and the parent thinks that since the other children are at school the child studying at home also need to study and be with the books. But they need to understand that the children at school also have time to enjoy and they waste so much time traveling to school and back.

So actually they are not giving enough time to their studies.

Try to work with a set pattern and make child understand that he/she is needed to sit from this time to this time and study. The time can be anything between 2 to 4 hours. Try to make the studies fun and let the child enjoy and learn many things outside the books. The subject you are going to teach the child also will determine the time set for studies.

If the subject you are teaching the child is new it may take a little bit more time to
teach. The teaching can be made fun by using the practicalities of the subject. If you are
teaching the children science you can show them the birds, bees etc which will be easier to follow for the child.

Home school is not just sitting in front of the books and mugging everything it is more
of fun when you can take the children for field trips and make them watch the videos of what you are trying to teach them or taking them to the library for searching on some subject. In the morning you can reserve some hours for studying from the books and then in the afternoon once a week you can take them out for different activities.

As already discussed the regular school hours are not packed with studies all the time
and there is lots of wastage of time and you cannot measure the studies you are about to
teach the children in home schooling.

Since the home schooling children are more exposed to the practical aspect of the studies
and not only book reading they are more smarter than the regular school going children.