If you are one of the many families who find yourselves, for one reason or another not at all happy with the general education system on offer, then you may already be considering homeschooling your children. Some families decide early in their children's lives that this is the direction they will go when their children reach school age. While other families will pull their children out of school to home educate instead. There are many websites out there to tell you all about the positives of homeschooling for children - and believe me, there are plenty of positives. But as a parent, you need to consider this option very carefully if you too are to enjoy the positives.
Children naturally love counting and doing puzzles, but for some reason, when you call it "math", all of the interest flies out the window! So how can you cater to this natural love of 'math' and keep it fun and interesting enough to keep children's interest?! 1) Use things around the house that they already know and love! My son has a HUGE adoration for his Thomas Trains... he can tell you every single trains name, number and color. When we started working on recognizing numbers and colors, I tried to use posters, games, workbooks, etc that would help him learn to recognize them.
If you have homeschooled for any amount of time (or even if you've just kicked around the idea of homeschooling in lighthearted conversation), you have had this thought or have been asked this question: "What about socialization? " This is a topic that seems to automatically arise in any discussion about homeschooling, especially if one of the people involved in the discourse does not homeschool. First, I think it's important to tease out what the inquisitor means by "socialization". When answering this question, it's important to know if the question is about socialization or socializing, as the two have vastly different meanings.
Thanks to the internet, the opportunities for educating outside of a classroom are endless. Homeschooling families are discovering what Universities all over the world have used to their advantage: Students do not need to be in a classroom with a teacher to process "the facts" and the internet is an extremely effective means of transmitting those facts in an engaging way. On-Line Homeschooling can mean a variety of things. You can use the internet to reinforce lessons learned from a purchased in-the-box curriculum or from your daily "life learning". You can use the plethora of (mostly free! ) on-line resources and pull together your own curriculum specially tailored to your child and your lifestyle.
As I approach this topic, I realize how ridiculous it is to assume that I can write about "The" Top 10 reasons to homeschool. One of the main reasons to homeschool your children is that you can be at the helm. You can do it for whatever reason you want in whatever way you want, so for me to assume that I could come up with the definitive top ten reasons seems kind of silly. My top 10 reasons are top ten for me. There are many homeschooling families I know whose reasons are vastly different from mine. There are, undoubtedly, similar veins and similar convictions behind the reasons that people choose to homeschool but if you took a moment to do the math on all the different reasons, it could get quite staggering.