Parents have long debated whether private education is better than public education. Now colleges are recognizing the value of an applicant that has been home schooled. Statistically they are well rounded, equipped, socialized, and able to handle the curriculum as well as their counterparts. There is no magic home school formula. Perhaps learning what a child is exposed to in that environment may shed some light on the situation. What most people fail to realize is that home schooling has been around long before there was formal education. Primitive society educated their young in survival training.
I discovered the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling early on in our homeschooling journey. I loved the idea of reading aloud to my children, and did not take a lot of convincing to leave behind most text books and embrace a literature based approach to educating my children. During the pre-school years we had spent much time enjoying reading together. Once "real schoolwork" started we, like most new homeschoolers, bought text books and began "teaching". Somehow we had less time to read aloud. I was introduced to the Charlotte Mason method, and enthusiastically bought Karen Andreola's book "The Charlotte Mason Companion".
For many of us, homeschooling your children can be a daunting task. To think that you are responsible for your childrens education can make any parent feel overwhelmed and keeps many people from homeschooling at all. My wife and I have been homeschooling our children for 5 years now and I wanted to share a few keys we have learned along the way that will help you be successful at homeschooling your children, whether your just starting out or have been homeschooling for a few years now but feel frustrated, knowing you could do a better job. 1. The first key to being successful with homeschooling is to learn to keep a daily schedule.
I can only speak from my experiences of home-schooling my ADHD son Richard and it may not have been the right way but it certainly worked for us and we both enjoyed the time together. Home-schooling was forced upon us, when Richard was excluded from a special needs school and we couldn't place him elsewhere for some time. The following are our experiences of how we coped with that situation and I hope it is useful for others. Where We found the best place was in our dining room, where we had a large table to spread out on and the computer close by. I say 'the computer close by' because I knew that Richard, like many ADHD youngsters, was very interested in the PC and I therefore wanted to incorporate it as much as possible as a learning tool, with games as rewards for good work.
I was terrified when my husband and I finally made the decision to homeschool our kids. Would I be good at it? Will the kids listen to me? Are we doing the right thing? I found out very quickly that the answer to all of those questions was, YES! My advise as a new homeschooling family or a potential homeschooling family is to follow these three tips. We are in our 6th year of teaching our kids at home. As a veteran homeschooling mom, here are 3 tips I would recommend for a new homeschooling family: Ask around - Learn from the experience of other homeschooling families. Why reinvent the wheel?