A Primer on Homeschooling and Homeschooling Resources
The percentage of parents wanting to have their children undergo homeschooling, as opposed to utilizing traditional methods, is slowly increasing. This is due to a large and very varied number of factors that are affecting public and even private schools around the world: increasing cultural differences between teachers and students (and even among students), bad influences within the school’s administration, and an overall declining quality of education. There are even factors outside the school that affect the choice of whether to send your child to a traditional school or to subject him/her to homeschooling: a lifestyle that does not allow for the strict schedules of formal schooling, a certain degree of control over your child’s education, and more importantly nowadays, the availability of adequate homeschooling resources for your child.
Homeschooling, obviously, comes with its own set of disadvantages, probably the biggest one being the lack of any standardized lesson plans and study guides for your child.
It is therefore important to always have good quality study material, lest you risk having your child not learning enough, or worse, learning the wrong things.
Fortunately, we are living in the Internet age. With the boom of technology, the Internet has proven time and again to be a good source of homeschooling resources. This comes at a price, though: you will have to put in quite a significant amount of effort into making sure that the materials you get are good, credible ones, not ones just created by people with neither authority nor experience on the chosen topics. Once you have done this, however, you will find that homeschooling has become popular enough that there will be many good materials for you to choose from.
Homeschooling: Addressing The Needs Of Homeschooled Kids
A lot of views and opinion from different rank of the society can be heard about homeschooling. Some give their supports and even promoted it while some do not consider it in the best interest of kids and others just ignored it. And to help the people realize and weigh out things about homeschooling, different lists of pros and cons of this kind of educational system is rolled on the floor and was spread all over the world wide web. Either way, if it is really the best interests of the kids that is at the supporter and opposition’s hearts, then I can say that it is more important for us to give emphasis and focus on what the students really need and should have embodied within their selves for them to accomplish success in their learning process, without considering what type of educational system the kid has adopted–whether it is in traditional way in public or private or in new innovative way that is homeschooling.
In this article, I will be taking the side for those kids who are enrolled in homeschooling. These students have their own interests and needs which need to be assessed and be known so as to choose on which learning method suits best for them and best stimulates their curiosity and inquisitiveness. Doing such thing will give way to a quality and effective home-schooled education.
In homeschooling children, the educators may be in the form of their parents or a private lecturer who should be able to offer a time for the education of kids. Homeschooling needs preparation and it takes so much time. A lot of learning materials and other related stuffs needed in order to give the most effective but a fun-way of learning.
The Odds Against Homeschooling
If a husband decides to go back to college at 30 to become a pharmacist—and his wife has to support him and the children for the next decade—he will have praise of the multitudes: “It’ll be tough living on one income, but you can do it. You just hang in there. It will all be worth it.”
If a woman quits her demanding job as a nurse to start a scrapbooking business in the spare bedroom, her friends are green with envy. “It’s your life . . . do what you enjoy. Set your own pace, be independent. Best wishes! Making a living isn’t all about money, it’s about enjoying what you do.”
But let someone say, “I want to homeschool my children,” and a thousand eyebrows may instantly raise. The masses gasp for breath, and counselors crawl out from under every rock to warn of “the dangers” of entertaining such thoughts. Cunningly, the vacuum of doubt attempts to abort the dreams, aspirations, and faith from the hearts of parents who are being called to the road less traveled. Are the odds really against homeschoolers, or are the challenges really part of a higher plan which God uses to manifest His wonderful grace?
My wife Jenny and I have lived through a lot of stuff, and some of it was not good. In the process we’ve been blessed—though we didn’t always realize it until after the “stuff” was over. I would say that our greatest blessings have been the results of beating the odds. For some reason we believed that God would prove Himself through life’s overwhelming challenges. Time after time, our heavenly Father has manifested His power in the face of all those odds. Let me tell you about a few of them.
Homeschooling Supplies
Homeschooling supplies come in many forms. Some of these are simply regular school supplies, sold from a homeschooling-oriented store. Others attempt to replicate the trappings of a traditional school. Still others are meant to help parents teach particular subjects or concepts. Which ones are right for you depend on both you and your children.
Supplies which are meant to mimic “regular” schoolrooms include chalkboards, school desks and chairs, and big maps. Whether these are really necessary depends on the situation. A blackboard can be cool, but is probably not at all necessary if there will only be one child looking at it. It is probably more useful to show a child or two a concept by drawing it out on paper where they can see it up close. Some homeschoolers, however, also get together with other parents to teach a small group of children a particular subject.
In these cases, traditional school furniture may be extremely useful.
Courses meant to be taught in a homeschool environment can do a world of good for parents who need help developing a curriculum. With these courses, it is easy to ensure that no important material is missed. They also include something parents who haven’t been to school themselves in years may need: Answer sheets. Nobody knows everything, and the answer sheets help parents make sure that the information they’re teaching is definitely correct.
Science projects and equipment are also sold by homeschooler-centric retailers. These allow homeschooled children to get a better science education by providing access to instruments like microscopes. The wonder of directly viewing an organism so small that it can fit on a microscope slide is something that cannot be replicated by pictures in a book, so this type of equipment is essential for a child’s learning experience.
Homeschooling Cons
Let’s look at what people are considering on the negative side of things with a list of homeschooling cons. Despite all the good things that have been said about this type of education, there are those that continue to battle it or call it names. Whether some of these things are true or not, I’ll leave to you. And whether some of these things can be overcome, I’ll leave for another article.
Homeschooling can be hard work. There’s no doubt about that. On top of all the other household duties and chores, adding homeschooling to the list will be difficult. It can take anywhere from 1-6 hours per day to homeschool a student depending on their grade level and method of teaching. You may have to quit your job and take part-time work.
Quitting a job can be hard in order to homeschool. It’s becoming pretty common these days to have two wage earners per family.
The reality of losing one of those paychecks can be difficult or impossible to survive. Even part-time work won’t likely make up the difference. Maybe you will have to save up to do this for a year or two, but even saving is hard for some with two employed adults.
A lot of people don’t think they have what it takes to homeschool. They don’t have a teaching certificate or maybe even a college education and think these are needed to do the job right. After all, aren’t all the teachers in public schools required to have them? There must a good reason then.
The housework will start to fall behind and the class projects will be scattered everywhere. Homeschooling will start to take its toll on the time and energy available to clean, dust and even do the laundry.