Homeschooling your children has emerged as an alternative to traditional education for many families around the world. As parents want more control over their children’s learning experiences and environments, the demand for homeschooling continues to grow. Yet, this homeschooling method is not without its challenges and complexities.
In this article, we embark on a journey into the world of homeschooling, exploring its benefits, strategies, and challenges. You will learn to manage homeschooling your children while working at home within the comforts of their own homes.
What Does Homeschooling Your Children Mean?
Homeschooling, also known as home education, is an alternative form of education in which parents choose to educate their kids at home instead of sending them to traditional public or private schools. In homeschooling, parents take on the role of primary educators, creating and selecting curriculums, and developing lesson plans according to their child’s needs, and learning styles. Homeschooling may require parents to teach their children directly, hire tutors, or use educational websites and online courses as well.
The reasons for choosing homeschooling are diverse and multifaceted. More and more parents are now choosing to homeschool for various reasons. These may include dissatisfaction on the part of parents regarding the traditional schooling system, various religious, cultural, and educational philosophies prevailing over the family setup, and physical inability or mental incompetence. Some parents believe that the children are not showing good performance under the existing academic structure at schools. Parents also believe that homeschooling allows for greater academic rigor and focused attention. This helps foster a deeper understanding of subjects and promotes critical thinking skills in children. Homeschooling also provides an opportunity for parents to create a learning environment that aligns with their values and beliefs. This helps them focus on character development and cultural enrichment. But homeschooling has also been a great challenge for parents, particularly working moms.
Homeschooling is legal everywhere, including all the fifty states of the United States. The statistics show that more than two million children were being homeschooled before 2020 in the United States and the number has got to 3.7 million in the year 2023. Overall, homeschooling your children offers you the freedom and flexibility to tailor your kid’s education to gain desired goals and values. Therefore, more and more parents prefer homeschooling their children.
Also Read: Homeschooling will let you observe your child while they learn and you will be able to discover your child’s talents more effectively.
How Does Homeschooling Work?
Homeschooling is quite a challenging task for most families but not so for many other families as well. It is a relative thing that must require a lot of effort and focus on the part of both the parents and the kids.
Homeschooling is also a broad term involving whatever you learn at home out of curiosity or self-motivation. It might be your mother tongue, the names, and various facts and figures about all the things around you or the routine books as per your academic stage or level.
Moreover, homeschooling is different for different families depending upon their mindset and the technical approach they like to follow. Some families always want to teach as per the tendency and curiosity of the child towards a topic. They teach different concepts woven into the child’s natural exploration of the subject. This type of teaching never involves the proper use of regular and traditional school books but still ensures that all the concepts are clear to the child.
On the other hand, some families like and prefer to teach their kids using textbooks and following a definite pattern and curriculum. This is just by the traditional way of teaching at schools but only at a smaller scale comparatively. Both methods are in use across the globe.
How Much Does Homeschooling Your Kids Cost You?
While discussing what is involved when parents teach their kids at home, the cost of the project comes at the top of everything you need for the purpose. Though you have total control over the expenses, you are bound to spend for the following everyday needs to your satisfaction level.
- Curriculum owes you to spend as much money as you think you should look for the sake of well-serving stuff to teach your children. You have got three options here: you may develop your own curriculum for free, you may spend a considerable sum to buy one of the best ones available on the market, and you may purchase an average curriculum spending a modest amount. There are also several ways available on the market to buy an economic curriculum.
- Supplies and equipment are the other main category that needs your money. But, here again, you never need to spend lavishly. You must be very spend-thrifty in this regard. Always try to devise ways you can reduce your cost like buying the used items or using for free the things already used by some friend’s children last year, etc.
- Field trips are a source of great fun and frolic for children who are always looking for recreation in between study sessions. Visits to the zoo the museum or any other recreational places always cast a healthy influence on the children. They also feel refreshed to study more and more energetically. Homeschooling without all this glamour is quite a boring activity overall.
- Extracurricular activities undertaken at home also increase the cost of homeschooling. Parents must be very watchful in managing such activities at home without allowing them to be a drain on their budget. They may arrange simple things like dance competitions, singing melodious tunes, community sports, karate, etc. Remember that there should be no compromise on the quality and utility of the extracurricular activity you are going to design for your child.
- Loss of income is the highest cost a family has to pay for homeschooling their children. This is because one parent has to sacrifice permanently for the sake of children, for homeschooling always demands a lot of time on the part of parents.
What are the Requirements for Homeschooling Your Children?
Dedication and Involvement of Parents are Must!
There are no strict legal requirements for homeschooling in the United States. However, some states do ask for portfolio reviews or standardized testing at random or at specific intervals. What actually is required of the parents homeschooling their kids is their dedication and involvement towards this noble task. You cannot teach a student up to the mark if you do not like the very process or profession of teaching at heart.
Match the Mindset of Your Children
A mom homeschooling her children must match the children’s mindset, energy level, innocence, foolishness, passion, and the questions they ask during the learning process. She must also try her best to answer these innocent questions sensibly and passionately. So, the basic requirement for homeschooling children on the part of parents is to have a strong desire to do so passionately and to like the process of teaching.
How to Manage Working Full Time Along with Homeschooling Your Children
It is never easy to coach your children at home besides working full time. Things get too hectic at times to manage appropriately. One has to be proactive to handle both tasks efficiently. Indeed, parents never require any education degree to teach or coach their kids at home. Those with young children who have not yet started going to any school can commence a home education program as soon as their child turns the age to go to school. They need to fulfill the requirements of their local authorities.
However, for those with children already going to school to start homeschooling is a bit different. They should lodge an application or write a letter to the school principal or the superintendent. They must explain why they want to withdraw their child from school and like to coach him at home. Once they get the official notification, they may contact the local authorities to fulfill their legal requirements if any.
The platform is all set for homeschooling; the parents must consider the following tips to ease the stress of trying to get it all done.
- Reserve a quiet workspace for your child to ensure a distraction-free environment for him to focus on his studies wholeheartedly. You can provide your children with some noise-canceling headphones if you observe too many family members doing their chores all around.
- Be flexible with your schedule to facilitate the child with his likes and dislikes. Too much rigidity spoils the whole coaching and learning process. Your cooperative approach will make things easy for your child to handle them properly.
- Use timers and alarms with the help of your Android phone or other devices to help structure the actual process of homeschooling.
- Allow for breaks throughout the day so that your children may not get tired of being taught for hours at a stretch. They should be able to refuel themselves periodically for the next tasks, improving their level of concentration and focus.
- Hang picture schedules and checklists on the walls around to help your child look for expectations and feel relaxed.
- Try to organize the teaching or printed material subject-wise and use folders and color-coding to get the schoolwork well organized as well. You may write down the tasks assigned to your child in a folder and let him check off each once it is done.
- Use assistive technology to support your child if he has some learning disability. An audio presentation or a recorded speech to such a child may prove very helpful.
- Offer incentives and rewards to tempt your kid to finish his home task promptly and efficiently and well in time as well. Try your level best to avoid physical punishment as it does more harm than good to the noble cause of coaching and learning.
- Ask for help from your child’s teacher if your child faces any problems regarding handling the number of assignments per day.
Homeschooling Tactics for Working Parents
The parents have to be pretty alert to manage both working from home and homeschooling their kids. Here are five tactics for parents who are working full-time while they are homeschooling their children.
- Discuss the whole study plan with your children and let them develop a comprehensive daily schedule of studies for themselves. You should design a flexible schedule that allows you to balance work and homeschooling your kids. If you recently started homeschooling your children keep in mind that changing the pre-existing routine can be very stressful for young kids. Your discussion will help them a lot.
- Develop a befitting curriculum for your children keeping in mind the time available for the academic terms. Divide the syllabus as per your accord and start coaching your child regularly and adequately. You may also buy some curriculum from the market and use it as per your requirement and speed. Parents will have absolute authority to decide the amount and pace of the curriculum they want to teach their kids.
- Delegate the responsibilities and tasks to other family members to help you manage your workload. This may involve dividing homeschooling tasks among multiple caregivers. You can outsource certain subjects to tutors or use learning tools online.
- Find ways to maximize efficiency by making most of the time available. Look for ways to integrate learning into everyday activities, like incorporating educational games during breaks. By involving your children in household chores you can teach them valuable skills and tasks.
- Take full advantage of remote learning tools and websites that can support your homeschooling efforts. Explore the educational apps and websites you get your hands on. Engage your kids in some virtual classes, and pre-recorded lessons that provide useful content for independent learning.
What Are Some of the Schedule Ideas for Homeschooling?
The best way to homeschool your children is to follow a specific routine regularly. Forming a definite schedule based on fruitful ideas will serve you miraculously to achieve your goal. You may hang a written program somewhere in the kitchen or paste it on the refrigerator, so that your kids may catch its glimpse time and again while moving around. The following key points may be included in the formation of a constructive schedule for homeschooling your children.
- You and your children must get up, dress yourselves, and have breakfast at standard time if you want to create a proper work routine.
- Decide a peaceful quiet place for the children where they can focus on their study most effectively without any distraction whatsoever.
- Keeping in mind the times for learning, exercise, and breaks, make a timetable feasible for you and your children to follow smoothly.
- A small assignment of almost 20 minutes, followed by physical activity of just 10 minutes will work well for the younger kids.
- Lengthy projects may work wonders for older children and teens with small breaks between different subjects.
- Better include your hours as well to let your children know when their working day is over.
- Reserve some special time for nutritious lunches and snacks and never forget to allow afternoon breaks as well.
- Schedule your daily dinner together as a family and discuss the busy day in detail.
- Schedule more family time in the evenings to enjoy playing, reading, exercising, or watching a movie together.
- Try your best to stick to regular bedtime routines so that all of you may enjoy good and enough sleep.
What Curriculum for Homeschooling Your Children will be the Best?
Homeschooling your children will be useful only if you have an effective curriculum for the purpose. Always check the fitness of a curriculum by the following elements.
- The content of the curriculum must always be in alignment with the grade your child is in. If it covers the topics usual with that grade, it will serve your child. Otherwise, you must not select it for the purpose.
- The structured approach of a homeschool curriculum must be the taste and style you and your child like to go with.
- The pros and cons determine the delivery of a curriculum it presents to its reader. The more pros it delivers, the better it is.
What are Some of the Great Homeschooling Programs?
The following are some of the most successful homeschooling programs you can rely on.
- Homeschool Buyers Co-op
- Time4Learning
- Clavert Education
- Gryphon House
- Sonlight
- CHSH-Teach
- Acellus Power Homeschool
- MyEduCrate
- CTCMath
- Math U See
- Techknow Training Studios Inc
Frequent Questions about Homeschooling?
Homeschooling your children may give rise to the following questions in the mind of various people belonging to different walks of life.
- Do you find homeschooled kids ahead or behind the public school kids?
- Does the state ever fund homeschool programs?
- Do you know any network of parents who like to homeschool their children?
- What about homeschooling if a parent gets ill?
- Is there any homework for homeschooled children?
- How do the homeschooled children receive objective grades?
- By which mechanism do the homeschooled kids get promoted?
- How long does homeschooling prolong itself?
To Conclude
Homeschooling offers a unique educational option for families who want to seek personalized learning experiences, flexibility, and the ability to monitor their child’s education. Parents can create a supportive learning environment that promotes academic excellence and critical thinking skills. Thus, homeschooling your children fosters holistic learning development in ways that are not possible within traditional systems. While homeschooling requires dedication, planning, and adaptability, the benefits outweigh the struggles.
Also Read: Parents can have better control over their kid’s education and have more effective parenting this way.
