Homeschooling Wisdom from my Mom

 

For those who are homeschooling at this time

Hello, neighbors! Since many of you are at home with school age children and so are 'homeschooling' for the first time and kinda stressed out, I thought I could share my helpful tips from homeschooling my kids for a period of 15 years.   -------------- I'm writing as a 'retired' homeschool mom. My kids are all grown up and in their 30s... Whoa! Can you believe that? They actually grow up! I remember the heavy weight of burden of trying to be a good teacher and trying to make sure that my students were well taught. But I also have so many years of experience of being a homeschooling mom that I can say that there are many ways to teach kids and some are more successful than others. Having parts of the school day that are 'delight oriented' is a big part of the success!  Anyway, my advice is to take some time to think. Instead of focusing on "How can I teach school at home?", ask "What would I like to do?  What would I like to learn about? What do I know that I'd like to teach my children? What would my kids like to learn about? What do I think that they would like to do for fun?" Here's the deal. It's pretty likely that you'll be having them at home for the rest of the school year, and I'm thinking that it's unlikely that anyone will really care what they do in the long run. I could be wrong, but I think that everyone will be so glad when it's all over and things can go back to normal. They probably won't fuss if you don't do their given assignments. There's not much school left anyway, so I think you can choose whatever you want to do with this time.  Worksheets are okay... parents feel like kids are actually doing something if worksheets get done. And they do take a child through a certain set of information in an organized way. But ... they aren't so fun to look at after they are done. What is more rewarding for student and teacher alike,  is having something that your student creates out of their own head. Worksheets will just get thrown out but creative work will get saved and even looked at again and again. Yes! It's true! I used worksheets/workbooks too. And I liked how I could say, "you have to do this many pages today" or "this many this week." But it's not very satisfying in the long run.  One year, I had two kids I was homeschooling (instead of four) and it was just before they started high school, so I thought... hmm. What have we missed? What do I want to cover with them before high school? I thought back and figured out what we hadn't yet studied and came up with some periods in history for us to focus on.  We took one week each for: Incan History, Aztec History, Mayan History, the Minoans, The Indus River Valley, then an overview of Africa (3 weeks, where each week they had to choose one country and write /draw about it) and we ended the semester studying WWI and WWII. So each week, we'd read a lot about this particular subject Monday through Thursday and then on Friday, they had to put what they learned on one page (what they thought was interesting). They could choose anything from the week to include.  Turned out to be really cool and is really fun to go back and look at it even now, years later. I wished that I had done all of my homeschooling like that so that I had this fantastic result for show and tell! And guess what? They really remember what they chose to write about so it is such a great learning tool.  So dream a bit. Look over what books you already have in the house that are about science or history or biographies or even just interesting stories. Choose the best ones, the ones you know your kids already like and say "These are our school books for the next week(s)." Make sure you have a story that you start the day with, reading just a chapter a day. And when you read aloud, make sure that they have something to do with their hands... such as playing with play dough (you can make some from scratch, it's easy) or drawing/coloring or something quiet.  Plan on reading at least two pages or a chapter (some measurable unit) each day in your chosen books, with recess breaks and lunch/snack breaks between your areas of study. And then have them do some creative stuff... either writing or drawing or creating or building --  whatever interests them.  It's even okay for them to be a bit bored, as that will probably lead into something that they can find to do.
Hope this helps! Jeanne