How to Homeschool Your Child

Teaching children at home seems to be a headache for quite a number of parents. Though they are constantly worried about their child’s performance, they are also scared about not being able to give as much as a school education. However, there are a number of benefits involved with home schooling your child. It gives you an opportunity to give him/her personal attention and monitor his/her growth constantly. Moreover, the environment at home can protect your child from peer pressures and other deviations as well. In case you are planning to homeschool your child, remember not to build unnecessary pressure on him/her and remain patient. Develop friendly relations with your kids and gradually encourage them to improve on their weaker areas. However, homeschooling necessitates a lot of effort on your part and you need to keep yourself constantly updated about the curriculum and need to adopt effective techniques. Read on to learn how to homeschool your child.

Teaching Your Child At Home

The first and foremost thing to do is to check your schedule and check whether you will be able to devote ample time required for the task. As the process involves personalized attention to be given to the child, you will be required to invest a lot of time in the process.
For getting started, you can buy readymade plans from the market and make the task easy for yourself. You can even take online classes or check out software or videos to learn about the details of home schooling, in order to prepare yourself for the same. There are several home education tools available online, which can be of great assistance in your pursuit of educating your child at home.
Gather all the essentials to educate your child. Collect textbooks, boxed curriculums and other learning tools.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the education given at home should be more holistic and richer, as compared to that given at any normal school.
Find out the weakest areas of your child and help him improve on the same.
If your child asks too many questions, do not get irritated. Rather, try and answer his/her questions. In case you do not know the answer to any of his questions, make sure you look for or research the answer and tell him later.
Keep an eye on the curriculum and educational requirements of the grade your child is in, so that you know what is necessary for him/her.
To make sure that your child is learning, keep taking tests on a regular basis. This will be a record of how much he/she is grasping. However, do not forget to reward your child on his/her achievements, so that he/she feels encouraged.
You can find several groups or societies that meet frequently and organize periodic seminars or conventions. You can also look for groups online who discuss such topics, help each other and exchange ideas. Many daily seminars and classes are held by parents to help other parents with their experience and expertise. Don’t be perplexed, you can always seek outside help from others when you want.
Include some hands-on activity in your curriculum. Children will learn faster by seeing things first-hand. Some of the activities which you can include are: gardening, science projects, hiking, decorating your drawing room, cooking, and sewing.
You also need to figure out how many hours in a day you need to spend teaching your children and whether you will homeschool them throughout the year or will go on holidays or for breaks. Bind each section of your curriculum to a time frame and make an estimate as to how much time you will need to finish each of the sections. However, once you start teaching you may realize that the sections of your curriculum are taking a little more time than expected. Keep making new schedules so as to be able to cover all the subjects in your child’s curriculum, within a year.
Homeschooling is legal in many countries; however, all the countries have different rules. Acquaint yourself with all the legal and academic criteria of homeschooling. In some countries the parents don’t have to be in contact with public schools and in some countries you have to follow the school curriculum and have to report the test scores of your child from time to time. Sometimes, it is essential for the parent to have some teaching qualifications. Get in touch with the local homeschooling authorities and get all the required information before you start.

Homeschooling is not an easy endeavor and the parents need to devote much of their time and effort to offer a proper education to their children. Before you start homeschooling, do some prior research and plan accordingly.

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