No, my homeschooled children are not normal. But it's not for the reasons you think.
One of the most disheartening assumptions about homeschoolers is that they are not normal. They are weird misfits.
What is normal anyways? What does normal look like? Does normal have brown hair and blue eyes? Does normal wear jeans and t-shirts? And why would being homeschooled exclude you from the normal label?
For many of us, reading is not only a way to educate, but also our preferred method of entertainment. As a book lover, it has come as quite a shock and challenge to discover my eight year old doesn’t like reading. What a wrench in my idyllic homeschool vision of home libraries and reading parties!
Unfortunately for him, reading is a necessary part of our school days. While we require our kids do their schoolwork —even the parts they hate—, there are ways to make the homeschool day more palatable for a child who hates reading. And when school is a happy experience for our kids, it's also happier for us!
Working at home while homeschooling means that you actually have two full time jobs. One is caring for your kids and managing their education while the other is fulfilling the responsibilities of your paid job. This dual role brings with it a number of challenges, but these two stand out as the most distressing ones: lack of me time and distractions.
If you can overcome these two biggies, you can get through your homeschool years swimmingly.
Do you want to use a boxed curriculum but worry that you can’t afford it? If you feel that a boxed curriculum like BookShark is best for your children, don’t give up on purchasing it because you’re intimidated by the price tag. BookShark offers Payment Plans. You may find that with strategic planning, you can afford a boxed curriculum.
Before looking for additional money in your budget, first put the price into perspective. For example, consider the price per child if multiple children will be using it.
Believe me, you’re not the only mom who hid tears from her child because she was certain she had bitten off more than she could chew with this whole homeschooling thing. Homeschooling is not for every parent out there. We’re traveling down a road less traveled, and it’s normal to feel like a failure at times.
While some us may be blowing our doubts out of proportion, there are valid concerns that give us reason to worry. I have a few ideas why your homeschool might feel like it’s not working and why you might be ready to throw in the towel. (Ask me how I know.)
Now that homeschooling has exploded into nearly two million children being educated at home across the United States for multiple reasons and with varied religious or non-religious backgrounds, homeschool curriculum publishers are almost as numerous! While having a plethora of choices at your fingertips is a great way to give your child a customized education, it’s also a great way to send a homeschool parent into analysis paralysis.
In homeschooling circles, boxed curriculum is also known as an all-in-one educational program. One company provides the materials you need for all core subjects for an entire school year, often in one large box. When you purchase a package like this, you receive the necessary student books, an in-depth teacher’s guide and schedule and, frequently, any additional readers and supplies you’ll need to complete all of the lessons throughout the year.
Many parents find that the teacher’s manual included in this type of curriculum is worth its weight in gold.
As home educators, we struggle with self-doubt, wondering if we are teaching our children the right things at the right time. There are plenty of models to pull from: public school, private schools, curriculum publishers, etc. But if we are not careful, we can become burdened by feeling we must fit it all into our schedule.
Realizing that I can focus on only a few things well as a teacher, I chose to narrow my yearly homeschool focus to one or two overarching goals each year.
Once you are homeschooling, you realize how easy it can be to adopt a fluid sense of time. In fact, you might sometimes lose track of what day of the week or hour of the day it is when you remove yourself from a traditional school schedule! However, with that flexible perspective on time comes a need for being more particular about the ins and outs of our day. Otherwise, we become so fluid that we end up wasting our precious hours.
Are you super careful to protect your time or are you extremely casual with the hours in your day?
In our homeschool, my children constantly encounter new vocabulary words during their individual reading time or during lessons. My naturally curious kids are great about asking, “What does this word mean, Mom?” Typically I ask them to look it up using an online dictionary.
But sometimes we use them our new words in one of these five fantastic vocabulary games.
