E0045 | Homeschooling Methods

Homeschooling is the topic today, and I’m going to be getting into some of my thoughts on why you should homeschool your kids. And I want to try to encourage you in setting out on that journey. I intend to dispel some of the myths and preconceived notions that might give you pause. And I want to cover the positives as well as highlight several methods and approaches to homeschooling. Why Homeschool? What’s the deal with homeschooling? I’ve had several people ask me to talk about this in the past few months so I figured I’d give you my take on homeschooling and what it means to us. And I wanted to kind of go over some of the means and methods that other people follow. I hope you take my thoughts and my words and think critically about what I have to share here and apply it to your life as it makes the most sense for you and your family. Freedom - Frankly the freedom to change your family schedule and be flexible is wonderful. Let’s say there was a sickness or an injury that necessitated that your family move for a short time to help someone or get treatment in a different city. The freedom to just pick up and go is great. Life happens and sometimes tragedy strikes. Conversely, what if there was a fantastic opportunity for someone in the family to do something amazing or wonderful, or to learn in a unique way, homeschooling affords you the flexibility to not be held to a single school location or jump through the hoops of changing schools. Time - Homeschooling allows you the choice to let children go as fast or as slow as they want or need to with learning any specific subject. Comparing this to public school, you have set subjects and a set amount of learning must be done to complete the grade. Nothing more, nothing less. Additionally, if one of the children excels at reading, they can progress as much as they want to, they won’t be held back a grade level to keep pace with their peers. So this can greatly enhance the efficiency of learning by allowing massive leaps forward with certain subjects while relieving the time burden later on for subjects that are more difficult for the student to learn. Family - It’s inherently a more family focused and family involved type of learning method. So if having a family who knows each other and are knit together is on your priority list, then homeschooling might be a great solution. Personally I like the idea of my kids growing up in an environment surrounded by family members instead of strangers. Diversity of Experiences - To compare, public school has generally a single adult teacher and a classroom of peers that are almost all the exact same age and experience. This is close to a monoculture of ideas and experience. Only one person in the room has authority and experiential wisdom, how sure are you that every one of those teachers holds the same values and care for your child as you do? What about growing up spending the vast majority of their time with people the same age and foolishness level? I think homeschooling wins just based on one simple fact, that the child grows up interacting and learning from people much older, as well as much younger. A homeschooled child grows up knowing how to communicate with younger siblings as well as elderly people and everyone in between. How much more well rounded of an individual will you raise? I want my kids to be comfortable interacting with anybody, not just those who are their same age and definitely not learn the whole clique social order garbage.   True Learning - Homeschooling allows your children to experientially learn about real life. You can’t get that kind of learning through most of public education. Sure you’ll learn some real life lessons there, but for the most part it’s very much not grounded and based on what life is really like. I’m a big fan of bringing experiential learning to my kids, to be there to keep them safe,