Remember: Homeschooling is not difficult – it is not as complicated as it sounds – it actually is a simple process. The fact is: It is simply an academic extension of parenting, which you as a parent you are expertly qualified to do.
How to start – a shortlist:
- Join the Pestalozzi Trust.
- Update yourself on the legal aspects of homeschooling.
- Decide together as a family what your goals are.
- Take a holiday from “school”, especially if school was a traumatic experience, to be able to start with a clean slate.
- Start learning with your children, and, if necessary, buy learning materials.
Take it slowly!
Take it very slowly. Extensive research and even more extensive experience have shown that your children will not “fall behind” their peers in schools if they take a “holiday” from bookwork.
Starting out in home education is, for most families, a tense and confusing time. Start off by deciding on a plan of action: Why do you want to homeschool, and what is your goal?
Talk to each other, and start living together again
A child learns the most from conversations with his parents and other adults. This is something that does not cost a cent, except for time devoted to conversations in the family and with each child. The purpose of the conversations is to share and crystallize each other’s ideals and interests. Encourage your child to follow his interests – his interests probably will lead to his career(s) one day.
Involve your children in your life – take them with you when you do business and teach them everything that you know and that you can do. If you think about it, you actually have learnt so much from life itself, like how to get along with people. These skills you were not taught at school or in a formal course. These are the kind of life skills your children will need when they themselves become parents one day.
Get to know your children even better, and start functioning as a family again.
Keep it simple
Home education is education for life.
To ensure that your children receive a rich, balanced education enable them to play a lot, have enough time to think, and to work with you in and around the house. Read aloud to your children – at least one hour a day, from good books, with good language. Ensure that your children do mathematics, and if possible, enable them to learn music.
Spend your money on learning, not on teaching
Buying curriculum is not the first
thing on your homeschooling journey. It is the last thing one
does. The reason is that home education is not about what
mother (or father) teaches the children. It is about what the children learn themselves.
So give yourself enough time to research the various options, taking into
account your child’s learning style and your own teaching style.
Use your money to “homeschool” yourself first, while your children unlearn the bad habits and false expectations that were ingrained in them at school. Read books about homeschooling, attend workshops, join the Pestalozzi Trust, associations and support groups.
Important: Not all advice will be applicable to you and your children; you are a unique family and you have unique children. Often you have to take the advice of others with a pinch of salt and follow your own inclinations.
Also allow the children to learn from life: Go on educational outings with the children – museums and places of historical or scientific interest, farms and factories, concerts and so on. Create memories in this way that all of you will enjoy looking back to in future.
Be ready to change your mind!
So now you are ready to answer you children’s questions (or preferably find the answers with them), and to provide them with suitable materials to learn and do the things they ask to learn and do – whether that is art classes, computer programming or book keeping. And, no matter what else you do, never neglect the simple ingredients above. These ingredients remain essential at all levels of education.
It is however important to be ready to try something new whenever you conclude that whatever you are doing is not working for your family or for your children. Don’t get locked in some programme or system that does not work for you or your children, and be too scared to let it go. Remember that home education will change both you and your children, and in time you might find that a change of approach is necessary to reach your goals.
