Posts Tagged ‘motivational’

Avoiding Burnout in Home Schooling

December 6th, 2009

No matter if you are teaching in a traditional school or in a home schooling environment, there will come a time when you will experience burnout. This is something that you have to avoid so that your learning progress is not affected.

Here are a couple of useful tips that you can use in order to prevent an occurrence of home schooling burnout:

Be aware of your abilities. From the very start, you should already know your limitations and those of your child. You must be able to doing things slowly sometimes, especially if your child is still very young since you have to consider your child’s capacity to learn. Most students are average learners (obviously), so you will have to take the lessons according to your child’s learning pace. Never expect your small child to read complicated selections nor your teenager to get top marks in SAT exams.

Try not to adopt strict schedules, as this can put undue pressure on your child. You should just set an interesting routine for your child to follow. Children spend most of their time doing routine activities like getting up, eating hearty breakfasts, reading books, practising writing, doing light jobs about the place, etc. You must ensure that they complete their routine activities before they can go outside or play with the computer. Even these routine activities change from day to day, but you have to ensure that your child completes these routine activities. You can throw in occasional incentives or fun activities if they finish their routine tasks early.

You should try to enter into the spirit of home schooling with your child, since it is one method of developing a strong relationship with your child and if you and your child can relate to each other, you will find it very much simpler to handle curriculum struggles and motivation problems later on. Besides motivating and guiding your child, you can also follow some of your own interests like gardening or cooking. If your child sees you enjoying your own interests, then he or she will also be motivated to do likewise.

As your child is in a home schooling program, you should not try to copy a traditional schools environment. Try to use unusual ways when teaching your child. Home schooling is also about flexibility and creativity, so if you can create an easy-going but firm atmosphere, you can probably prevent burnout.

Just always try to remember that with home schooling, you don’t have to structure your teaching methods in the normal way. You can simply do things in an enjoyable way especially when teaching very young children, so that they learn easily. Ensure you keep the day in the right perspective to prevent burnout. Although your children may forget some of the day’s lessons, that’s all right too because somehow children grow in intelligence as well as in physique.

Your children will always think back on your home schooling days together and remember with fondness how well you treated them. The old song goes: “… there’s no place like home” and for little students, home is the best place to learn the first lessons of life. If your teenagers are already in high school or college, they can still pursue home schooling if they want to. That would also a good idea since you would get a chance to watch your offsprings’ development.

Parents always look after their children’s best interests, so, if after careful consideration, you still think that home schooling is the best option for your family, then go on with it. Just follow the tips mentioned above to avoid burnout. Have fun activities from time to time to prevent monotony.

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Home Schooling and its Effects on the Family

November 4th, 2009

According to the National Center For Education Statistics, almost 1.1 million children underwent home schooling in 2005 alone. That’s a lot of children. Once upon a time, homeschooling used to be a radical statement – something like a declaration of independence.

It was the right-wing Christians who advocated homeschooling in the 1980’s and legalized it in every State. But these day, average homeschooling student is not religiously motivated.

Later surveys indicate that parents are actually fed up with the public school system where much of the learning is superficial and compulsory. They are also concerned about the negative environment in school, ranging from drugs and abuse to negative peer pressure.

Because of this, we have a surprising mixture of people who make up the homeschooling world of today. They cut across all religious creeds and all regional borders. Their main goal is providing meaningful and productive education through a means that strengthens the bond between all the members of the family.

All these families have one main thing in common – a long enduring commitment to the sanctity of childhood. The children in these families are accorded a primary position. Many believe, and, I think, rightly so, that home schooling allows parents to bring up their kids in a more natural and caring environment.

Public schools can make a child anxious, subservient and downright mean. Children who get their education at home are protected from these damaging, negative influences until they reach an age where they can deal with them.

Home-schooling draws the whole family into the almost religious job of teaching. Everyone is put to work. The parents together form a bond with the children. Any experience can be turned into an learning experience. Both the parents are aware of exactly what is going into their child’s head.

Parents also have a greater control over the kind of religious and moral values that the child is taught. Even watching a film together can become a learning experience. Visits to the libraries, zoos, museums and other places become educational as well as recreational.

A home-schooling family is primarily dependent on the income of one earning member. That means that often spending has to be curtailed and proper planning of expenditure is a must. This helps to bring the family members together and everybody gets involved in the process of saving money.

Just having a parent at home to look after, to nurture and to care for the children brings with it a lot of love and caring. Even the husband chips in and there is just no room for boredom.

Yes OK, problems still do sometimes occur, and there will be a lot of misgivings in your mind, but when you know that your children can always count on you, and your kids know it too, then homeschooling becomes a very rewarding experience.

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Learning History at Home Schooling

October 14th, 2009

Do you think that passing time in traditional classrooms is a waste of time? For many people, that is probably true. For instance, an exam is due and the students are told to memorize a lot of dates and names. However, after taking the exam, they will definitely forget 90% of those dates and names. That’s what most students do every time they have tests. If you are one of these people, you will find traditional history lessons boring, so home schooling, which concentrates more on the history of the world, will surely interest you more.

Simple memorization by rote is just not enough to know the importance of historically famous people and important events. However, through home schooling in history, you can study the different cultures of the past in a unique, but interesting way – that is your own way! By the study of history, you will also realize what is happening in the world today.

But, if you think that home schooling is the best option for your child’s learning, you should also be prepared to undertake some responsibilities. Since there will be no teacher physically present, you will have to oversee your child’s learning progress by yourself.

Let’s suppose that your kid is interested in sports. Through history and home schooling, you can start by just putting a map on the wall of your child’s room. Mark the location of his favorite sports team and make sure that you track all the team’s activities and schedules. Then, you could go back to history by reading biographies of the various athletes, who had been popular in the particular sport that your child likes. Aside from that, you could also look into the history of that specific sport and discover where it originated, its inventor, and the other things happening at that particular time.

For example, if your child follows baseball, you could teach your child about the history of Negro Leagues, government hearings on the use of steroids, and other favourite sports during that time. Just remember that you can apply this concept to any interest such as dances and inventions. You can also have conversations with your child concerning current events or read interesting historical works and other books. Apart from that, you can also watch documentaries together with the rest of the family. There are various resources that your child can use in home schooling, like TV, maps, books, a globe, an atlas, and encyclopedias. Due of the exciting adventures that you and your child will read about and see on film, he/she will find it easier to remember the names and dates of the history lessons. After all, learning is best when it is done in an interesting way.

These ways are recommended for when your child is still young, but once your child gets older, you should select a home schooling program that is suitable to his/her age group. The programs are available at the elementary, high school, and even college levels. You just have to search online for these various programs. One good thing about these programs is that you can adapt them to fit the interests of your child. However, you must make sure that all the modules are learned by your child.

Once you and your child have decided to try home schooling, you must be prepared to make some changes in your life. The learning environment will now be in your home not at a school and through the various resources that you think best, such as a computer and the Internet.

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