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Homeschooling Resources: Educational Issues

College Planning: Parents' Contribution to Homeschool
By Mimi Rothschild

There are different ways parents can help a homeschool student to study effectively. One of them is to inculcate good studying habits. These habits can help the student learn systematically and can also help the child remember the material he has learned for a longer period of time. Good studying can become a habit which every homeschool child can develop because it is essential for success.

Make your homeschool a good place to study. Keep the room free from any sort of noise or distraction. Also find the best convenient time for studying for your child. Every child has about 60 hours of productive time during the week where he can study. Develop a time schedule for homeschool for a particular week and see how your child fares. You can then change the time schedule according to the result of the week. Keep times for homeschooling at durations which do not conflict with the times where there is a likelihood of disturbance.

Parents should decide at what time of the day their children should study. Since the homeschool does not follow a rigid pattern like a normal school, it is good for parents to keep the afternoon or the early evening as the voluntary study time. The late evening can be allocated for games and relaxation. One can do the homeschool homework also during the study time. If there is no homework, the child can review the classroom study of the homeschool. Parents can also decide on how the study breaks be made. You can use an alarm to indicate the beginning of the break time at the end of study. Homeschool works on the principle to let the student study for one hour in full concentration, rather than allowing the student to get disrupted and disturbed in three hours of study.

Parents of homeschooled children should try and eliminate distractions like television, radio, music, clutter of the furniture and the noise of the traffic from entering into the study room. You have to show your children that the syllabus and homeschool books are quite important by turning off distractions like television and music. If the child loves to study with these elements, then make sure that the volume is turned low.

You should also keep a few things in mind like answering phone calls when the study is going on. Take your calls outside or if the phone is for your child, take the message and tell the caller that you will let your child speak to him after he is done with his homeschool studies. You have to make sure that the child is at his best concentration with good studying conditions, lighting and furniture to study for homeschool. The work-desk should have enough space to write and read. Also, keep homeschool supplies like pens, charts, dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedias, stationary, calculator, ruler, etcetera, in a study box nearby for easy access.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, author, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of almost 3 decades reside with their 8 children in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. because "our current system of education has broken its promise..." Learning By Grace, Inc. delivers Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children in the United States and throughout the world.

Rothschild has authored a number of books about education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Daily Education News Blog contains feature stories on alternatives in education.