Gearing Up for Home School
Monday, July 17th, 2006By Mimi Rothschild
What is home school? In a nutshell, it is the collaboration between parents and children to help children acquire an education according to family values and by their own initiative. Home school used to be the only kind of school but as parents got busy with raising crops and farm animals and other jobs began to develop, it became the job of one person in the community to teach the children during the day.
Nowadays, home school is coming back around, not because the jobs and responsibilities of the parents are disappearing but because the focus is returning to family. Home schooling doesn’t work for every family, but the ones for whom home schooling does work must work to make it happen. In other words, home schooling takes a little initiative beforehand, a lot of preparation, and even more planning.
First, a good look at the curriculum materials available to home schoolers is essential. Which are appropriate to the age of the home schooler? Which suit the values of the family? Which subjects will be covered first and how will the academics mesh with local events, museums, plays and other field trips? Some parents create their own curriculum while others purchase theirs. Most do a combination of both, creating their own lesson plans and accompanying materials and purchasing the core curriculum or buying materials for specific courses and creating and mixing it up on others.
Next, check out the regulations that are required by state law. The last thing a home schooling parent wants to do while trying to empower their child through home school is to mess up and miss standardized testing and other official deadlines. Create a calendar ahead of time and mark on it all the important dates and deadlines for paperwork, meetings, and portfolio reviews as required by the school board.
Take this calendar a step further and with the help of your curriculum materials, create a basic study outline of events for the coming semester or coming year. Home schooling parents are responsible for making sure that their child has the opportunity to learn everything she needs to and more during the course of the year. The home schooler has the responsibility to do the work and the actual learning. Involving the students in the schedule creation helps make home school feel more like the collaboration it should be.
Every step of the way, the collaboration between home schooling parent and student makes home schooling into a family oriented, social event.