What is Homeschooling? The word derived from home and school. It is a new form of education that fulfills the role of institutional education. Instead of attending school to get an education, your kids study at home to get their education.
Currently, there are about two million people in the country that undergo homeschooling and fast growing.
Currently, all fifty states legally approve the practice of homeschooling and is available to everyone. However, each state has specific laws regulating the homeschooling program. If you are unsure, it is best to seek advise from your local homeschooling authority.
The requirement for homeschooling varies from state to state. Some states do not require parents who want to homeschool to have degrees or high-school diploma while others require parents to attend a homeschooling training program before they can home school their kids.
So why is homeschooling gaining so much popularity nowadays? Some commons reasons are parents find the school curriculum questionable or have some moral issues with the curriculum. Class sizes increasing and cuts to funding thereby not optimizing the skills and potential of each child. Some are concerned with the safety and security of their local schools. Some parents enjoy teaching their children and want to be with their children all the time. Some children just do not fit in school so parents had to home school them.
But for whatever reasons, the decision to go homeschooling is not an easy one and should not be taken lightly. You may need to take the following points into consideration
1. Time Commitment
Homeschooling requires a great deal of time. It is beyond just buying textbooks and sitting down with your kids to study.
2. Personal Sacrifice
A parent has to sacrifice a lot of his/her personal time to homeschool their child. Typically, one of the parents has to homeschool fulltime.
3. Financial Commitment
Because one of the parents will not be working, it can placed great financial stress on the family. Sacrifice may have to be made such as having a long vacation once a year instead of twice a year.
What do you need to homeschool? Well, not much is needed actually. Simple household stuff can be used to demonstrate scientific principles. You can borrow books from public libraries or borrow tools from friends or neighbours. You can use the internet to download workbooks, worksheets and other stuff made freely available to anyone.
However, I do stress a good studying environment is needed. Examples are chairs, study tables, pens, markers and papers.
Once you embarked on the homeschooling journey, you will find it to be a very rewarding experience. It provides time for family bonding in a way that is impossible to do in a traditional institutional education. Remember that you don't have to be a genius to become a homeschooling teacher. |
