Homeschooling Tips & Ideas

Ever given your child a simple job like “Clean your room” or “Go get your math done,” and they respond as if you just asked them to climb Mt. Everest? Many kids (and adults!) today struggle with weak executive functioning skills, making it difficult to get organized, stay focused, and even know where to begin a task. The good news is that you can help them develop these skills, starting with one important strategy: teaching them to break big tasks down into manageable steps.

As homeschooling has exploded, the available educational resources have grown as well. The options are overwhelming, but the real question is which option is better? Do I use the tried and true, that beloved program successfully used for a generation, or will the newer curricula options provide my child with a better education?

Is it just me, or are homeschooled kids particularly good at exploring their interests? There seems to be a natural curiosity that, when combined with a flexible schedule, leads them on all sorts of rabbit trails. With time and research, practice and development, these interests can become a hobby. These hobbies can become a high school elective and, if we are lucky, these interests can lead to a lifelong profession!

I fear our culture has forgotten the great benefits of kids experiencing a proper amount of risk. It’s a way to strengthen problem-solving skills! When we’ve worked out a problem and succeeded, the result is great satisfaction. Let's talk about risk-taking play as a way to introduce kids to activities that have uncertain outcomes. Dealing with this uncertainty will help them learn to operate outside of their comfort zones!

Our language skills progress as we grow, mature, and learn. Squiggles turn to letters, to words, to sentences, and before we know it, we are writing essays, papers, and reports! The written word allows us to express our ideas, understandings, and findings to others. As this skill develops for your young students, a new skill needs to emerge in your personal teacher toolbox: the ability to evaluate, assess, and grade our students’ writing. So, where do you start?

Evaluating essays can pose large challenges for parents. For multiple reasons, we can become discouraged and challenged with responding effectively to student writing. What should be “good” for student and parent instead becomes “the bad and the ugly.” Don’t wave the white flag! Evaluating your student’s writing and encouraging them in this process is important, doable, and can provide wonderful results.

Gaps, holes, chasms — call them what you will, but they are a real fear for some parents and something they will avoid if possible. Gaps typically happen when you make a big change. It can be from one math program to another, or it could be from attending school to homeschooling. How do you fill these gaps in understanding?

As home educators, we want our children to learn facts and information. But truly, our goal is not just for them to hoard information, like we’re filling some giant pitcher with water. Very simply put, we learn stuff to apply it in context. We want our children to take that “pitcher of knowledge” and skillfully use the contents to grow things. Learning is, in actuality, using what we’ve learned to discern, analyze, create, build… We want our kids to be excited to say, “I know stuff and I can do things!”

If you are following a traditional school year or have a schedule unique to your family, the half-way mark is a fair time to look at your curriculum choices. What do we like? What is not working for us?  If you feel that you are missing something, supplemental materials might be helpful to plug those gaps!

Are you noticing the mountain top areas where your homeschooler is excelling in certain topics and contrasting those with valley areas of struggle? Now is a great time to observe and address these little struggle moments that could grow into bigger tensions in your academic year. What do you do when you start pinpointing these areas of pain within your student’s day-to-day work?