How to Start Homeschooling

The decision to homeschool is usually made with a lot of enthusiasm, but may also create a few feelings of anxiety and concern. The big picture can be overwhelming! By organizing your thoughts and gathering resources, the journey can be enjoyable and workable. Here are some tips that may help you as you begin the rewarding journey into homeschooling.

• Develop your family’s homeschool philosophy. Reading books about homeschooling and the reasons for doing it is a good place to start. After learning about the perks of schooling your children at home, you’ll be ready to draw up your own philosophy. Writing it onto a document that you can re-read when you need re-evaluate can help you keep on track. Two excellent resources that will help you establish your personal philosophy are books by Ellen White and Dr. Raymond Moore. Both are Seventh-day Adventist pioneers: one in Adventist church history and the other who is known as the grandfather of homeschooling in America. Other Christian homeschool educators and some secular educators also have helpful ideas related to homeschooling and their books could be helpful as you develop your educational platform. This platform contains the principles that best help you achieve your educational goals and they become the core of your homeschool lifestyle.
• Research homeschooling laws for your state. Some may require that you take a “how to” class if you don’t have some college credits. Others may require a cover school or specify how records are kept. Here is a link that tells about thelaws by state. The link also shares a listing of nationwide homeschool support groups by state. Most states require that you register with the local school district, completing an “intent to homeschool” form. It is a simple document that helps you meet local compliance regulations and will keep your child from being declared truant. This is only necessary after your child has reached the designated age required for enrollment.
• Research legal defense organizations that assist homeschoolers. Decide if this is something that would benefit your family and then follow through to sign-up for the service you choose. This can create peace of mind and membership helps support the larger community of home educators throughout America. One such organization is the Home School Legal Defense Association.
• Set up a space for your children to learn. A relaxed approach could simply mean a bookcase, bean bag chairs, and a low table. Some like a more formal classroom set up with desks, chairs, and marker boards. Then, name your school. This is helpful for your children, as it gives them a school to name when they are out and about in the community and they are asked where they go to school. It gives them a sense of place and belonging.
• Plan your course of study; a list of subjects that your student is to investigate. Your plan should include the subject matter, curriculum requirements and standards that you want your children to meet by the time the school year is over. World Book offers recommendations for a typical course of study on their website. Standards are outlined for preschool through grade 12. Additionally, your course of study can be expanded to include other aspects of the wholistic education that Ellen White outlines in her book, Education. This would include the additional study of the scriptures, work, service and nature.
• Start planning how you will implement your course of study. Choose resources, textbooks, and learning materials that will help you achieve your goals. A teacher lesson plan book, a journal, and a calendar are helpful tools. Some parents like to plan an entire school year in advance, yet others prefer to divide the school year into smaller segments, either quarter or semester. Allow yourself space to be flexible, as your homeschool should meet the individual needs of your children. Resources are available from your local teacher supply store, from curriculum companies online, and from your Adventist Book Center.
• Attend a local or statewide curriculum fair. This is highly recommended, as they are a great gathering place for vendors of educational materials designed specifically for homeschool families.
• Find or create a support group so that you and your children can interact and enjoy the companionship of like-minded individuals. Field trips, playdates, music recitals, science fairs, and art exhibits are some of the things that homeschool families can do in conjunction with other homeschoolers. Likewise, join online homeschool support groups such as SDA Homeschool Families on Facebook. They provide a safe place to ask questions, share concerns, and learn about resources that are specific to Adventist homeschool families. Additionally, some communities have a homeschool resource center or lending library where they can cooperatively share science equipment, physical education gear, resource and textbooks, musical instruments, and more. Reach out to others for support. Be a part of a larger community and make homeschooling a cooperative effort. Finding a mentor who is experienced in homeschooling can also be helpful. Their expertise can help you move forward in a positive way, avoiding the pitfalls that they may have faced.

Recipe for Home Teaching

As a new school year starts for many, it seems timely to review the core "recipe" for homeschooling. I have always appreciated the one by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore, early advocates of home education. Here's their recipe for home-school teaching:

"The requirements are not complex. Parents need only to be loving, responsive, and reasonably consistent, and salt these qualities with a little imagination, common sense, and willingness to follow a few simple suggestions...And don't worry about the opinions of neighbors who don't know or care about the real needs of children. Just be kind to them. Have your children be helpful in your home and in the neighborhood. Visit the old and infirm and ill. Do favors for others without asking any in return. Soon your 'strange antics' will be forgotten...or admired." 

They remind us that:

• "In one sense you are teaching all your waking moments --- as models to your offspring. Yet while some parents are more diligent than others, none need to formally teach a full school day."

And continue with this:

• "Much more important is your working with your children in physical work, helping them learn practical skills and the nobility of work --- building character qualities of initiative, industry, neatness, order, responsibility, and dependability, which are hard to find in even one of ten children or young adults today."

And there's more!

• "Along with these grosser values you can by precept and example teach manners and graces which today are rare --- kindness, thoughtfulness, tact, forgiveness, generosity, and a just plain kind of for-others love. This is seldom done in schools these days. Teach therm how to walk tall, how to listen closely, how to speak graciously. Paul was not gesturing idly when he wrote Philippians 4:8, 'Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report;...think on these things.'"

Using the Moore Formula of work, study, and service, children have been found to excel academically and socially. For more on this subject, it's recommended that you establish your foundation and philosophy for homeschooling by reading several of the books Raymond and Dorothy Moore have written on homeschooling. 

The quotes above are from the book "Home-Spun Schools" page 12 - 13.

Moore on Home Education

One of my favorite books on the subject of home education is Home Grown Kids, written by the grandfather of homeschooling in America, Dr. Raymond Moore.  In it he shares a way of thinking that was radical when he wrote the book thirty-some years ago!  Homeschooling, now considered a "right", was a "privilege" that was hard earned in its early stages.  He encouraged parents to embrace the right and responsibility of homeschooling.  Here's a quote from his book that reinforces this concept.

"No schoolroom can match the simplicity and power of the home in providing three-dimensional, firsthand education. The school, not the home, is the substitute, and its highest function is to complement the family. The family is still the social base, and must be, if our society is to survive. Let's leave no stone unturned to guarantee the fullest freedom of the home and the rights of parents to determine the education of their children."

Dr. Raymond Moore
Home Grown Kids page 26

Work Opportunities for Children

Sometimes finding work opportunities for children can be challenging.  Daily chores create opportunity for routine work experience, and tasks like lawn mowing or pulling weeds in the garden provide opportunity for extra jobs that can provide learning and fulfillment for children.  But it’s important that purposeful work be provided that is not part of the daily routine.  Children should not be made to feel that ‘work’ is a negative concept and is just something they have to do to make their parent’s lives easier.  An altruistic spirit is good and work can help create it, but that is not the entire purpose and role of work as a part of a home school curriculum.  Children can develop work attitudes and a sense of self-worth if they have work related jobs that are unique to them and provide them with a sense of fulfillment.  Thus, special care needs to be taken in helping a children in this role.  In the past, school children could harvest cucumbers or strawberries for pay, or work on a farm changing irrigation pipes.  Regulations regarding the age that children can be employed has made it more difficult for children to find work related roles, so creative thought must be applied!  Helping a child establish a small home business is one way of providing meaningful work related opportunities for them and a good way for them to earn extra money. 
 
Here are some ideas of work opportunities for children:

1.   Being a mother’s assistant or babysitting.

2.   Washing cars.

3.   Baking homemade bread and selling it to neighbors.

4.   Having a bake sale.

5.   Setting up a lemonade stand.

6.   Participating in a yard sale and having a table of toys, clothes, or things not wanted or needed any more.

7.   Folding laundry and/or ironing shirts for a neighbor or relative.

8.   Sewing aprons or cushions and selling them to friends and neighbors.


9.   Growing a vegetable or flower garden and selling the produce or flowers.

10. Writing a monthly neighborhood newspaper and selling it for a quarter to community members.

Creating Work Opportunities for Teens

Gainful employment and business opportunities for teens are not as difficult to implement as it is for elementary age children.  The key to success in this area is to encourage the teen to find something to do that follows their own natural interest and ability.   Encouraging teens to develop skills that they have or would like to develop is key.  That, along with the spending money that gainful work provides, works as interest and incentive for the teen. 

Some ideas for youth employment and business opportunities are:

1.  babysitting and child care

2. housekeeping or assistance with spring-cleaning

3. growing flowers and selling bouquets

4. building customer computers and selling them

5. working as a computer tech, fixing problems and reformatting computers

6. growing produce and selling at a fruit stand or Farmer’s Market

7.  making products to sell like jams, jellies, bread, cookies, cakes

8.  catering meals for an event like a wedding or family reunion

9.  mowing, weeding, planting yard care business

10. ironing and doing custom laundry

11. doing car detailing and washing

12. tutoring young children; being a homework helper

13. bagging groceries at a supermarket

14. working in a fast food restaurant 

15.  caretaking of the elderly

16.  becoming a personal shopper, for groceries or other items

17.  gathering firewood and selling it

18.  painting rooms, houses, or furniture

19.  repairing cars or lawn mowers

20. sewing things and selling them


Sometimes work can be especially "fun".  The teen in this picture is modeling for a jet boat promotion and brochure.  Although something might look like recreation, it can also be gainful work.

Applying Your Homeschool Philosophy

An educational philosophy is important for your home school. If you have a home school philosophy that is specific to your family it helps to keep your goals and strategies in focus. The grandfather of home schooling, Dr. Raymond Moore, recommends that each family have a philosophy written and prepared as the basis of establishing a curriculum for each family that home schools. A successful family philosophy focuses HIGHLY upon the formula that Dr. Moore presents (Smithsonian formula) on creating a genius.

The Smithsonian Institution’s study of twenty world-class geniuses stresses three factors: 

1) warm, loving, educationally responsive parents and other adults;
2) scant association outside the family, and
3) a great deal of creative freedom under parental guidance to explore their ideas.

Peer pressure works to tell us that we must socialize our children by having them spend time with other kids. But, studies have shown that the greatest socialization takes place within the family structure and by association with other adults. It is perfectly okay for children to spend all week with their parents, associating with other children only weekly at church. As children reached the upper elementary grades, they frequently start asking for opportunities to spend with other children. At that point, teaming with other friends to start a ‘home school activity group’ that meets semi-monthly and provides structured field trips for a group of local, home school children can be provided. This frequently fills the ‘need’ of children to associate with others their age. Piano and other group lessons can also help meet this need. The structured environment continues to facilitate learning and prevents an opportunity for negative socialization.

A great deal of freedom to explore is important. In order to create creative children, time and resources to work with are essential. So is the ability for mother or father to put up with a mess! A separate space for learning can be helpful in containing materials for this type of exploration. Paper, glue, paste, scissors, computer printers, cameras, film, paint, glitter, etc. and etc. are much more important than coloring books and paint by numbers. A supply of art materials should always been readily available at all times. They are tools that can be utilized for every subject, not just art class.

It’s important to keep priorities in focus. If one chooses to home-educate, then the education of our children must be a priority. This includes their religious education and the development of their intellect and ability to think for themselves. This comes before: canning and freezing food; laundry; a clean house; shopping trips; visiting the neighbor; etc. Of course these other things are important — but the children and their education should come first. Assigning workbook pages for the children so that the parent has time to wash windows or clean the oven does not create a wholesome and productive school environment. Children become bored to tears and homeschooling can become a struggle with this approach. Instead, plan work into the daily routine, so the children work with the parent in establishing a tidy home structure. Make this process a part of learning. Then, continue to develop other kinds of learning events as a family team. Although it is important for a child to learn to work independently, busy work is not the key.

Lessons learned while creating, building, analyzing, and applying concepts are best absorbed and retained by children. A unit study approach that is developed by the parent teacher around the interests of the children being taught is interesting and grasped well by them. It is the role of the teacher parent to create lessons and learning experiences that spark the interest in the children being taught. A bored child does not learn well. It is the parents role to provide experiences that facilitate growth, learning, and interest in any subject. Mastery will result effortlessly if this principle is applied.

Developing an educational philosophy assists the home school family to teach and learn purposefully. Once a philosophy of learning is established, the resources selected to facilitate this learning fall into place. If workbooks do not play a role in promoting your educational philosophy, there is no need to spend money on them! Instead, use your resources to find the tools that promote the philosophy you choose to embrace. Children are a precious natural resource. Thoughtful care should be taken in establishing how we will help them learn.

Blessing Our Children

Blessings are words of affirmation and love spoken to another.  When a parent speaks these words and then exhibits them by action or deed, the child is blessed beyond measure.  Gary Smalley and John Trent speak of the five elements of the blessing in their book by the same title.  These elements are a meaningful touch, a spoken message, the attachment of high value to the one being blessed, the creation of a word picture of the special future perceived to the one being blessed, and an active commitment to fulfill the blessing.  Although all parents can share the blessing with their children, the homeschool  parent has a greater opportunity to pass this blessing along to their off-spring simply because of the dedicated amount of time he or she spends with their children.  The creation of a warm and responsive environment facilitates a positive sense of self-worth in children, blesses them, and helps them develop intellectually and to his or her full potential.  Although teachers in an institutionalized setting can be warm and responsive, studies have shown that the sheer number of students under the care of a classroom teacher limits his or her ability to spend much time affirming each student individually.  An average teacher spends seven minutes a day responding to students, and this number includes both positive and negative responses.  Because of time constraints, discipline issues, and lack of one-on-one interaction, most students are not asked the “why” and “how” questions that expand their abilities to become thinkers.  Instead, instructors tend to spend more time asking “who, what, where, and when”, simply because the answers to these questions are easier to evaluate quickly so they can move along to other things.  Home education provides an opportunity for parents to bless their children by responding to their individual needs in a warm and positive way.  A by-product of this blessing is the development of intellect and the creation of thinking children.

Schooling on Purpose

When our family began our homeschool journey, my husband and I spent time together, talking specifically about how we wanted to educate our children.  We researched styles of homeschooling and decided that a relaxed approach that focused upon teaching our children through life experiences best reflected our beliefs and goals.  This meant that education wasn’t designated as something that happened within a block of specific periods of time.  Instead, it was something that we kept in focus from the moment our children woke up each morning until they went to sleep at night.  Every life experience was an opportunity.  These opportunities did not pass by in a laissez faire manner.  Instead, we worked together to grasp onto teachable moments throughout the day.  In the early years, the teaching moments involved hours of reading, singing, exploring nature, and playing together.  As the children grew, they took on age appropriate responsibilities that taught them life skills.  Study of God’s Word through Bible stories and games emphasized the value of developing moral characters and inculcating Godly traits.  The children were immersed in a learning environment through books, discussion, opportunities, and experiences.  Unschooling was not the concept we grasped, but rather schooling on purpose throughout all the events of life was emphasized.  Teachable moments from dusk to dawn created the beginning days of homeschooling for our family.  Using opportunities to immerse the little ones in learning all day long created an environment where learning took place naturally and organically.  It just happened.  On purpose.

Using Home to Teach Life's Lessons

When beginning the homeschool journey, it is easy to become caught up in schedules, drills, copy work, worksheets, textbooks, and routines.  If you as the parent were the product of traditional schooling, these tools are familiar and comfortable for you as a homeschool mom or dad.  With a wealth of resources available on the glossy pages of homeschool catalogs or in teacher supply stores, purchasing helpful materials is easy, albeit sometimes hard on the pocket book.  These resources can become a blessing to us if we use them well and with purpose, but if they simply become assignments to throw at our children, school evolves into something no different than sending a child to the community school down the road.  School at home replicates the traditional classroom and the maximum benefits of home education become limited as a result.  Instead, consider using the home as a school to teach life’s lessons.  Allowing every teachable moment in every day to teach academics, life skills, and service to others achieves optimal results and reaps great rewards.  Teaching the whole child by a true homeschool method creates a child who learns enthusiastically and well.  Teachable life moments create well adjusted children.

Homeschool Philosophy of Education

Do you have a philosophy of education for your homeschool? Taking time to think about what is important to you in the education of your children provides you and your family with a base for all decisions related to how your children learn and how you teach. Once this has been done, selecting curricula, establishing schedules and routines, and choosing extracurricular activities becomes easier, as your belief system has been well thought out and decisions have been made about what is important to you.
 
For most of us, educating the whole child is of top priority. Helping him or her develop spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally creates a well-adjusted child that has the talents and abilities necessary to succeed in today’s world. Homeschool families in 2010 are given opportunities to choose from a myriad of academic resources. Curriculum companies have been quick to write textbooks and provide resources for the learning needs of homeschooled students. Sometimes it is easy to forget that a child’s education is not one-dimensional, but that academics are only one piece of the puzzle. Spending equal time planning for physical, emotional, and spiritual elements is key in creating a well balanced child. For example, character is developed through work and service to others. Physical wellness is also a result of hard work. And service to others helps the child discover that a happy heart is one that tends to the needs of others as it focuses outward in life.

If you haven’t taken the time to write down your philosophy of home education, why don’t you take a moment to jot down what you really believe about educating your child. What is the foundation of your home school? It is the core of your family system of education.

Achieving Optimal Intellect

Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, the influential teacher of the Suzuki method of music education, spoke frequently of the ability that all children have to learn things well if they were placed in the right environment.  His motto is “any child can learn”.  His methods, though sometimes controversial, make sense to me.  Expanding his concepts to areas beyond music opens the door to new concepts in education.  Believing that any child can achieve optimal intellect, I embarked on a journey to explore ways to help my own children become thinkers and not mere reflectors of the thoughts of others.  As a public school teacher, I knew that some students learned to think, but many who crossed my path were simply satisfied with becoming cookie-cutter students; ones who followed the crowd and interacted and learned just like their peers.  It seemed that if I put my own children through the same process as the norm, the risk of developing reflectors rather than thinkers was great.  During the discovery process, I came across a simple formula for creating children who knew how to think, create, and excel and I was hooked!  This formula was developed by Harold McCurdy and his team of researchers.  They were commissioned by the Smithsonian Institute to discover the recipe for the creation of genius’ throughout history.  The results of their research revealed simple and amazing principles that any parent can implement in their homeschool.  Would you like to know the formula?  Here it is:  1)  provide the child with warm, responsive parents and other significant adults in their life, 2) isolate the child from peers outside of their immediate family, and 3) give the child much freedom to explore and follow their own interests.  Although simple, this formula goes against much of what current culture believes and endorses for raising intelligent children.  But, when these principles are not present, or are only minimally present in the lives of children, it is found to suppress the development of his or her intellect.  Would you like to raise children who can think?  Consider the formula for raising a genius!

Teach Your Own

An excerpt from “Teach Your Own” by John Holt, the educator who promoted freedom for children to learn naturally and coined the term “unschooling”.
 
“I have used the words “homeschooling” to describe the process by which children grow and learn in the world without going, or going very much, to schools, because those words are familiar and quickly understood. But in one very important sense they are misleading. What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools but that it isn’t a school at all. It is not an artificial place, set up to make “learning” happen and in which nothing except “learning” ever happens. It is a natural, organic, central, fundamental human institution, one might easily and rightly say the foundation of all other institutions. We can imagine and indeed we have had human societies without schools, without factories, without libraries, museums, hospitals, roads, legislatures, courts, or any of the institutions which seem so indispensable and permanent a part of modern life. We might someday even choose, or be obliged, to live once again without some or all of these. But we cannot even imagine a society without homes, even if these should be no more than tents, or mud huts, or holes in the ground. What I am trying to say, in short, is that our chief educational problem is not to find a way to make homes more like schools. If anything, it is to make schools less like schools.”

Learning Through Nature

David tells us in Psalm 19:1 that “the heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands”. All of God’s creation is an expression of His love for us. His principles and truths are shown through observation of the things He has made. Object lessons from nature teach children concepts that their minds may not be able to grasp from books or school routine. Learning like the child Jesus did, at a mother’s knee and in the woods or fields surrounding a child’s home, gives each one the opportunity to gain the same knowledge of God and His character as Jesus observed. The book, Education, says “let the child from his earliest years be placed where this wonderful lesson book shall be open before him” [p. 101] By looking at the landscapes crafted by God as the artist, observing the change of seasons, and seeing all that God made, the foundation of true education is firmly given.
 
These were principles that my maternal grandmother and mother firmly believed in. Both were school teachers, and both used nature study as an integral and significant portion of their lesson planning and instructional method. In the classroom, Sabbath School, Pathfinders, and at home, the study of the planets, stars, moon, and sun were balanced with rock or shell collecting, finding and creating butterfly and insect collections, observing birds and their nesting or migratory habits, learning to identify trees and creating leaf crafts, or studying botany by roaming mountainsides and fields in a search for early spring flowers. Nature was left undisturbed, but small aspects were brought into our home for our continued enjoyment and learning. Stories and books about nature filled the gaps in between the moments spent outside. Art always centered around something found or seen in nature. Watercolor, pastel, and pencil scenes ranged from vast landscapes to tiny parts of a flower gathered in the woods. Stories from books like Benny the Beaver, Girl of the Limberlost, or A Tippy Canoe and Canada Too taught of nature’s lessons and fueled our imaginations. My sister and I received untold blessing from the influence of these two amazing women and the lessons they taught from God’s second book. Such a heritage becomes a part of who a person is, and that heritage is something that was passed along to my own children in our homeschool. Much of my instruction reflected that of my mother and grandmother. Sometimes Mother and Grandmother would come to visit our homeschool, and I would turn the reins over to them. They become honorary instructors for the day. Their lessons continued through the generations as four generations observed God’s creation together.

Time has passed, and the life cycle passed more quickly for some than for others. My mother’s lessons remain in my heart, as she is no longer here to share them with us. But Grandmother’s influence still is cherished in her 102nd year. A recent visit with her was spent with me pushing her in her wheel chair through the gardens at her pleasant Canadian nursing home. We would stop to smell the flowers, and I would pick one of each kind and gently tuck them into each buttonhole of her sweater and in the band on her hat. The common act pleased her, and as we wound our way through the garden paths, I was both joyful and tearful as I remembered the days gone by. Teaching and learning had gone full-cycle and the roles reversed. But the joy of sharing God’s creation remained a firm bond in our relationship. Nature provided many lessons which became a significant part of our family legacy. The children and grandchildren of the future will enjoy lessons that were established by the careful instruction of generations before.

What are you doing to implement nature as a part of your homeschooling? Are you creating a legacy for your children? Please leave a comment and share how nature is an integral part of your teaching method.

Free Christian Homeschool Curriculum

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Welcome to HEWC

 
Welcome to Educating the Whole Child, a blog which explores methods of homeschooling the whole child from birth through high school.