Hardly a week goes by without homeschooling moms asking us questions like these, either via email, telephone or on social media:
• How do I know that my child is not behind?
• What if my curriculum has gaps?
• My (mom/aunt/husband) says my children should be (reading/doing division etc.) by now?
These are real concerns of parents who choose to homeschool but who are constantly measuring their children’s progress against the standards of others.
1. Write down your goals and vision for home educating your family
Firstly, and most importantly, YOU as the home educating parent have to be firm in what you believe. There will be many things that buffet at you in your homeschooling journey and many times you may be seized with worry brought on by well-meaning family and friends. This is why it is important to write down why you are homeschooling, any scriptures that confirm your decision and keep track of your family vision in some form. When you are questioned you can humbly explain your position and then refer yourself back to your goals and vision for comfort!
2. Stop trying to keep up
Let us remind you that when you are homeschooling, you are not following anyone or keeping up with anything. Home education allows for customized learning at your child’s own pace! You should not feel under pressure to complete any particular grade or level in any particular time frame.
Even a formal curriculum should be a tool in your hands and not your slave master!
Here are 8 tips when learning to read is hard.
3. Stop measuring
A child in the school system is required to meet the standards of their grade and children are in an age-guided education system. One of the great benefits of home education is that we have greater freedom and we are not stuck in this system of enforced and measured achievement.
If you are concerned with gaps, then the scopes and sequences in Ruth Beechick’s book You Can Teach Your Children Successfully may help you judge what can be accomplished at various levels. However, it is probably best to learn to stop comparing and measuring!
4. Drop the myth of ‘everything there is to learn’
It is a false ideal to believe that children will come out of the school system without gaps in their learning. No one can learn everything and every curriculum, be it state or homeschool, will have its ‘gaps’.
We believe that any perceived gaps can be filled in at any point by a child, teen or adult if they have developed a love for learning and know how to research and access information. One of our goals should be to create life-long learners.
Next, when you are concerned that your child is “behind” what can you do?
If, for example, a child is not reading fluently at age 7, he is not “behind”. However, if your child is not reading at age 11, even though you have consistently been teaching her, then you may need to consider your options:
1. You could seek specialised help from a homeschool-friendly therapist.
However, as homeschoolers, you have a wide variety of ways to help a struggling child besides going to remedial classes.
2. You can go back and cover work that has not been understood or grasped by your child. There is no time limit to homeschooling. Rather lay a solid foundation than continue building a shaky house!
For example, “children develop through three modes of thinking about numbers:
- manipulative mode – working with real objects e.g. beans, cups, spoons
- mental image mode – using mental images or pictures of real objects
- abstract mode – using number concepts without thinking of images of objects
All children develop these modes of thinking in this same order. They can switch back to an earlier mode but cannot jump ahead until they have grasped the previous mode.” (Source: Preschool Math)
If a young child is struggling with maths in her workbook, go back to doing maths with real objects until her confidence has returned and she is motivated to move on.
3. Sometimes it’s a good idea just to back off and drop the slow-going subject for a few weeks or even months. Different children progress in different subjects at different rates at different stages of their unique development. For example, a child may seem to be making very little progress with Reading, while progressing in leaps with Maths. Then suddenly Maths reaches a plateau and she will progress swiftly in another subject.
4. Just take it slow: You can wait for a child to develop in his/her own time, training their character gently in perseverance by including the difficult subject slowly and gradually.
5. Make it fun: To help a struggling child, you can also choose to drop the workbook approach to teaching say phonics or maths skills and rather do some fun, interactive games that will develop those same skills. Play board games, count money, do word searches, crossword puzzles, play hangman, scrabble etc. Practical Pages is a great source of ideas for these types of games and hands-on learning activities.
6. Read BLTE: Prescribed reading for all homeschooling parents should be the book Better Late Than Early by Raymond and Dorothy Moore. Multi-disciplinary research showed that children who begin their formal education later, learn more quickly and soon reach the level of their peers who began earlier. Even so-called late starters were on a par by about age 12-13.
Let us never miss the true purpose of the “school” side of Homeschooling which is to allow our children to develop at the pace that is right for them, to ignite the love of learning, to motivate them to pursue their interests, to strengthen their characters for the tougher high school years to come and to really and truly give them a living education.
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