Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Tips For Planning a Home School Program

Tips For Planning a Home School Program
By Darin Sewell Platinum Quality Author

Homeschooling is a very rewarding experience for both child and parent. Not only does it allow the parents to have full control over what their child learns it also can bring the family closer together. But before you decide to jump head first into teaching your kids at home you need to be aware that you should first develop a home school program that will help your children learn to the best of their abilities. And also keep in mind that planning a good home school program requires much more then just deciding what time of day to teach certain subjects or how long the school day will be.

Tips for Planning Home School Lessons

The best approach to planning your home school curriculum is to first determine what your children are having trouble with and where improvements need to be made. This information can be found on your child's report card or by talking with their former public school teachers. Once you know what areas your child is lacking in you can build your lesson plan around those subjects. There are many great online sources and stores that can provide you with adequate materials for your lesson plans. Of course you should still cover the subjects they excel at but do not devote as much time to them as you would the ones they find more difficult.

One thing that you will find out as a parent teacher is that your plans may change as the school year goes by. You may find that subjects that were once difficult for your kids are now easy and that they now need help in other areas. That is great thing about homeschooling, you can change the study plans to fit your child. And if you have more then one child you can vary the lesson plans for each of them to ensure they are learning at the best level possible.

Aside from just emphasizing the areas that need improvement you should also present material that your kids find interesting and enjoyable. Being taught material they find easy and enjoyable to learn will help reduce the feelings of anxiety and boredom they may feel when working with difficult material.

As a home school teacher and parent your job will to always evaluate and modify your children's learning experience. By being a responsible parent and taking full advantage of the flexibly the home school offers you are giving your kids a great head start in life.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Home School - Single Parents Can Home School Too

Home School - Single Parents Can Home School Too
By Jan Verhoeff Platinum Quality Author

Are you a single parent with children at home? Education is a primary concern these days, and many parents prefer not to place children in school systems, or occasionally have a reason for withdrawing them. There are alternatives and many parents choose them for solid reasons.

As a parent of pre-teens and teens, it had been a mutual choice to home school before I became a single parent. Afterward, the question of income and time became an issue. But we found solutions. Some of those solutions included working with the children and earning while they were learning.

Unschooling

Unschooling is literally learning how to live as life happens. Children learn by natural consequence to make good choices, learn important information, and study to achieve natural life goals.

Although this option is becoming more and more popular, as a single parent, it was nearly a requirement. I didn't have time to spend hours sitting in front of my children 'teaching' so education became more learning and less teaching. I focused on providing my children ample opportunities to learn and a variety of methods to choose from within a specific curriculum plan developed around our lifestyles.

Three primary methods held out:

1) Incorporate earning and learning.

As they were learning, I took notes, wrote books, and taught them as while creating educational tools for other students. After one particular trip became a project learning opportunity for a group of home school students, a large need for project planners and targeted educational programs became apparent. Those sold well. Families saved time and paid for the project planners.

2) Hire the kids for training and employee benefits.

A tax break too? When a teenager picked up the slack after a secretary took a hike one Tax Season, she was paid her for her efforts. She got so good at data entry, filing, and answering the phone that she stayed on permanently. In the fall, she asked to take the training to work as a tax consultant. She's one of the best tax preparers, on staff 3 months of the year, and working now with her own clients. She's had clients for 2 years, and is looking forward to another year of commissions.

If you pay your children for doing the same job you would pay an outside employee to do, their wages are deductible. (Be sure you pay their income tax and social security just as you would any other employee. If they choose to operate as an independent business help them with Schedule C records.)

3) Encourage active learning of life skills.

Besides knowing the basics of how to find information required during the normal course of living, it's important to have basic life skills. These are often not taught, but rather experienced as part of life. Children learn by actually living. For instance: on a trip, they might help care for vehicles, read the map, manage travel arrangements, and help make choices of costs and budget on the trip. In the home, they would help with preparation and clean up, budget and spending, home maintenance and care. As part of a family, they would participate in self care, child care, and care of invalid or elderly family members.

As a parent in this educational choice, you would offer opportunities to learn history, math, science, and English or language arts by encouraging your children to participate in political discussions, construction projects, and other educational opportunities. These would all be incorporated into daily activities and events. For instance: attending a Political Rally might include discussion about history, and an opportunity to write a letter to politicians.

A teenaged boy expanded his interests to writing and currently shares his experiences in a

Unschooling offers an opportunity to teach children alternative methods of earning income, learning, and developing skills in leadership and other life required abilities.

Web log. His published books are sold both locally and online.

Learn Brand Recognition with a Free Subscription to The Branding Iron at http://brandyourmarket.com and a host of other FREE ebooks, reports, and information. Jan Verhoeff provides informative blog posts and updates, frequently.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Home Schooling - The Best Choice!

You Control the Environment

The major advantage to home schooling is that you control the environment. You choose the curriculum, you choose the pace. If your child is slow to understanding a concept, you have the freedom to allow the extra time your child needs to completely understand the topic. There just isn’t this level of individualism in public school. Public school is equally hard on the under achiever who feels lost when the rest of the class moves on and for the over achiever who is bored because they grasped the concept long before the rest of the class. At home you can vary the pace to give both types of students the freedom they need to succeed.

Most public schools are overcrowded with 30 or more students in a classroom. The shear level of noise and commotion with this many students in one room makes learning difficult. With home schooling, you control the noise level and can limit the number of interruptions in your child’s day.

Many parents are opting for a Christian home schooling curriculum to reinforce their values and morals. Public schools cannot teach religion and may not teach the moral values that are important to you. At home, you get to decide when to discuss sex education with your child in a private setting. In public school, sex ed is often taught in phy-ed or health class in a large group setting with lots of snickering and embarrassing comments. ‘One size fits all’ sex ed. Are your values being taught? Probably not.

Home schooling is a great answer for parents who want a stronger math or science background for their child. Whatever it is you want your child to learn, there is curriculum available that the home school experience can provide. Many students learn best with tactile, hands on learning. Most public schools do not have the funds to provide hands on learning to children. Through home schooling programs, you can tailor your program to fit your child’s style of learning.

These are just the beginning of the benefits that a home schooling program can offer your child!

We developed http://www.Help-For-Home-School-Moms.info and http://www.Home-School-101.info to give parents ideas to help with home schooling their most valuable asset - their kids! Please remember to bookmark our site. Thanks for visiting!

Five Advantages of Home Schooling for Your Kids

Home schooling is now a common option to most families. There are various reasons why parents prefer home schooling for their children. In home schooling, the parents or guardians are the teachers. They can adapt the best curriculum that will fit their children's needs.

Here are some of the advantages of home schooling:

1. The children get more attention. Since it is usually one on one, your child will have all the attention he needs in order to learn. If he has questions, you can easily respond to him. And you will easily find out if he understands fully well what you are teaching him.

2. Your schedule is more flexible. You can spend more time with your child and you can adjust the time you spend for each subject. If your child is having a hard time understanding Science, you can fine-tune your schedule and spend more time on it. You can take some time off on subjects that he is better at.

3. You get to personally instill values, religion and philosophy on your children. Home schooling reinforces foundation built by parents when the kids are younger. If the children's principles are continuously strengthened, it would be difficult for him to deviate away from it, more so if he is living it.

Children's development is greatly influenced by the environment he lives in. If he sees these convictions in action daily, then he will most likely incorporate it in his adult life later.

4. More time is spent with the family. Family activities will no longer depend on when the school ends or when the kids finish their projects. They can plan it out every time dad gets a break from work so they can have more time together at home. You can plan for an activity that will involve the rest of the family members.

5. You are sure that your children are treated well. One of the biggest challenges in traditional school setting is if your child is being bullied by other children. There are times when kids have difficulty fitting in. Through home schooling, you will be sure that he is safe. You can guide your child to develop his full potential without pressuring him to prove himself to others.

There are a lot of benefits that home schooling can offer. If you feel that this is the best option for your child, then look for the best curriculum that will address his needs, definitely you can give your child good education through home schooling.

Ace Smith is a prolific writer touching base on topics like Technology, Travel,Health and others. For more information you can drop by his web sites that deals with: Sex Diseases, Money with Blog and Cell Phone / Telecom News.

The Many Benefits of Home Schooling - 3 Reasons Why Home Schooling is Better

For parents, the choice of teaching your child at home is becoming an increasingly popular one. Although it is going to take a lot of work on your part to make sure that things go smoothly, there are some benefits of home schooling that will make it all worth your while. Here are three different reasons why teaching a child at home is better than allowing them to go through with the mainstream schooling.

Environmental Reasons - One of the main reasons that people decide to teach their children at home is because of the environment that exists in many school systems. It is difficult enough to raise a child to be a balanced adult without the influence of other children whose parents may not share the same ideals as you.

Lack of Supervision - Another thing that is difficult for the school systems in general to monitor is the behavior of the children. Since one adult is generally responsible for a large group of children, they can be difficult for them to keep a handle on the situation. One of the benefits of home schooling is that you are able to supervise the situation and to control it to the extent that it is possible for you to do so.

Custom Tailored - One more of the benefits of home schooling your children is that you can custom tailor the curriculum to the child. This will help to reduce boredom, especially when it comes to subjects that your child may excel in. Since you will not have to stick with the rest of the group, you are free to move along as quickly as you desire.

How Does Home Schooling Work?

Getting involved in a home schooling plan is not complicated as you might have guessed. You need not have to pass through a series of activities to help troubled children. In addition, home schooling is an extremely essential method of the development of a child upbringing. Take care of a few steps to provide the best for shaping up a child career and life. It can be done with proper and careful planning and a clear understanding of today needs and requirements of a child. With a little alertness, you can create a growing home school curriculum very easily.

Many home schooling curriculum involve parents as a major part of the whole study process. It requires the help of a parent or any elder at home to assist the child go through the learning of chapters and help them with getting its adequate meaning and concepts. Often parents feel it a bit challenging to prepare learning strategies for their child to give him or her model of absolute growth. Home schooling skills helps you to understand the difficulties of students and helps you formulates effective solutions for this. Thus, by creating a daily schedule of learning on the weekly and monthly basis for future learning goals is always the first step.

Home Schooling Must be Entertaining

One of the success formulas for this whole process would be making it really entertaining and enjoyable so that a child would not get bored. A parent in assistance with a tutor can chalk out plans for integrating activities such as artwork, stories and hands-on training with a touch of different subjects in it. For example, if you like to provide knowledge of science, as a parent you need to discuss its usage practically. You can take you child to a nearby science museum and enjoy your time with the child.

The aforementioned article has been contributed by the webmaster of orbitutors.com. An online tutor database where you can find a tutor as well as search tutor for all subjects in your local area.

Home Schooling Education

A home schooling education is a prized asset to anyone's background. It demonstrates independent work completed in a timely manner, often reflecting an education well above the average education level of that from a public or private school.

A home schooling education most often involves well thought out planning and instruction from a loving parent or guardian who's gently guided the child through many series of targeted lessons. The lessons have covered in-depth information on not only main topics of focus as required by the local laws by often much more advanced training with onsite visits at local industry establishments and interviews with their company workers as part of the lessons.

The more customized and in-depth lessons learned by those with home schooling education provide a much more well-rounded real-life education for after high school years. While their peers from public and private schools battle learning good independent life skills, work and study habits, their home schooling peers already excel in those areas, for example.

The child's home schooling education has included plenty of socialization within peers groups of other home schooled children and children who attend their local churches, on average. Plus home schooling education means an average of 3 children or more per household, so others to play with, plus neighborhood children, library groups, etc.

Grades, maturity levels and college work / study habits of those who have had a home schooling education are on the whole at more advanced levels than those of their peers in public and private schools. Those educated at home with a more Christian approach, especially, tend to not have dealt with the negative issues like early sexual activity and pregnancy, substance abuse, neglect, abuse, etc. as witnessed in their public and private school peers. And those with a home schooling education are accepted more often in universities and colleges, often having had scholarships offered, too.

While public and private schools have time-tables for sessions, breaks, months to complete lessons, etc., home schooling education offers a much more flexible training program. It can go with families when they travel, take breaks, are transferred for work / military or other reasons. And home schooling education offers much more flexibility with materials; books, online learning, non-violent materials, Christian materials with incorporated religious training and daily activities, etc.

In summary, a home schooling education can offer a very valuable asset. Anyone interested in giving their child or children a head start in life, a solid foundation for learning and growing should delve further into the subject.

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