What now?

You might be wondering what to do next if you have just pulled your child to home school. Don’t worry, even those of us who have been home schooling for a while sometimes have to hit the reset button about this time of year.
What we need to do, both new homeschoolers and veteran homeschoolers alike, is decide what works for our children, and what doesn’t. One way to help figure that out is to figure out your child’s learning style. Oddly enough, you may not know what your child’s learning style is if they have been in traditional school up until this point.
My child is a visual learner, but she is not limited to one learning style, oh no! Lucky me, she is a complicated sort of child who learns some things only by listening, some things by seeing it done, some things by actually doing whatever it is she is trying to learn. Take a little time and figure out what your child’s learning style is, compare that to how well they did last semester. Then, consider if you should continue the type of curriculum he was using last semester, of if things need changing. Once you have figured that out, get ready to home school!

Happy New Year

Welcome to the New Year! For some of you it is back to home schooling, for others, you are just jumping in, taking that leap of faith. You would be surprised to know that plenty of people decide to pull their children out of the traditional school setting and start to home school at the beginning of the calendar year.
Part of the reason for this is that there is a considerable break in most school systems for the Christmas holiday. Exams usually happen mid-December, report cards are probably going to be coming out right as the kids go back to school. And many parents have reached the end of their rope by now.
Another thing that happens is that parents often realize that they like the child that has been out of school for a couple of weeks. They find that the child is more relaxed, the parents are more relaxed, and the family as a whole functions better without the stress of the daily school adventure. This is understandable because regardless of the age of your child, being away from parental influences for eight to ten hours a day is detrimental to the family dynamic.