Everybody can homeschool
I have written on this blog a few times about homeschooling and a number of people had emailed me to voice about their concerns and the possible cons of homeschooling. I haven’t had any posts explaining the basics of homeschooling, where to go for more online resources, or how to find the legalities of homeschooling for where you live. This was brought home to me when a 15 years old boy asked me last week how could he get started with homeschooling.
For a 15 years old boy who has a few more years to go in the public school system before going to college, homeschooling is about taking the route of self-education. It’s not about buying the most expensive curriculum or passively waiting for a “teacher” to spoon feed him. He can take on a program for independent study through a local homeschooling chapter. In these programs, students usually meet with a teacher several times a week and the center would provide the materials. While this is not true “homeschooling,” it may meet his needs and satisfy his parents. In fact, a few good books and some educational software could cover almost everything.
What is Homeschooling?
Homeschooling is basically is parent directed instead of institutionalized education. This can occur in the kitchen of a home or at other locations in a home, for example a spare bedroom, the garage, the basement, or the study room. Many parents also find ways to teach their children outside of the home i.e. taking lessons, going to the library, going on field trips and visiting museums. In short, parents assume full responsibility in educating their children. The parents may choose to involve others to help, but they are still in charge.
Why do people homeschool?
There are a wide array of reasons why parents may choose not to enroll their children in public schools. However, a majority of parents have chosen to homeschool for one or a mixture of more of the following three basic reasons: school environment, academics and religious or moral.
Many homeschooling parents were concerned about the environment of public schools. The worries ranged from safety, bullies, gangsters to drugs, and so on. Many also homeschool because they are dissatisfied with the academic and education standard at public schools. Some parents choose to homeschool desire to impart their religious or moral instruction at homel. There are also many more other reasons people choose to homeschool i.e. their children have learning difficulties, special needs. Some try to get away from bad public school teachers, some do it because of the father’s work schedule. The reasons can go on, and on.
How to homeschool?
There are just as many ways how people homeschool as in why they homeschool. Some people use a very structured curriculum, other have a more relaxed approach. Some parents pick and choose individual curriculum for each subject. Some might use a particular approach like Montessori, Charlotte Mason and Unschooling . Some parents take a mixed of a few approaches, some are doing school at home, some allow child directed learning. It’s also very often to find parents who use one approach for one child, and another approach for another child. Most families also find their approach changes over time. You would find a diverse demographic of homeschoolers, they are people with different ethnics background, educational levels and financial situation.
If you are interested to become a homeschooler but worry about the financial aspect of it, Here’s how it can be tuition-free! You should never let your financial circumstance deter you from homeschooling, because you can homeschool with tuition free materials through this K-12 Free Homeschool. If you need additional thoughts, resources and information on homeschooling, check this out, you can browse through the K-12FreeHomeschool.org Course Catalog for more information.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Why teach children to read through spelling and writing?
Excerpt from an article published in Newsweek magazine(Oct 22, 2007)
Petitto, for instance, led a 2007 study that settled a decades-long debate over how children learn to spell: does the brain uses the same processes for words you can sound out (”blink”) as for those you can’t (”yacht”)? Brain imaging showed that blink-like words use the brain’s soundprocessing system, while yacht-like words rely on circuits that encode memory and meaning. That suggests “a dual-route model of spelling,” Petitto says. “Knowing this, there’s no way I’d teach a child spelling without phonological information. This is finally evidence that the brain needs that and uses it.”
The new journal, called Mind, Brain, and Education, is full of other fascinating hints. One study found that when children begin forming mental representations of letters, more than the visual sense comes into play. Crucially, the brain’s premotor area, which plans movements, does. That suggests that having children try to write letters at the same time that they’re learning to recognize them might produce what Denes Szucs and Usha Goswami of the University of Cambridge call “a multisensory representation” of letters, and “deepen learning.”
The full article is titled The case for Chutes and Ladders“, written by Sharon Begly. She cited two recently done studies.
1) Laura-Ann Petitto of the University of Toronto’s study of the dualprocessing of the spelling of words - and the need to include phonic instruction for reading.
2) A study published in the new journal of Mind, Brain, and Education by Denes Szucs and Usha Goswami of the University of Cambridge: early readers use the pre-motor part of the brain, so writing instruction is important for reading instruction.
Many asked me if they know the phonetic system of English, can’t they use use what they know to teach their children, why should they use Spell to Write and Read? I would say, SWR doesn’t just teach phonics, it teaches a completely different methodology which employs multi-sensory approach to deepen learning.
And I thought these study conclusions were fun, because those of us who are using SWR are already doing just that. :-)
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Importance of parental involvement
Parents education is considered a very important part of Montessori education. Ideally, before a child to be accepted into a Montessori program, the parents are to be interviewed to ensure their philosophy of education and level of involvement are consistent with what the school desired.
Parents are expected to involve and participate in the educational process of their children in a variety of ways. They can get involved in helping their children improve their schoolwork by providing encouragement, prepared the right environment at home conducive for learning and modeling desired behavior (such as reading for pleasure). Those who do not work outside of home can also serve as classroom volunteers, homework assistance, or involve in decision making and other aspects of school governance.
Children achievement and learning outcomes are positively related to parent involvement in education of their children, the more intensively involve they are, more beneficial are the achievement effects. This hold true for all types of parent involvement and for all ages of students. However, parents differ greatly in their willingness, ability, and available time for involvement in school activities and their children educational process. In order for the parent involvement programs to run successfully, schools need a variety of parental involvement resources, so that they can offer a variety of ways which parents can participate. Schools that can provide a continuum of options for parent participation usually have successful, well organized and long lasting parent participation efforts.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)Teaching penmanship using large motor skills part 3
You want to check out part 1 and part 2 before you proceed.
We started with the clock letters, writing on the floor using chalks.
We started with him tracing my writing and says the movement as he swings his arm i.e. “Start from the base line, go to 2 O’clock, turn back and then put a connector” for cursive a.
Once he is able to trace smoothly, he would write on his own by chanting the same as above.
Do it on blackboard with lines.
Children don’t automatically know where to start the letters, so it’s important to teach the placement and position of the letters.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Teaching penmanship using large motor skills part 2
You may want to read the Part 1 of this write-up before you continue with part 2.
The boy is 6 years old, his small muscle is quite well developed and has good pencil control. So, we dived straight into training him to write using the big muscle. (If you are training younger children who have not developed good pencil grip and control, you may want to start some Practical Life Exercises for small muscle control and pencil grip.)
We have the 26 letters divided into 4 groups, according how the letters are formed. (We did cursive, but you can do the same for prints)
The clock letters :
The loop letters:
The uphill letters :
The hump letters:
Teaching penmanship using large motor skills part 1
It took me a while to write this up because I wanted to take pictures of this 6 years old boy that I have started tutoring in September 2007. He is going to be the case study of how you can train penmanship using large motor skills.
(I did not show the child this sheet, some of you who knows Montessori well enough would know it’s not Montessori to “mark” the sheet or “correct” the answers.)
He has been to preschool since 3 years old, he cannot read and the above is what he had written down when I dictated 20 out of the 26 letter names. So, his problem is much more serious than the normal uncertainty of whether there are two or one “f” in Differin.
You would have expected most children to know how to write out the 26 letters from memory (without looking) since they have been writing don’t know how many worksheets. You will be surprised. It is quite common for children who have written hundred pages of handwriting practices and could not write a-z from memory. One of the things that went wrong was: the children were just copying the letters as pictures and there were no muscle memory and automaticity.
We want to train their muscles to remember because if they spend too much time trying to recall the picture memory of the letters, they would end up spending all their energy on that and none left to remember what they are writing.
Filed under Learning problem, Pre Writing Exercises, penmanship | Comment (0)Disclosure
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