EDUCATION GUIDE

Education guide – The right time to introduce your child to home schooling seems to be in the elementary years. Those children who get started with elementary home schooling seem to be the ones who get the most benefit from it.

Children schooled at home succeed academically at greater rates in relation to national rates of success. Those who are home schooled from an early age often end up significantly advanced in comparison to children in regular school. Elementary home schooling allows families with young children to take advantage of the full range of educational benefits of home schooling.

If your child is in elementary school and you want to try home schooling, you have to test your child to see what their current grade level is. You can do this online and it will target your child’s weaknesses and their strengths. Then you would use this information to figure out the curriculum and method to which you will use while home schooling.

Home schooling comes with a choice of a variety of curriculums. These concentrate on the requirements of your child. A wide spectrum of coursework marks the elementary levels. You may have to consider the regulations of your state while choosing a program. Of course, your main objective remains your estimation as to your child’s requirements.

Homeschooling families are often interested in specific courses such as Christian education or advanced literature. Because there are a variety of home school programs, it is important to examine several before making a decision. Knowing what the different programs contain and what teaching methods they use will insure you get the program most suited to you.

Starting with elementary home schooling seems deliver the most benefit for home schooled children. It is very rewarding for both parent and child to stay at home working together to accomplish an education designed for their unique needs and interests. Both can discover all the value that home schooling has to offer.

It will be much easier than you expected once you start preparing for your elementary home schooling curriculum. You will need to get a set of guidebooks which will prepare you to become and expert in elementary home schooling.

If part of your home schooling program is to teach your children a second language then Spanish is probably the most practical choice as it is effectively the second language in the US and is one of the most diversely spoken languages in the world. Teaching children a second language is also thought to improve their general academic performance too. Give them that important head start they need in an increasingly competitive world.

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Educational theorists, from philosophers like Socrates and Rousseau to researchers like Howard Gardner today, have addressed theories of learning. Many of their ideas continue to influence homeschoolers as well as traditional educators. A little familiarity with some of the ideas most popular among homeschoolers will help you make sense of the wealth of available materials when you begin to make choices for your family.

Jean Piaget and Cognitive Development

He proposed that children go through several distinct stages of cognitive growth. First comes the sensorimotor stage (birth to two years), during which the child learns primarily through sensation and movement. At the pre-operational stage (ages two to seven), children begin to master symbols such as language and start to be able to form hypotheses based on past experiences. At the concrete operational stage (ages seven to eleven), children learn to generalize from one situation to similar ones, although such reasoning is usually limited to their own concrete experience.

Finally, at the formal operational stage (eleven years older), children can deal with abstractions, form hypothesis and engage freely in mental speculation. Although the rate at which children progress through the stages varies considerably, the sequence of stages is consistent for all children.

Therefore, to be appropriate and effective, learning activities should be tailored to the cognitive level of the child.

Rudolf Steiner and the Waldorf Schools

Steiner divided children’s development into three stages: to age seven, children learn primarily by imitation; from seven to fourteen, feelings and emotions predominate; and after age fourteen, the development of independent reasoning skills becomes important. Waldorf education tends to emphasize arts and crafts, music, and movement, especially at younger ages, and textbooks are eschewed in favor of books the students make for themselves. Waldorf theories also maintain that the emphasis should be on developing the individual’s self-awareness and judgment, sheltered from political and economic aspects of society until well into adolescence.

Montessori and the Prepared Environment

Italian physician Maria Montessori’s work emphasized the idea of the prepared environment: Provide the proper surroundings and tools, so that children can develop their full potential. Montessori materials are carefully selected, designed to help children learn to function in their cultures and to become independent and competent. Emphasis is on beauty and quality, and that which confuses or clutters is avoided: Manipulative are made of wood rather than plastic tools are simple and functional, and television and computers are discouraged.

Charlotte Mason: Guiding Natural Curiosity

Charlotte Mason was a nineteenth-century educator advocated informal learning during the child’s early year contrast with the Prussian system of regimented learning then in vogue. She recommended nature study to develop both observational skill and an appreciation for the beauty of creation and extended that approach to teaching history geography through travel and study of the environment rather than as collections of data to master. She felt children learn best when instruction takes into account their individual abilities and temperaments, but she emphasized the importance of developing good habits to govern one’s temperament and laying a solid foundation of good moral values.

Holt and Unschooling

Educator John Holt wrote extensively about school reform in the 1960s. Although he originally proposed the word “unschooling” simply as a more satisfactory alternative to “homeschooling.” Unschooling now generally refers to a style of homeschooling, in which learning is not seperated from living, and children learn mainly by following their interests. Children learn best, he argued, not by being taught, but by being a part of the world, free to most interests them, by having their questions answered as they ask them, and by being treated with respect rather than condescension.

Gardner and Multiple Intelligences

Psychologist Howard Gardner argues that intelligence is not a single unitary property and proposes the existence of “multiple intelligences.” He identifies seven types of intelligence: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Because each person has a different mix of these intelligences, learning is best tailored to each individual’s strengths, rather than emphasizing the linguistic and logical-mathematical approaches traditionally used in schools. A bodily kinesthetic learner, for instance, might grasp geometric concepts presented with hands-on manipulative far more easily than she would if they were presented in a more traditionally logical, narrative fashion. A teaching approach that recognizes a variety of learning styles might encourage many individuals now lost by conventional methods.

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