Your child is an individual, and to ensure their child’s homeschooling experience is as effective as possible you will need to do several important things. Read on to find out what they are.
Co-create a routine with your child
Being able to create your own routine that suits your family is one of the many benefits of schooling your child at home. However, you won’t be getting everything out of this that you can unless you involve your child in the process too.
Indeed, involving your child means you can plan breaks for when they get most hungry. It also means you can start and finish the school day in line with your child’s own sleep, and rest routines which can greatly reduce any resistance in getting them up in the morning and into the schoolroom.
Lastly, by involving your child in the scheduling decisions, you will provide them with a sense of agency in their schooling. Something that will help them stay more engaged and take more responsibility and ownership of their learning.
Celebrate the wins, even the small ones
When homeschooling it can be tempting to focus only on what your child needs to improve and learn. However, a big part of successful learning is positive reinforcement or celebrating the wins and achievements they do make.
The best approach here is to “keep success close”, which means instead of always focusing on the bigger issues, looking at the small ways they are succeeding and making progress every day.
To facilitate this, you might even like to create a rewards system with points or stickers ( depending on the age of the child) that they can collect and then trade in for prizes, or time to spend on their own projects.
Create a beautiful learning space
Homeschooling isn’t only about the lessons and learning you provide, but also the space you create in your home in which your child can learn. Indeed, having a separate, well equipped, and aesthetically pleasing learning space can be an exceedingly useful tool for those that home school.
Be sure to include desks and chairs, as well as a whiteboard at the front of the room if possible. Also using ready-made materials like these bulletin board sets can help you create dynamic displays. Thereby enhancing the space, and making it more engaging for your child as they are homeschooled.
Look at life skills too
Lastly, if you want your child’s homeschooling experience to be truly effective you must make sure that you include not only academic skills and subjects, but practical life skills as well.
What this means is that spending at least some time each week on basics like budgeting, time management, and physical, mental and emotional wellbeing is a good idea.
Socialization is also a big issue for lots of kids that are homeschooled, so joining an organization IRL or online that allows kids and parents to meet up and do group work is a great way to make sure that every aspect of your child’s social education is covered as they are homeschooled.
