Educating Today

When you homeschool, you are learning every minute of the day no matter where you are. Learning will take place at the dinner table, in the living room, in the backyard,at the park, at the grocery store,etc. If you do have a school room, that can work too.

If your attitude and motives are good, learning will happen anywhere you are, including the school room. Don’t believe that learning can only happen in the school room. Don’t limit your children or yourself. Location is not necessarily the key.

The important key to successful homeschooling is the parent’s attitude as well as consistency. Your attitude and your habit of consistency will rub off on your children.

Certainly one-on-one tutoring is far superior to the classroom approach. Yes, your children will get a personalized education, but that does not mean they will be geniuses. Some students may struggle academically, even if they are homeschooled, but the good news is that with the low student to teacher ratio, your homeschooled students have a great opportunity to be successful.

Getting a quality education is very important, but even more important is the opportunity you have to develop a good, healthy relationship with your children that will last a lifetime. You also have the freedom to choose subjects that your children are interesting in learning. Beyond the basics of reading, writing and math, just think of all the different topics you and your children have to choose from.

Your job is not to teach them everything they will ever need to know. Your job is to help them develop a love of learning, to teach them how to study and to inspire them to be self-directed learners.

Don’t idealize home schooling. Home education is a wonderful plan–I believe it’s a God-given plan, but no situation is always perfect because we’re human. This period in your children’s lives is for their development, but it’s also for your development and growth.

A speaker at the first homeschool seminar  that our family attended said that he believed that one of the reasons God was drawing families to homeschool was to “grow the parents up.”  Boy, is that true. If you allow God to guide and direct your homeschool, you will be placing the lives and plans of your children into His hand, and there is no better place for them to be.

Enjoy the adventure.

When children get to junior high and high school age, many home school parents fear they are not qualified to teach those grade levels. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you believe God has called you to homeschool your children, why would He abandon you when you are nearing the home stretch. Precisely! He won’t.

Many, many families have successfully homeschooled through high school (including our family). This is exactly the time when you want to be involved in your children’s lives. This is when they start growing into their own faith in God.
You want to be available to answer questions when they come up, you want to be there when your child has to learn to make some difficult decisions and take a stand for what he believes in.

This is the time of life when he starts to make his own social contacts. It’s that time when they sometimes act like a child and sometimes like an adult. Remember that difficult time in your own life? Teenagers are not mentioned in the Bible. There were children and adults. The teenage mentality is a modern creation that your kids do not have to develop. They don’t have to fall for the false teachings of the teenage lifestyle and neither do you.

Spiritually and philosophically, you have every reason in the world to continue your home schooling adventure through the high school years. Academically, you have many, many tools, curricula, mentors, and tutors available to help you. Ask God to guide your steps and put you in contact with the tools and people who will be a positive influence in your young people’s lives.

Be flexible. You don’t have to have every detail of their high school career carved in stone. Allow God to work in the life of your child. He may bring someone or something into that child’s life that you never even considered.

God is faithful, dependable and He has never let you down yet, has He!

The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students.
- Prof. Benjamin Bloom,father of OBE (Outcome Based Education)

Think about that.

10. It’s very difficult to home school through high school.
9. All homeschooled children will be brilliant and accomplished.
8. Every homeschooling family needs to have a school room.
7. Parents are not qualified to educate their children.
6. If you homeschool through high school, your children will have gaps in their education.
5. There is a perfect curriculum. You just haven’t found it yet.
4. Your child must do every single exercise in every single textbook.
3. Your close friends and family will be your biggest homeschool supporters.
2. If you homeschool, your children will not be able to adjust to the “real world.”
1. Homeschooling will solve all your problems.

“If there is anything in my thoughts or style to commend, the credit is due to my parents for instilling in me an early love of the Scriptures.
If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper.”

–Daniel Webster