Many parents are choosing to homeschool their children, whether to have more control over their child’s education, to have a more flexible lifestyle or because it suits their family better. If you want to start homeschooling your child, use these tips and tricks to help you get started.
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Stick To A Routine
Keeping to a routine will prove invaluable when you start homeschooling. Your routine should include some breaks where you can plan some fun things to do with your children. Try to keep the structure of your days in line with a traditional school timetable as much as you can, even if you aren’t using the time for academic studies.
Let Children Learn At Their Own Pace
It’s best if your child has some control over their timetable. The luxury of homeschooling is that children who understand a concept more quickly aren’t held back, and those who need more time will have a chance to fully understand their work, with support from tools like Soapbox Educate.
Make Your Child The Teacher
Letting children teach stops the learning process from becoming boring and helps to keep them interested in their studies.
One of the best ways to do this is to find the national curriculum online and go to a specific topic that your children need to study. Compile the resources that they will need and ask them to go away for an hour and write notes and draw pictures related to the topic. Once they have done this, ask them to come back, and present what they learned to you.
The benefits of this are that they will get a sense of achievement, and will retain the information without learning in a traditional manner.
Show An Interest In Your Child’s Work
Take an interest in what your child is studying. If parents engage with topics and tasks, this will inspire children to work harder.
Keep Active
Making sure that both of you and your kids spend some time exercising is a great way to keep you feeling motivated and productive. If you don’t have access to an outside space, there are plenty of exercises that you can find online that you can do indoors. Try out the YouTuber Joe Wicks, who has lots of online PE classes, designed for kids of all ages.
Have An Outside Person To Mark Your Child’s Work
Ask someone who isn’t a family member to look over your child’s work. At school, your child would get structured courses with regular assignments marked by a tutor, which encourages them to do their best work and gives an unbiased and experienced guide to progress.
Limit Screen Time
It’s a good idea to set ground rules early on for children about how much time they are allowed in front of a screen. Try to avoid letting your kids spend all day on their phones or laptops, especially if they are looking at social media, as this can fuel feelings of isolation and anxiety.