Caveat Before Beginning
With the recent actions within this time of the Plandemic of public educators and the refusal of the past social contract of educating our youth, it is coming more and more clear that we will need to have systems in place for us to do the educating and guide the expansion of the minds of rising generations knowledge and wisdom.
Now this isn’t necessarily a new thing, although it hasn’t been a thing for at least 3, maybe 4 generations. Just over 100 years ago it was commonplace to be the main source of your child’s education. Although it was thru the industrial revolution they were dealing with things and not the digital revolution – in some respects we, who seek to Homeschool or Teach our Children at Home, have a better circumstance than was available in ages past.
Now, I must say at this point, I do not have any kids who are in school. They have all already graduated high school and started to move into the careers they want to pursue. Moreover, I see a very real possibility that as I get older I will need to be able to accommodate the learning of my grandchildren into my daily pursuits once they come along and seek to expand their horizons.
And as socialistic indoctrination has seeped down even to the pre-school level of education over the last 70 years, the need for liberty loving people to take up this banner so that education, critical thinking and problem solving can be the norm instead of the counterfeit of writ, rote and regurgitation of soul damning principles taught for them to remain sheeple in a society of those questing for power and dominion over their fellowman.
10. Search, Read, Gather and Repeat
As you begin this crucial calling of teaching your children more formally as any of our parents or grandparents ever did, you need to know what the requirements are for the advancement from grade level to grade level on to the eventual graduation. In fact, search out and know what colleges and universities will require your child to accomplish, know and pass to be eligible for educational advancement. This is where we have the advantage now, with the Internet we can find out the generally accepted points that will make the further educational pursuits your then grown child will be able to have access.
At this point, with another round of “remote learning” being forced upon the both of you, you are just wondering how you are getting by the next month. If you really are able to grasp ahold of the opportunity you now have to guide your child, eradicate all the bad habits of lethargy and boredom that plague and are instilled in the young mind, and get them actively and excitedly moving thru their general requirements and learning the extras that are needed for real life; then you will go thru a bit of growing pains it takes to get true education back on track.
But don’t read any “This is the way to teach your child” books. You’ll end up confused and convinced that you can’t do it. Instead, brush up on the lots of books on world history, philosophy, religion, biology, psychology, literature, and other topics. If you don’t know where to start, go to the library and look up all the children’s books on the subject in which you’re interested. The children’s books will give you an overview, with easy-to-understand explanations that provide a base for more advanced learning.
Gather the resources, the library (electronic or hardcopy) that can facilitate all they want to pursue and learn about. Get them away from the treading water mindset that current public schools promote and help them to realize they can learn, and apply what they want in all that they need to study. They can move thru it all as slowly or as quickly as they want to.
9. Recruit your kid for what he wants to learn
Get your child as an active participant in this education process. Find out what they are curious about, even beyond how to beat the latest video game. What have they wondered about and wanted to understand more? What line of work they are interested in presently? What extra-curricular activities gets them motivated? Horses, swords (metalwork), languages, sports, chemical reactions, what mathematical equations describe what is around them, why people do things they do, or how are things put together can all be those things that can get them moving to what they feel is a “life calling” but also would get them as the ‘carrot on the stick’ motivation to move thru the less liked educational requirements.
Help them realize there is no more of a box that they are confined to, that they can get on that horse or start blacksmithing their sword, or the myriad of all the other interests they may have as long as they are able to get these minimum requirements done. Assist them to dream now, not when they are “done with school”.
8. Relax: You don’t have to be the Sage on the Stage, but the Guide on the Side
Say the word “school” out loud. What’s the scenario that comes to mind? Desks. Chalk dust. bullies plotting against you. Teacher up front, lecturing uninterested students. Lockers slamming. Bells ringing. Boring. sleeping inducing and drool pools accumulating.
Having “School-at-home” is an image and a term that needs to be discarded as you would a used tissue. Ditch it for the right connotation of “homeschooling.” You don’t have to know everything and teach it the way they do at your local elementary or middle school. Rid yourself of the idea that having school means sitting at a desk in a stuffy room, taking notes for six hours a day while you lecture endlessly about history, biology, algebra, and Chinese.
If you truly want to educate your child, use every opportunity to be a learning one. When you homeschool, the emphasis is on the word “home.” Sitting on the lounge chair while the both of you do math problems, or as you concentrate on learning the vocabulary. But it doesn’t have to be limited to home either! They can studying insect life under the rocks in the garden, or the field trips you can take asking questions in the car on the way to the library, art gallery, or museum, reading historical biographies instead of dry, skewed, history textbooks, and writing papers about the words of Longfellow, Cary and Burke. Go learn about internal combustion engines, or how to take care of their favorite animal. It is also playing with their brothers and sisters and like minded friends at “recess”, and wearing what they like to wear, not what the group says is “in style.” You don’t have to be the teacher all the time, but search for those moments that can be memorable and educational to the young minds in your care.
Allow others who have specialties in other subjects also depart their knowledge. There is no way you can know about everything you need to in what is required from learning institutions. But you know someone else who may know more about physics and how they can be applied. You may know another who knows how to work leather and get it to a place that can be used for clothes. You may yet know someone else who is an expert with finances and have shown they can part with their morsels of info to others. And if you don’t know anyone, then it is a good excuse to get out of your own comfort zone and making more friends.
7. Tailor the program to fit your child’s learning style
What kinds of activities does your child enjoy most? What can be done in place of that which they dislike that will fulfill the requirement of the subject at hand?? Does she count with Legos, love to finger-paint and use modeling clay,? Does he enjoy being in the middle of a garden plot build, or help feed their favorite barn animals while listening to podcasts and books? How does your child like to learn?
People learn in all three ways: kinesthetic (by touching and handling things), auditory (by listening), and visual (including reading). Of course, children learn through all their senses, unless they’re physically or mentally unable. However, since everyone tends to lean to one specific learning style, you can increase your child’s learning enjoyment by adapting the curriculum to fit their style and choice. And that is not anything public education could even attempt to do.
Materials good for visual learners are workbooks, flash cards, matching games, instruction books, and charts. Good materials for auditory learners are verbal explanations, podcasts, (recorded books), educational songs and rhymes, and rhythm instruments (for music class). For kinesthetic learners, try nature walks, model kits, gardening, puzzles, and keyboarding instead of writing (faster and less frustrating).
Knowing and leaning towards your child’s learning style is especially helpful when you have to work through some of those sticky problems of math, English and science. For a visual learner, try working out the problem on paper. An auditory learner may need only to have the problem read aloud. And a kinesthetic learner may need concrete objects (toothpicks, buttons) to stand in for the factors.
6. Don’t limit it to just one way
Get the materials and the resources that are apt to do the job is always a great way to do business, and live. When it comes to education, it is also the same way. Education is at least as important as the amount you spent on Christmas last year, or on a trip to Disney World. Utilize funds for the equipment you get for educational purposes (computers, books, learning materials, etc.) and optimize their use in multiple ways. If you set aside a specified amount for home school supplies at the beginning of the school year, you’ll feel freer to buy that set of art prints or those German language tapes than if you have to dip into the family budget.
Caution: Don’t buy anything you can’t return. Ideally, you should have your hands on the book or program before you pay for it. There are plenty of sources online that can help you with the grade level curriculum in the homeschooling category. Ask yourself: Is this simple to use? Will this appeal to my kids? Does it appeal to me? (If it isn’t simple and/or appealing, you’ll use it for two or three weeks and then stash it in the closet, where it will haunt you forever.)
Also don’t limit the teaching to just you! Beyond what we mentioned above you can spread the love with your spouse. As time and capacity permits, give times and subjects to your significant other to work with your child. Now, if you are a single parent, then we can understand taking on this as well as everything else, but if you are in a committed relationship, it is good for your child to see it can come from the both of you and not just the “head teacher”.
5. Write out your homeschooling educational goals for each subject
Why do you want to teach your own children? Beyond it being “forced upon you” by present circumstances, what do you hope to accomplish in each subject? Do you want to ensure their religious training, academic achievement, individuality, continuance of family/ethnic traditions? When the push comes to shove, you’ll need to have written-out reasons for taking on this more-than-full-time job, so you can read them often. That way, you’ll remember why you are doing what you are doing.
Educational goals should focus on outcomes. What do you want your child to be able to do as a result of having been taught this material? The educational goals should also include mathematical skills, perseverance, intellectual curiosity, physical and mental health fitness, and more. Your list of goals should cover those areas which are important to you and your family.
4. Sometimes it’s not fun
Nothing in life is fun all the time. And this also goes for the homeschooling efforts too. There will be times when you or they don’t want to slog thru it all. But that is the beauty of this situation, you can switch things up a bit and get out of the rut that you may find yourselves in. Unfortunately, sometimes you just have to push through the hard parts in order to make way for the good.
Face it, some things are just not fun all the time. However, they just have to be done. This is a lesson kids need to learn before they enter adulthood and have to write an annual report, cook dinner every evening, or stay up until 2 a.m. to meet a deadline.
3. Don’t be easy to throw in the towel
Going with this type of education solution for homeschooling your kids could not do any more harm than what has been happening with these calls for remote learning with public educators. The main difference, one would think beyond your time and efforts to prepare for the lessons, that the pubic educator has 30+ kids they have to try to keep track of remotely versus you having to guide your brood of one or more children. One year of home education will not irrevocably harm your child, even if the only “schooling” you do is reading lots of books. On the other hand, after a year, you should be able to tell if home education has been a success for you and your kids.
Be generous in your judgment of “success.” Maybe your family has suffered a financial setback, death, illness, childbirth, or the like (in other words, normal life), and you’ve all had to pitch in to make it through tough times. In that case, “success” may mean a closer relationship between parents and children, and perhaps a talent discovered in carpentry, nursing, or clothing design. These family lessons are priceless and can only be taught at home, not in a public or private school setting.
2. Give life skills equal status with academic skills
Educating your kids can take any forms. Beyond cracking open a book and thumbing thru pages a lesson can be learned when doing things in everyday life. Maintaining a car, calculating the nutritional values of certain food used for a meal. Helping to build a geodesic dome, smoking meats and the list could go on and on – These are life skills and, while we may think they don’t take a lot of brain power, life skills will most likely mean the difference between your child’s future independence or his ineptitude to handle what life throw his way. All that happens in life can have a direct educational application and vice versa… well almost everything (who uses what they learned in Algebra?).
Make a list of life skills you’d like your kids to know before they leave your tender care. Teaching these skills not only helps the family now, but ensures that your kids will be able to take care of themselves later in any environment they find themselves in.
1. Lastly, enjoy the ride
Beyond the rigid requirements, this is a chance for you to not only refresh what you learned so long ago, but also take on new aspects of it all. Perhaps you didn’t appreciate the skills needed for Industrial Arts, or in your keyboarding class. Heck, who took their art class seriously? Allow this time to be a chance to visit some of the things you ay have skipped over the first time, when worrying about zits and who you wanted to date in study hall predominated your attention and focus.
Who says school is for kids only? Now’s your chance to listen to all the works of Franz Liszt, delve deeper into the economic factors of your local real estate industry or which types of wood work best for smoking a turkey for those special occasions. There’s no limit to what you and your kids can learn when you have the freedom that home education brings.
Overall TakeAway
We here at ThatAquaponicsGuy are all about education. Many of the items we have in our How-To Videos and our life hacks section are geared towards that educational factor. Feel free to reference us in the future for lesson ideas and actual teaching of the knowledge of our ancestors had that we have lost over the last few generations. Don’t squander the time or opportunity to have your children learn the best this life has to offer.
