The Nitty Gritty

Even in states where subjects and material is controlled by the governing authority, you decide how and when to let your child learn. That's what this week's lesson is all about.

I've mentioned it before and you'll probably hear it again -- home schooling is not about teaching -- it's about learning. And there is a huge difference between the two. The curriculum is where you get to find the best way for your child to learn. You'll find that most publishers offer what they call Scope & Sequence, a list of the topics and objectives covered in a curriculum. This is just one tool you'll use to find what's best for you.

Your reading in the text covers many options quite well, so I won't repeat that information here. Here, I want to encourage you to look around, evaluate and try different approaches. Change what you're doing when it doesn't work and watch for signs of learning instead of counting worksheets, book reports and days of school to see how it's working.

Look for Ways They Love to Learn

During my childhood years, I loved to do worksheets. Filling in every little blank, page after page -- to complete a workbook was a true delight. I'd color each picture, answer each question and enjoy myself thoroughly. So, it seemed quite reasonable to me that my son should enjoy the same.

I was horrified to find that he hates worksheets. He'd prefer to punch holes in them with pencils than do them! He doesn't want to complete a book, fill in a blank or even write his name neatly on the cover. This was unnerving to me. I was devastated, plus I'd gone out and bought a lot of workbooks...

What I have found is that he loves to write with dry erase markers and when I discovered a wonderful clear clipboard, called the Trace Erase Board, designed to put a paper inside and then write with dry erase markers on the front -- he liked that. So...when we have a need to do a worksheet (and sometimes that is the thing I want him to do) we put it in this clipboard and he has a great time filling in the blanks and then making his fingers black when he erases the marks.

As you start to spend more time with your children, you'll find that you'll see things about them you didn't know. When I first took my son out of school, I observed that his writing was large and rather sloppy. He didn't like to do worksheets, especially math ones, he didn't want to write in a journal (another great idea I had that was a total flop :) and he wouldn't sit still for more than about 5-10 minutes of writing. His teacher had told me that when asked to write stories he had often refused and had one time filled his journal with "blah, blah, blah, blah" line after line. I began to wonder if there was more to all this than just a lack of interest.

We made a visit to the pediatrician who suggested some testing and we found that his fine motor skills were quite a bit behind what was expected for his age. The diagnosis was that the actual task of writing things was difficult -- regardless of the subject matter. Knowing that, we worked on developing those skills, but in the meantime we changed the way we worked.

I showed him flashcards instead of asking him to write the answers to math facts. He dictated story after story to me while I typed them up. I had him point to the right answer on worksheets rather than fill in the blanks and I began to see that knowing the information wasn't the challenge, but rather finding a way for him to easily express the answers.

Children in a classroom won't have the same kind of attention you can give your own children. I'm not trained to recognize learning disabilities in elementary school children nor do I have any particular criteria to judge a child's progress, but I can watch my own child and see that something isn't right. When you need to, there are lots of experts out there available to offer help. Once you find the type of learning that best suits each of your children (and they won't necessarily be all alike!) you've taken the first step to finding your best curriculum.

I've found that some kids like lots of variety and so I'd encourage you to explore variations in teaching material from one subject to the next. But some students like things to be predictable and consistent. They like going through the same process for each subject, knowing exactly what they have to do to complete their work. Even if you don't know just what works best, start with something and see how it goes. If it goes well, keep going. If you need to fine tune, don't hesitate to make a change!

Give Them Time to Love to Learn

If you are taking your children out of a difficult situation at school, or just out of school during the year, they may need some recovery time before you can really judge the successfulness of your curriculum. This is often known as detoxing in home school circles. Detoxing is defined as: the process of purging the poor attitudes and habits of public/private school; the adjustment process for a student coming out of a classroom into a home education setting. Now, I do realize that this makes it sound kind of serious and scary, but you'd be amazed at the difference a little time will make.

Detoxing from school is fun and easy and kids love it. It's hardest on the eager mom ready to home school! Basically, you give your children space and time to enjoy being home -- no school work, no homework, no assignments. Read to them a lot, go to the library and stay there for a little while, do science experiments if they like that kind of thing, let them watch an occasional educational movie, work on a craft or build something, go to the movies if there's something educational playing (National Treasure was a great movie for home schoolers) and look for change in your children.

Generally, the idea is they relax. They learn that being home is okay. They learn that you have time to spend with them. You learn to spend time with your child. There's no right or wrong way to do this, nor no exact amount of time you need to do it. I do strongly caution you to limit TV and computer/video games, at least until after school time. You're setting precedents and building patterns, so think about how you want to do that. We spent about a month or so in the process. It was extremely worthwhile.

If your child has never been to school, or you are starting to home school after a summer, this may not be necessary. Keep in mind that children who have been in school have learned to spend the majority of their days being told what, when, and how to learn. They're beginning a process where they will be discovering new learning patterns and this is a little scary. No need to hurry the process.

We'll move on to our reading and activities so you can dig into the details of curriculum choices.

By the way, if you're interested in the Trace Erase Boards, here's their site. They come designed for all ages and they are great!