Parenting: Parents Can Give a Whole New Dimension to a Home-School
By Mimi Rothschild
The basics of education, like reading, writing and math, take less time than you think. In a home-school, these things can be learned in only about 100 hours as long as the student has an inclination to learn. Let's assume that you do not have much experience as a home-school teacher. Still, it can only take 3 months (300 hours divided by six-hour public school days is 50 school days or ten weeks) for the child to read, write and do simple math with the help of phonic workbooks and computer software.
Public schools take eight to ten years or more of the child's life and yet he is not capable of reading short articles or doing math calculations without a calculator. If you teach your child in a home-school or hire a tutor, you will see that the child ultimately squanders his life in a public school. While in a home-school, he makes fruitful use of the time. In the span of 1100 hours a year that he spends in a public school, less than 25 percent of his time is spent on things which are relevant. The child in home-school spends only two hours a day for seven days a week on basics and important material. Moreover, unlike his public school counterpart, the home-school child has a lot of time on his hands each day to take part in extra-curricular activities like art, history, physical education etc. If a home-school child studies systematically for only two hours per day for the whole year, he can get three times more hours of basics-studying than public school students.
Teaching children for home-school is easy for parents because of the educational resources available to them. You get a lot of home-school books that inform you as to how the child can learn the basics of education quickly. Children of home-school are welcome to study any subject which arouses their interest. They absorb an analytical, rational way of looking at things from a young age. Children at home-school develop a skill of self-studying or researching for information online. You can help your home-school children have access to any online library and learn about various subjects and concepts.
You can supervise the home-school studies of your children and even gauge the areas where they can be improved upon. As a parent, you can make them aware of various subjects and check which subjects catch their fancy. You can accompany them to enjoy a music lesson and make them play and experiment with musical instruments. You can also help your home-school student read books on various subjects. Parents generally should sit and teach their home-school children for three hours. You will then see how your children with their inquisitive minds grasp things rather quickly in a home-school.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, children's rights activist, author, and Founder and C.E.O. of online education company Learning by Grace, Inc. Rothschild and her husband of twenty-eight years reside in suburban Philadelphia with their eight children.
Feeling that “our current system of education has broken its promise,” Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. to provide families with Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children all over the world.
In addition to her twenty years of experience as a homeschool mother, Rothschild has written a number of books dealing with education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Home Education Websites Blog consists of helpful online content and activities for Christian homeschooling families.
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