Posts Tagged ‘homeschooling’

Fear In School

Do you have happy memories of your school years? Do you have happy memories of teachers and school friends? If you do then you were lucky, because some children hate each minute of being in school and not because they are no good at it either. Frequently it is the clever kids who are taunted for being swots and teachers’ pets. They are safe in the class, but the travelling to and from school and the school breaks can become nightmares.

However, it is not only bullying from other children that causes fear in school children. There are other reasons for fear in school as well. Occasionally, children think that a certain teacher does not like them and sometimes children are just frightened of failing or doing badly. Occasionally teachers are frightened of doing badly as well. It can all lead to an atmosphere of fear at school. It makes you ask yourself how anyone could have enjoyed their school days, does it not?

This atmosphere of fear can get greater in state schools because the teachers are subject to success charts and the kids are more subject to bullying. Furthermore, all of the school shootings in the world have taken place in state run schools.

However, the most subtle form of fear in school comes from teachers who are scared of missing the targets set by the state, because that will cost them their jobs. This fear is passed on to their pupils. The regime of fear is exacerbated by over-sized groups. Why?

Because teachers can hold the attention of only so many pupils – as we all can in normal discourse. Therefore, if the class is too big, the teacher will have to switch roles from being a teacher to a controller. When this occurs, education suffers for the sake of restoring order.

For all of these reasons and more, many parents are turning to home schooling. Some of the reasons why parents are deciding to educate their children themselves are: distrust of the state education system; fear of bullying or worse of their children; a desire to teach their children in a more conventional or religious manner.

There are learning packages that parent-teachers can buy to give them a course of action on what to teach. There is also a lot of help accessible on the Net. The problem facing any parents who wish to educate their own children is providing an all round education.

People have a natural tendency to specialize in one topic or group of topics like, say, astronomy or the sciences, which is why schools supply many teachers, so that each one can teach his or her favourite subject. However, if you are the only teacher you will have to teach all the subjects yourself.

This is why it is best to have a course or set of guidelines to follow. It is difficult to teach maths if you have no talent for it, so look at your strengths but also your weaknesses before you take the considerable decision to withdraw your children from school and educate them themselves

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on numerous subjects but is currently involved with Fear At School and Home Schooling. If you would like to read more, please go over to our website entitled Home Schooling.

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Burnout In Home Schooling

It doesn’t matter if you are teaching in a traditional school or in a home schooling program, there will come a time when you will experience burnout. This is something that you have to prevent so that your learning progress is not adversely affected.

Here are a few helpful tips that you can make use of to avoid possible home schooling burnout:

Know your abilities. From the very start, you should already know your limitations and those of your child. You must be able to doing things slowly sometimes, especially if your child is still very young since you have to consider your child’s capacity to learn. Most students are average learners (obviously), so you will have to take the lessons according to your child’s learning pace. Never expect your small child to read complicated selections nor your teenager to get top marks in SAT exams.

Don’t adopt strict schedules, because this can put pressure on your child. You should simply set an interesting routine for your child to follow. Children spend most of their time doing routine activities like getting up in the mornings, eating large breakfasts, reading, writing, doing light jobs about the place, etc. You must insist that they finish their routine activities before they can play outside or with the computer. Even the routine activities vary from day to day but you have to make sure that your child follows these routine activities. You can add in occasional incentives or fun activities if they finish their routine tasks early.

You should try to enjoy home schooling with your child. This is a good method of developing a strong relationship with your child and if you and your child can relate to each other, you will find it very much easier to handle curriculum struggles and motivation problems later on. Besides motivating and guiding your child, you can also pursue some of your own interests like gardening or cooking. If your child sees you enjoying your own interests, then he or she will also be motivated to do the same.

Since your child is in a home schooling program, you should not try to copy a traditional schools environment. Try to use non-conventional means when teaching your child. Home schooling is also about flexibility and creativity, so if you can achieve a light-hearted but firm atmosphere, you can more than likely avoid burnout.

Just always try to remember that with home schooling, you don’t have to structure your teaching methods in the scholastic manner. You can simply do things in an enjoyable manner especially when teaching very young children, so that they learn naturally. Ensure you keep the day in the right perspective to avoid burnout. Although your children might forget some of the day’s lessons, that’s all right too because somehow children grow in intelligence as well as in physique.

Your children will always think back on your home schooling days together and remember with fondness how well you treated them. The old song goes: “… there’s no place like home” and for little pupils, home is the best place to learn the first lessons of life. If your teenagers are already in high school or college, they can still do home schooling if they so desire. That would also a good idea since you would get a chance to watch your offsprings’ development.

Parents always try to look after their children’s best interests, so, if after careful thought, you still reckon that home schooling is the right option for your family, then run with it. Just follow the tips stated previously in order to avoid burnout. Make time for enjoyable activities from time to time in order to prevent monotony, which could lead to burnout.

If you are interested in avoiding burnout in home schooling then please visit our web-based resource at Home Schooling

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Home Schooling Learning History

Do you think that spending time in traditional classrooms is a waste of time? For many people, that is probably true. For instance, an exam is coming up and the pupils are asked to memorize a list of dates and names. However, after taking the exam, they will probably forget 90% of those dates and names. That’s what most students do when they have exams. If you are one of these people, you will find traditional history lessons boring, so home schooling, which concentrates more on the history of the world, will surely interest you more.

Just simple memorization is not enough to realize the significance of historical, famous people and fateful events. Through home schooling in history, you can study the different cultures of the past in a different, but interesting way – that is your own way! Through the study of history, you will also understand the current situation of the world.

But, if you consider that home schooling is the most effective option for your child’s education, you must also be prepared to take on certain responsibilities. Since there will be no teacher physically present, you will have to supervise your child’s educational development by yourself.

Let’s just suppose that your kid is interested in a particular sport. Through combining history and home schooling, you could start by simply putting a map on the wall of your child’s schoolroom and mark the location of his favourite sports team. Make sure that you track all the team’s activities and schedules. Then, you could return to history lessons by reading biographies of the various athletes, who had been popular in the particular sport that your child enjoys. Aside from that, you could also study the history of that specific sport and discover where it started, its inventor, and the other things happening in that particular time in history.

For instance, if your child follows baseball, you could teach your child about the history baseball, government hearings on the use of drugs and other favourite sports during that period in time. But remember that you can apply this concept to any interest like dancing, cars or any invention. You can also have conversations with your child about current affairs or read interesting historical documents and other books. Aside from that, you can also watch documentaries together with the rest of the family. There are various resources that you can use in home schooling, like TV, maps, newspapers, books, a globe, an atlas, and encyclopedias. Because of the exciting adventures that you and your child will read about and see on film, your child will find it easier to remember the names and dates of the history lessons. After all, education is best when it is done in an interesting way.

These ways are recommended if the child is still young, but when your child is older, you must select a home schooling program that is suited to his/her particular age group. The programs are pitched at the elementary, high school, and even college levels. You simply have to search online for these different programs. One good thing about these programs is that you can adapt them to fit the requirements of your child. However, you have to ensure that all the modules are learned by your child.

Once you and your child decide to try home schooling, you must be prepared for some changes to take place in your life. The learning environment will now be your home not a school and through the various resources that you can use including the computer and Internet.

If you are into Home Schooling then please visit our site at Home Schooling Information

categories: homeschooling,teaching,school,parenting,children,books,reading,writing,mathematics,computers,science,motivational,stress,other

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Speed Reading – The Early Stages

Nobody actually knows when speed reading was first used, but it may well have been a long while ago. For centuries, reading was the privilege of a minority of the most highly-educated individuals in the world, the overwhelming majority of whom were monks and priests. This tiny, select group of men guarded their privilege and were loathe to instruct the general public to read. Moreover, throughout those hundreds of years there were relatively few books to read compared with nowadays. Books were also very expensive as they all had to be copied out by hand. Perhaps the only fact that has not altered is that the Bible was the most widespread book in existence and even now the Bible is the most prevalent book.

The world is rapidly devolving into a place where people are slowly but surely turning their backs on books and becoming stuck in front of monitors or television screens. In such a world, parents should not fail to notice the importance of developing a passion for reading in themselves and their children. Reading is a habit that should be established when the child is quite young, so what can you do to encourage this habit?

Well, there are a number of strategies you can employ, although one of the best to lead by example. Read with your child every day, even if its only for 10-15 minutes. Permit your child to see you reading. By this I mean, don’t only read in bed before you go to sleep, but in place of watching television from time to time and read your children a bed-time story. Encourage them to read too. You could also:

Register your child for reading lessons, if you honestly don’t have much time or your child is a little slow at reading. There are many well-structured after school reading classes that aspire to make books more appealing to children. They help children with pronunciation, idioms and phrases. These lessons can be pleasurable with animated characters and pictures, especially for young children,. They frequently use Illustrated books, nursery rhymes, comical songs and short stories to enliven the imagination of younger children.

You will have to learn how to arouse your child’s interest. If your child has a favorite character, pick a series of books that include this character. Endeavor to encourage your children to read proper books not comics. The style in comics frequently leaves a great deal to be desired with its sloppy English and street slang. As an alternative, go for series of books like Harry Potter or Tarzan.

You should build yourself a library of your own books. This may sound a little grand, but after all, a library is only a collection of books. Begin with a good-looking bookshelf that you can easily add to. A talent like reading cannot be learned in only one place, so you cannot afford to leave all the hard work to the day-school or even the after school programs. You have to collect books that you believe your child will enjoy too. Make use of the Internet as a source for learning about the modern reading games that will attract young children to the superior and ancient art of reading,

When you child is interested in reading for its own sake, you might read up on speed reading. Speed reading is best suited for informative learning and background reading. It’s immensely suited to cramming or studying for examinations. It is ideal for school and university. However, the first job, before you can think about speed reading, is to get your child reading in the first place.

Are you interested in speed reading for yourself or a loved one? If so, please hurry over to our web site focusing on Speed Reading.

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Learning Speed Reading

What have you been reading lately? At a meeting, you can soon tell who the frequent readers are, since frequent readers are often quick thinkers and good public speakers too. They quickly win the adulation, respect, and fellowship of others. After all, reading expands the mind and many people think of it as one of the most satisfying pleasures known to mankind, being a combination, as it is, of mental agility and physical relaxation well above the level offered by television or the cinema.

The act of reading is primarily a mental activity. After all, you read with your mind and use your imagination to paint the setting of the action thriller you are reading. You use your mind to imagine the pleasure that the main characters are experiencing as the story unfolds; or you bring into play the different arguments and ideas brought up by the author of that self-help book you are holding.

Learning how to read properly helps you to develop an extensive knowledge of words by reading various styles of books. A skillful reader recognizes a wide range of vocabulary. The reader may not understand exactly what every word means, but he/she will have a good idea of what the sentence is trying to convey.

The act of reading makes you more alert and more interested in new words. Some readers even develop ‘the dictionary habit’, which means that every time they come across a new word, they attempt to figure out what it possibly means in the context. If they are stumped, they refer to a dictionary.

Similarly, reading develops intellectual curiosity by exposing the reader to a variety of subjects. He/she learns to read by reading books of increasing difficulty and variety. Just as in other forms of education, he/she is learning by actually doing and while he/she is reading he/she is automatically learning about the subject matter of the book too – a free by-product!

Basically, reading teaches you to have an active and open mind. Only grasping the writers point of view is not really good enough, you must have a reply to what you have read. Be an active, not a passive, reader. Try to develop the habit of drawing your own conclusions, the habit of active thinking, of agreeing or disagreeing with the writer. Always keep your mind open; understand and weigh the ideas that you have read. A practical part of active reading is the development of one’s own opinions.

Now let me mention the phenomenon called speed reading. All of the above applies between three and ten times over, because speed readers can read that much faster than the average reader! Imagine that! – Being able to read, comprehend and remember all those books and articles. You would surely become well-read in your field much more rapidly than others. Just imagine how that could help you at work, in school or in university …

Let me share four primary rules for effective reading and better comprehension:

1) Try to read more and more every month. Remember the saying that practice makes perfect. 2) Develop the habit of reading for main ideas, ie look for the subject and predicate – the main ideas 3) Learn to read with focus and concentration. Think of what you are reading. Good readers read with understanding. 4) Learn to budget your time. Experiment with your reading time. Try purposely to read faster. Give yourself a time limit on a specific piece that you are reading.

Reading is a fantastically stimulating mental activity. It expands your understanding and ability. You have so much to gain by discovering the joy of reading. So, go ahead and take down a book right this minute.

Are you interested in speed reading for yourself or a dear one? If so, please go along to our web site called Speed Reading.

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