By Jake Lester
The dissatisfaction with the academic process has become an urgent problem. While educators debate on how to handle it, curious and intelligent parents have already found an effective solution. This is a homeschooling. When your kids gets their primary education at home, you can protect them from a school environment that frequently has a negative effect on kids’ development and grades. You can pay more attention to some subjects and avoid or intensify the moral and religious instructions. However, parents also need to have a certain background to be able to provide their kids a proper education. To get the basic idea on how to behave with your kids while studying, at what points to pay special attention, and how to define and fix problems in education, you need only five books. They are the best for guiding you in homeschooling.
If you are just considering the homeschooling, this is the first book you should read. Charity Hawkins explains the problems and the benefits of homeschooling in a fictional way making it a fun introduction to home education. This book will also be a useful and entertaining reading for those who already have some experience in home learning. There are no complicated theories, long-term investigations, or psychologists’ commentaries. This is a real-life description of what is happening when you give up your previous life to teach your kids and stay with them 24/7. The author homeschools her own three children.
Our kids have another vision of the world. Moreover, they learn differently than the adults. If you have forgotten what methods for studying you used as a kid, you need to refresh your memory, and The Way They Learn is the best tutorial for that. Cynthia Ulrich Tobias explains all important issues and the most common problems. She gives an understanding of the ways kids perceive the information, focuses on four main styles of studying, discovers how to find out the strong points of your kids. She also explains how to work with memory and how to increase kids’ productivity. One of the most important issues is the evaluation of your kids studying. Frequently, homeschooling parents miss this point, and in high school, their kids have problems with the evaluation of their knowledge and skill. Cynthia Ulrich Tobias is a learning styles expert who frequents homeschool conferences and recommends finding an educational system that fits your kid instead of insisting that he or she adjust to the one that everyone else uses.
If you need a guide that will explain you in a step-by-step way how you should work with your kids when homeschooling, The Well-Trained Mind is the best decision. It explains the process in a simple and clear way, giving the explanation of how to bring up a well-educated and curious teenager. In this book, you will find out how to build the whole process of education starting from preschool and ending the high school. Additionally, Susan Wise Bauer describes perhaps the most effective method of homeschooling called the trivium. According to it, there is a traditional pattern for education which includes the grammar stage, the logic stage, and the rhetoric stage. Understanding the trivium method, you will also understand how to teach mathematics, languages, natural sciences, etc. Perhaps the main advantage of this book is the availability of curricula that you can use for teaching your kids. Susan explains how to raise a second Einstein and how to unleash the inner writer in your children. The recommendations are easy and effective, and the result is outstanding. Dr. Bauer is a homeschool mom who was homeschooled herself through high school.
If you are wondering how to teach nature studies, Pocketful of Pinecones will explain to you all the hidden tricks and useful tips. This book is written in a form of a diary giving the feel that you really observe how the process of homeschooling is happening in a real life. Here, you will find more than 100 ideas for nature walks, names of flora and fauna in Latin, questions and issues that you need to discuss with your kid, and poems about nature and its beauty. The author, Karen Andreola, is a homeschool mom who introduced modern day parents to the “Charlotte Mason Method” of homeschooling.
A proper homeschooling education includes the development of the personal qualities. As a parent, you are responsible for teaching your kids what’s good and what’s not. Clarifying the ways of contributing to your kid’s future, you find out how to define the potential of your kid, his or her strengths and weaknesses, the most powerful traces of character, and the techniques on how to bring up a strong, curious and mind-powerful person. You will also discover how you can help your kids to settle proper goals, find the purpose in their actions, and effectively communicate with people. Additionally, Zan explains the importance of religion in upbringing and education. Zan Tyler and her husband, Joe, homeschooled each of their three children from kindergarten through high school, for a total of twenty-one years.
These five books give a profound comprehension of homeschooling, and with careful reading and analysis, you can build an effective strategy for your kids’ education.