Home schooling - how to create a studing method
Today, I would like to make a step ahead in our homeschooling journey.
For whom is reading me for the first time, I would like to say that if you are interested in this topic, you can find other article about it, and you can comment my posts in order to start a discussion.
INTRO
When we were children we learned to study on books or at most with the "transparencies" projected on a white wall (the ancestors of power point!); today, on the other hand, we have access to many resources, not only written, but also multimedia; we have didactic experiments of all kinds, some of which have been present for years and of proven effectiveness.
Yet most schools and teachers continue to offer frontal lessons and book studies for almost all subjects.
Perhaps this is also why many families are looking for learning solutions that are closer to what kids are like today.
One of these phenomena is the family school or homeschooling, which all over the world has spread only in recent years, and is getting known and appreciated.
HOW TO START HOMESCHOOLING
If you are curious or interested in family school, the first thing I recommend is to look for other families who have already made this choice to be able to compare and to understand if it is the right path for you.
You can start homeschooling at any time of the year and at any age your child is; however, it is necessary to make a specific communication and send it to the competent authority (ACCORDING TO YOUR JURISDICTION). If you had previously enrolled the child in a school, you must also make the withdrawal, normally
Once the bureaucracy is cleared, you can really start. Whatever age or school history your child has, the thing I recommend is to take a period of observation and initially focus only on the relationship with the child.
Perhaps he has a bad experience in school behind him and therefore refuses any didactic proposal, or he could be very curious on the contrary (especially if he is small), or he still does not know how to structure the many free time that he finds.
In this first phase, dedicate yourself only to activities that are enjoyable, fun and stimulating even if they do not seem to have a bearing on the program or teaching in general.
Children are naturally inclined to learn. It is a strong evolutionary drive. Think of little children when they want to learn to sit or walk - they put all their determination into it and don't get discouraged at the first fall, but keep trying and making mistakes until they learn.
We also find the same desire to learn in school-age children when they become passionate about some particular topic, for example dinosaurs or planes, or when they dismantle and reassemble buildings a thousand times over.
Of course, not everything can be learned while having fun : my daughter, for example, has never loved mathematics and geography, while the youngest does not like to read; but basically both my children and the many homeschoolers I met have learned a lot of things without effort, having fun and fixing concepts that are sometimes even complex without having to repeat them over and over again.
Studying or learning?
You can study for hours without learning anything because real learning happens when you are completely immersed in a topic. You make it your own, you connect it to something real that already exists in your life, and especially when you understand its purpose.
That's why books are just one of the many ways to learn, and usually aren't the most effective.
Learn with passion and fun
Very often it is we adults who have lost the desire to continue learning and this is the greatest gift that came to me together with the choice of the family school: I re-evaluated many topics that had bored me at school, and I was filled with "desire to learn ".
Even now that my children are in school sometimes we happen to "stage" some topic they are studying to help them memorize it more easily.
There is no need for expensive materials or living traveling (although that would be nice!), Passion and creativity are enough.
The story, for example, lends itself very well to being represented: it is enough to unfold an atlas or a map, create the main characters with puppets, Lego or whatever, And then put on stage The various events of the historical period that is being studied.
The more tools you try to use, the easier it is for the child to find the most suitable study method for him because we always say that children are all different, but then we offer everyone the same way of studying which, in my experience, is also the most boring, and the least effective.
I personally am a big fan of democratic schools - it's not conventional schooling, neither home schooling (which requires a lot of time and effort, sometimes more than we can give). It's kind of community schools where kids have much more freedom in choosing when do they want to learn and what do they want to learn :)
Never heard about them, but thanks for the input, I'll take a look on this concept.
Are you a father too?
I'm not a father. I always wanted to create the family with kids but life sometimes is tricky and does not give equal opportunities to everyone in that area. I am taking care of one family with kids, though. Supporting them financially and in every other possible way.
My husband used to work as the "teacher" in one of that institutions (in democratic schools I guess "mentor" is a better word than "teacher"). That's how I know in details how it looks like.