How Early Can You Start Home Schooling Your Child?
Many parents worry about identifying the appropriate time to begin homeschooling their young children. What they do not realize is that quite often they have already begun homeschooling although they may not call it that. When you interact with your infant, talking to her, engaging her, you are homeschooling your child. When you teach your child how to tie his shoes or count to ten, you are homeschooling. Many parents “homeschool” their children without ever realizing it. But what the experts say is so true: education begins at home.
If you intend on homeschooling your child, it is really never too early to begin. Homeschooling is more than just choosing a curriculum and teaching it to your child. The wonderful thing about homeschooling is that you have the freedom and flexibility to find out what interests your child and then tailor a learning program to their interests and needs. The thing is, nearly all parents do this, they just don’t give it that label.
Homeschooling offers parents a chance to spend a lot of quality time with their child. You can count, read and write together. You can take your child on educational field trips such as to museums. There’s a lot to teach your child that you can’t find in a textbook. You and your child can learn from simply observing the world.
Interact with your child; as you do so, see what your child is interested in. This can help you to tailor your curriculum and assist your child in setting goals for themselves. You can see what kind of pace is suitable for your child and will keep them interested in learning. Homeschooling is something all parents do; official homeschooling is nothing more than an expansion of this strategy which helps parents to prepare their children for life.
As you continue on your course to homeschool your child, you will find that the groundwork that you laid early on, long before you made any conscious effort to actually homeschool, will be very evident in the things that your child does. The things that you did naturally as a parent laid a very important path to future learning for your child. When you taught her to sing her ABC’s or you helped him write a letter to grandma, you were laying a solid foundation for future learning. You were paving the way for your child’s education and love of learning. The greatest mark of a good education is when a child can utilize what they learn in real life situations.
Our society has been conditioned to follow certain benchmarks such as a child starts kindergarten at five years of age or they should know how to tie their shoes by the time they are in first grade. Homeschooling is favored by many parents and child experts because it does not follow those benchmarks, it allows the child to direct their own. The milestones are met at the child’s pace, not at the expectations of some child development “expert.” So, instead of asking when you should start homeschooling your child, you should be asking what you should do next because you have already begun!
Filed under: Writing & Speaking