Teaching is one of my passions. As a kid I enjoyed giving my siblings homework and spelling tests. 😆 When I got a chance to go to college, elementary education is what I earned a degree in. Being a mom was very important to me, though, more so than having a career. I hadn’t thought about homeschooling in the beginning, but when it came up, it felt like the perfect opportunity. I quickly learned to love teaching at home.
With a background in education and over 15 years of teaching homeschool, I’ve created my own homeschool style based on the things I’ve learned and observed. These are my beliefs that guide that style:
📗Each child is unique, with individual strengths and weaknesses. Each child deserves the attention that will help them discover where they need extra help and where they can excel with ease, whether those things are academic or not. My homeschool style helps me find those strenghts and weaknesses and work with them.
📗Children learn better when they can make connections through a variety of assignments and activities. They remember better when they enjoy what they’re doing, so I make it fun when I can. I teach them to love learning by feeding their curiosity, finding answers to their questions, and taking our lessons in new directions if they get excited about something unexpected.
📗Reading is so fundamental to succeeding in school and in life. Of all the things I can teach my children, reading and a love of education are the most important to me. I teach reading through reading to them, teaching them phonics, practicing site words, and helping them apply those phonics and site words to the written words in books, in games, and all around us. Once a person can read, they can excel at anything they want to. In my homeschool style there is a lot of reading!
📗I teach language arts, math, social studies, and science once a week. These lessons I teach to the whold group. My kids practice language arts and math every day, and I help them one-on-one when they need it. I find this very effective.
📗There is more that a child needs to learn than just academics. I’m proud that each of my children have been able to learn cooking skills during their homeschool years that will be a benefit for their whole lives. Our homeschooling schedule also gives our kids time to practice skills like cleaning and working together.
📗I appreciate that our public schools keep religions separate from education to respect the rights of all to choose their own beliefs, and I claim the privilege of teaching with a Christian perspective in my own home.
It has been a fun adventure to learn with my children, get creative with lessons, and build my own homeschool style. The hours of preparing and teaching, seeing what works and what doesn’t, spending time with my children and getting to know them is well spent time in my mind. I’m very thankful that our cirumstances have allowed us to make homeschool part of our life style. I’m thankful that I can be a mom and a teacher at the same time.
Thanks for reading my post. For more of my Homeschool posts, click below. I hope you’re enjoying your adventure.
