FAQ's: A Home School Learning Q & A
By Mimi Rothschild
Q. Where do I find the best home school learning materials?
Everywhere you look. Recognizing the large market that home school families have created, the book and education industry has leaped to fill the niche. There are supplementary materials and full courses designed for home school. Catalogs are available, and online stores and bookstores all have a wide selection.
Other sources are less book-specific. The beauty of home school is that you don't need to stay home or stick to conventional learning via books. Videos, science kits, art supplies, and field trips: you can find these at thrift stores, toy stores, your basement, and garage sales. The world is your oyster as far as home school learning materials are concerned – they're everywhere.
The best home school learning materials? That is harder to answer than “where” to find them. What works for someone else may not work for your child. Consider your schedule and your child's learning abilities and strengths, and find something that caters to all these. You can find some great worksheets and home school learning materials online. Your home school co-op will most certainly be able to point you in the right direction. Don't be afraid to try and fail. Home school is a learning process for you as well as your child.
Q. How do I teach a subject in home school that I am not familiar with?
One of the beautiful things about home school is that your child is learning that everything and everyone around her is a potential teacher. If you wanted to find out about a subject, where would you go for your information? It depends on the subject, right? You use your analytical thinking to break down the subject to its foundation and figure out where the best sources for learning the basics can be found. There are online correspondence classes, community college courses (both of which admit students of all ages), support groups, community centers, and videos. All of these can teach your child what you can't, and in the process you could learn something as well. This demonstrates that life is a continual learning process that continues long after schooling is over.
Q. What about tests?
What about them? In the same way that you create or find homework sheets for home school learning, you can also find or create tests to test home school learning. Testing, however, is not mandatory. You may find that traditional testing may not work for your child. There are many ways to discern whether or not your child is picking up the details of what she is working on. Can she learn advanced concepts based on the previous ones that she has been working on? Life is tested in this way. There's no reason why home school shouldn't be the same.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, children's rights activist, author, and Founder and C.E.O. of online education company Learning by Grace, Inc. Rothschild and her husband of twenty-eight years reside in suburban Philadelphia with their eight children.
Feeling that “our current system of education has broken its promise,” Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. to provide families with Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children all over the world.
In addition to her twenty years of experience as a homeschool mother, Rothschild has written a number of books dealing with education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Home Education Websites Blog consists of helpful online content and activities for Christian homeschooling families.
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