*This article is intended to be a guideline for homeschooling. Please be sure to check with local and/or state regulations for specific education requirements.
If you think your child needs some standardized education at home, a homeschooling curriculum can accomplish this. Homeschooling is certainly not at the parents’ discretion to teach their kid whatever they want. It is a planned teaching curricula implemented in most school districts that follow a set of educational rules laid down by local school boards or administration.
This means that kids who obtain their education through homeschooling must fulfill the same standards as their contemporaries in a conventional school. The government takes the responsibility to ensure that there is a parity of educational standards for all kids within their jurisdiction, whether they learn via homeshooling or conventional schooling.
Many parents want to homeschool their kids while keeping a watch on them, avoid the hassle of bullies and peer pressure etc. The Internet and easily available online information is another reason for the increasing popularity of homeschooling.
An established curriculum will be available to any parents or guardians who think they have a reason to educate their kids at home. Once you decide to educate your children with a homeschooling curriculum, keep these points in mind:
- Your homeschooling requirements must include exhaustive prospects for every grade level.
- You must conduct personal reviews and submit accounts of your kids’ progress regularly.
- A team of experts may review the teaching process and results at home in the same manner they do in a conventional school.
- There will be deadlines and targets to meet to progress to the next grade.
- Homeschooling curriculum testing resources may be supplied to you and also be monitored.
Types of homeschooling curriculum
Once you have decided to homeschool your kid and understood its principles, you must next choose a suitable package. Here are a few choices:
- Buy a pre-packaged homeschooling curriculum.
- Create curricula of your preference with expert guidance.
- Go for a blend of both.
- Choose a program based on your religious beliefs, whether Catholic or Christian or others with expert opinion.
- Find online programs that can provide a combination of all forms.
Benefits of homeschooling
- A chance to combine lessons based on a focal theme. For instance a module about The American Dream can consist of the history of the concept; the economics behind the idea; some political science including capitalism and the U.S. Bill of Rights; theatre studies in the criticism of the concept in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman and so on.
- Another homeschooling benefit is to make students learn through cultivating their aptitude. Called the “interest-led” or “child-led” curriculum, or “Unschooling”, it educates through entertainment in the form of games and reality situations to induce impromptu learning. For instance, a kid may learn reading and math skills by playing card games, improve spelling and language skills by writing short stories for a local journal etc.
- Learning is a continuous process where parents can teach as well as conduct home reviews.
- During homeschooling, parent’s guidance can inculcate valuable behavioral parameters for instance that of joint family living etc. that cannot be taught through textbooks.
Whatever the benefits and the methods, always choose a homeschooling curriculum according to the distinctive requirements of your child.