help! i am not sure i know what i am doing!
If are new to homeschooling, and you weren’t previously a teacher, you likely have one or more of the following concerns:
There is one solution to all of these issues (and you might not like it): YOU need to learn about learning! Understanding what learning is and how it happens and how to enhance and support it is absolutely the most important thing to do right now. Just following others or trying to replicate school at home is not likely to give you the results you want: happy, healthy, self-motivated, engaged life-long learners who love life and want to be the best person they can be!
Educating yourself about learning is so important that you could literally stop all teaching and instruction and just let your kids play while you learn about learning. If you took this time to educate yourself, everyone would come out ahead. Way ahead. So don’t be afraid, you can do it and we have made it much easier by gathering information and resources right here.
- Yikes, what if I'm not good at this!?
- Where do I get curriculum and excellent workbooks?
- How do I keep my kids engaged (or get them to listen!)?
- What do I do when my kids just want to run around and play?
- What are the best books for my kids to read?
- How do I keep my kids off the screen?
- Do I really have to force them to do all this?
- What if my child is ‘behind’?
- How do I make sure my kids are getting enough socialization?
There is one solution to all of these issues (and you might not like it): YOU need to learn about learning! Understanding what learning is and how it happens and how to enhance and support it is absolutely the most important thing to do right now. Just following others or trying to replicate school at home is not likely to give you the results you want: happy, healthy, self-motivated, engaged life-long learners who love life and want to be the best person they can be!
Educating yourself about learning is so important that you could literally stop all teaching and instruction and just let your kids play while you learn about learning. If you took this time to educate yourself, everyone would come out ahead. Way ahead. So don’t be afraid, you can do it and we have made it much easier by gathering information and resources right here.
four easy steps to understanding learning, the brain, and the basics of child development.
1. read: how students learn
This is an excerpt from Wayne Jennings excellent book, School Transformation. He has generously allowed us to provide the entire fifth chapter. How Students Learn is an enlightening and easy to read synthesis of the current research on brain function, psychology, and child development as it relates to learning. Thank you, Wayne.
2. Watch: what is self-directed education
In this short, fun, animated video, Dr. Peter Gray, an Evolutionary Psychologist and Research Professor at Boston College, explains that children are biologically design to education themselves.
3. read: Free to Learn
Once you have heard Dr. Gray speak on the video, you may want more! In this must-read book he explains why unleashing the instinct to play will make our children happier, more self-reliant, and better students for life.
If buying the book is a problem, let us know and we will send you a copy
If buying the book is a problem, let us know and we will send you a copy
4. Take the crash course
A video-based self-study program, to increase your understanding of the power and possibility of nurturing a passion for lifelong learning and a desire within kids to take on the reasonability of becoming educated. These videos can be listened to while you cook, walk, or go for a drive. Enjoy learning from the leaders in self-directed democratic education and see for yourself that letting kids learn through play and self-direction is best way to nurture healthy, happy, educated, self-reliant adults.
