Cairo Forum 2010 Education Site

Archive for the ‘Homeschooling’ Category

Many parents make the decision to homeschool their children, and in doing so are privy to some clear benefits. Homeschooling allows you to tailor a specific education to your child’s individual needs, something that is often lacking in the public or private school systems. Homeschooling also allows you and your child to learn together, creating not only a valuable learning experience but strengthening family bonds. Add to this the fact that it is often prohibitively expensive to send multiple children to private schools, and we can see why homeschooling has become increasingly popular.

One of the most important aspects of homeschooling your child is coming up with a clear plan and set of goals. One of the greatest aspects of homeschooling – its complete flexibility – can also be one of the most difficult if it is not approached directly. Without a clear plan, you run the risk of creating a scattershot education that puts your child out of place with his or her peers.

So when you begin homeschooling, you should come up with a clear set of general goals. Think about why you want to homeschool your children, and what you want them to get out of the experience. What, generally, do you want your child’s education to encompass? Once you have answered these general questions for yourself, begin to split your child’s education into various subject areas. For each subject area, you want to come up with a timeline and set of goals.

A good place to start in terms of a timeline would be to look at the standard curriculum for your child’s grade in a public or private school. While it is almost certainly true that one of these reasons you’ve selected to homeschool your child is to go beyond and outside this standard curriculum, you also want to make sure that your child does not fall behind his or her peers in a given subject area.

Come up with your plan by looking at the standard expectations for a given subject level and then working backwards: how do you want to achieve that level of knowledge? What are the targets for each week? By setting these targets you can establish a timeline and curriculum that allows for effective homeschooling.
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Phonics lesson plans are the foundation by which you can be better prepared to help your child to begin to learn to read. You must be prepared in order to make the most of your time together and to make the most of your child’s attention span. With an early introduction to phonics, you are giving your child a head start on a lifetime of literacy.

A lesson plan must be created with the goal of teaching your child the 44 sounds and the 43 phonics rules of the English language and how to appropriately apply them. The question is what lesson plan will most effectively accomplish this task?

There are numerous websites available that will provide you with sample lesson plans for phonics instruction; however, in this article let’s talk about what you should look for in a strong lesson plan. With just a bit of planning, you can help teach your child to become an accomplished and confident reader.

When evaluating any lesson plan, there are several items to consider. Ask yourself these questions. Is the plan creative, interactive and supportive of the early reader’s efforts? Does the lesson plan utilize a variety of methods, such as textual, visual, audio, etc, to teach the concepts of phonics? Are there multiple opportunities in the lesson for your child to learn, practice, play and repeat what they have learned? It is through hearing and seeing the reading concepts in a variety of ways that your child will conceptualize and then utilize their newfound knowledge.
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The first step is to make time for the child in your busy schedule. Rework your life to give priority to the child. Spend quality time and read as well as sing songs to the child everyday. You could play soft music and other tapes like chants and so on in the child’s room at specific times each day. Music enhances memory and learning.

Speak to the child and give the child time to respond. Make everyday activities a learning time—introduce names of foods, point to the bath tub and say bath, show the child the sponge or soap, help the child recognize the animals and toys in the bath by introducing things like “ baby duck—quack, quack.”

Children listen, they learn how to discriminate specific sounds, and then they associate sound with actions, and finally put together sounds with what they actually mean.

Be vigilant at all times. If you have any doubts or notice any problems please consult a doctor.

Play “follow the leader”

Well have you thought of things you can do to encourage speech and language development? Well you don’t need special training or courses to do this. Think about it—you smile and the baby smiles at you. So, if you play “follow the leader” your baby will ape whatever you do and unconsciously learn.
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There are a myriad of different reasons why people choose to homeschool their children: there is the economic benefit of avoiding high private school fees; there is the convenience of scheduling schooling around other family activities etc. . . One of the most important benefits of homeschooling is the flexibility with which you can tailor your child’s education. It is a well known fact that every individual has individual needs, and homeschooling allows you to create a learning environment that suits your child particularly.

When you undergo homeschooling, it is important that you have a clear curriculum and mind and a plan to execute it. But within that plan, you should understand that you have a tremendous amount of flexibility: there are many different ways that a child can learn something, and many different things to learn in a given subject.

One of the best ways that you can ensure a high level of learning retention is to encourage your child to take a personal interest in his or her education. Although this may seem obvious, many people growing up who went though a traditional school system will probably agree that their education was received in an authoritative way: schooling and your education was something that was done to you, not with you.

When homeschooling, however, you can take advantage of the almost unlimited flexibility at your disposal and let your child take a more active role. While you can’t, obviously, let your child do whatever he or she wants education-wise, you should always explain to him or her a given education plan, and see what he thinks.
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