My poor kids! They were guinea pigs and my oldest got the worst of it! Back in the 80s when we started homeschooling, none of us knew what we were doing. All we knew was there had to be a better way than sending our kids off to be taught by strangers in an increasingly questionable environment. Unfortunately, the only model of education we had available to us was the 12 or more years of traditional schooling that we had endured. If I were to do it all over again, here are some of the things I wish I had known.
My kids don’t have to finish a textbook.
There’s nothing wrong with choosing not to finish a textbook, or to pick out parts of it and ignore other parts. Teachers in traditional schools do this all the time.
Using textbooks does not prevent gaps in learning.
One of my greatest fears about homeschooling was that somehow my kids would get to adulthood not knowing all they needed to know to function in society. Following the textbooks was supposed to alleviate that. It doesn’t. The fact is that ALL kids come out of traditional schools with “learning gaps”. There is simply way too much to information out there for a child to absorb everything they need to know. If you teach your kids how to seek out information rather than regurgitating a textbook, they will do just fine.
It’s perfectly OK for my kids to be doing 3rd-grade math and 5th-grade reading or vice-versa.
At first, I thought my kids had to complete all the textbooks in each subject and demonstrate proficiency before they could move on to the next grade. All that did was hold them back. Fortunately, I figured this one out pretty quick and let my kids learn at their own pace.
Doing 20 – 30 math problems at one sitting is counterproductive.
Children are not built to sit. Forcing my daughter to sit for hours until she got her math done only made us both crazy. Years later, after I had begun homeschooling other people’s kids I finally figured out that games and incorporating movement when doing drill work produced much better results.
If my child isn’t understanding the textbook, it’s the textbook’s fault, not my child’s.
Textbooks were originally created for people who had attained or were close to attaining an adult way of thinking. They were also created for visual learners. Most children just aren’t built this way. If a textbook isn’t working for your child, put it on a shelf and try something else! There are lots of real books, games, videos, and hands-on activities that will do a much better job of helping your child to learn than textbooks. Eventually, I wound up throwing out almost all the textbooks. I did keep a few. I used science books for copy work so my kids would learn to recognize words like “cell” and “atoms” that we used in our hands-on science experiments but rarely read and I kept a few math books around for my personal reference. I also used a few to stabilize wobbly furniture. Textbooks do have their place! Just not as a young child’s primary source of learning.
Many kids never crack a textbook open until their late teens and they do just fine.
If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t bother with textbooks at all. In my opinion, they are the least efficient way for children to learn. Fear and ignorance kept us slaves for way too long! Your kids have inside of them a natural drive to learn. Textbooks tend to kill that drive. It’s perfectly OK to throw them out! There are lots of kids out there who’s parents have embraced “unschooling”. If you haven’t heard of it, look it up! It’s the wave of the future in education.
God Bless You All!
~Grama Sue
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