These five factors make a big difference in any homeschool. Some times the most important things are the simplest and they tend to be overlooked

#1 – Be Positive. I cannot stress this enough. Smile. Let the child know you are happy for every improvement no matter how small. Give suggestions in a positive tone. The child will pick up your attitude quickly. If you’re having fun your child will have fun too. Even if everything goes wrong, which it will at first, if you stay calm everything will smooth out.

#2 – Be organized. Start on time. End on time. Stay focused. If it’s school time, it’s school time. Even if you can only get in three hours a day, make those three hours count. Do those same three hours every day. Have a designated place to do school work. School stays at school. Don’t scatter it all over the house.

Have an opening routine. Look at the date. Mark the calendar. Count the day. Sing a song. Write a memory gem on the board. What ever opening routine you choose stick to it. The same with the closing routine. Put away books. Clean up area. Review successes. What ever the routine, this marks the end of school.

#3 – Be creative. Make up games activities. Younger children can be entertained by very simple means. Use resources to give you ideas.

#4 – Be simple. Don’t spoil them with a lot of expensive games, fancy pencils, flashy note books, etc. While all the flashy stuff will make school seem fun for that day, the next day it’ll all be old. Let it be a once in a while surprise to brighten up the school experience rather than the purpose of school.

#5 – Let the child’s interest be your guide. That doesn’t mean forget math because your son hates it. But if he’s just not interested, try a different teaching strategy. This is where your creativity comes in.

Take clues from the kind of questions he asks. If he wants to know why there is a arrow after 100 on the number line, take the time to explain that numbers go on forever. Tell a story about how we use numbers. If he loses interest, go on to something else.

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Lily Ann is a mother to six bright children. She has enjoyed great success in the area of homeschooling. She is always looking for ways to improve and loves to learn new things.

Homeschooling is an education option that is widely debated by comparing and contrasting it to public school. There are always two sides to every story, and there are many topics that always seem to come up in these discussions. This article will focus on one of the popular topics, by sharing our family’s experience as it relates to it. We hope to address more in future articles.

Debunking the Myth: Homeschooling takes a lot of time

The public schools where we live begin around 8:00 am and let out around 3:00 pm. That is 7 hours each day that the child is away from home and in the public school building. When you add the time to get to and from school its closer to 8 to 9 hours per day. This is equivalent to someone working full time. Plus the kids we know that attend public schools have homework nearly every night. This adds another hour. Then there are the extra-curricular activities that they may choose to stay late to participate in.

Our experience has been that we spend an increasing amount of time on “school” as the child gets older. One hour per day is plenty for kindergarten, two hours per day for 1st through 4th grade and about four to six hours for junior high and high school grades. This includes all homework and research papers, etc.

Our kids have done well on the standardized tests and their annual evaluations with this approach. So I’m confident that we covered everything required and more. This has allowed time for other priorities like household chores, helping with the family business, helping a friend and free time.

Homeschooling does not require as much time for the student as the public education system requires. Then there is the teacher or parent’s perspective. As homeschool parent you will need to spend the times listed above with your child daily plus about another 30-60 minutes per day to prepare, review, plan, etc. When you have clear goals and work together, it doesn’t need to take that much time. Once you get through a grade with one child it gets even less time consuming with the next.

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Randall & Karen Webster have been homeschooling their 5 children for over 10 years. They offer advice and encouragement through a Free 5-part Mini-Course at Frustration Free Homeschool.

The question naturally arises as to whether the child can be permitted to give unbridled expression to all of his feelings. If there are limits as to how far a parent can go in his permissiveness? There certainly is. Just as the child cannot be given complete freedom to express his aggressiveness when it affects others adversely, so he cannot be granted the privilege of seeing exactly what he thinks when he hurts others by doing so.

Often when the child is expressing his negative feelings, asking him why he feels that he does can lead him to examine his attitudes in such a way that it enables him to develop some genuine insights necessary for learning to control his feelings and understand his emotions. Even when the child cannot be a chordate unrestrained liberty in expressing feelings are hurtful to others, we can let him know that we do understand how he feels and why he feels that he does, even though some ways of expressing these emotions are unacceptable.

From what we have been saying, it might sound stupid all the child’s emotions are unhappy and undesirable ones. Of course this is not. He has his joys, his excesses, his moment of the nation, which is just as eager to share with a listening parent. Love that listens at these times is just as necessary is that which listens when a child is frustrated. Whatever the child’s feelings, when they are suppressed because nobody cares enough to listen or because nobody is willing to take the time to listen, the way is being prepared for cutting off those valuable lines of communication between parent and child. Parents will find themselves yearning in later years to reestablish these channels of communication, and the repair work is sometimes hard to a fact, once the damage has been done. Blocking this flow of interchange between parent and child can damn up the sparkling springs of the child’s feelings, which can supply some of the richest joys in life through providing variety and flavor in living.

Children want to help and understanding of parents through sharing with them verbally: they want this kind of help even when they appeared not to want it. They want to talk things over, provided they can do the talking. Most children will discuss their problems with their parents if the parent has a listening ear, if he isn’t understanding friend, not an autocratic boss.

When Tyler, both by his silence and his worried demeanor, it is evidence that something is bothering him inside, it’s a good idea for parents to ask, Son is there something bothering you? Is there anything you’d like to talk about? This can be done in a non threatening way that Tyler knows that his parent is expressing the friendly concern rather than engaging in unpardonable meddling with his private affairs. If he takes advantage of this opening to air his feelings, it is imperative for his parents to listen, accept, and understand. It’s a good time for them to offer assurance that most people feel this way at times and such emotions are not wrong, only when we misdirect them or let them control us instead of our learning to handle them.

Helping our children to know and understand the reality of their feelings, day by day is the only way to give their emotions a chance to grow up along with their bodies and their minds. By talking out with the child aggressive tendencies, a parent can often enable a youngster to perceive and understand more calmly the cause of his own emotions. Parents can help their children understand the motives underlying the frustrating behavior of other people. This understanding can alleviate the child’s strong aggressive feelings or, at least, help them adjust to them.

Let’s permit our children to have their feelings, all of them. The only judgment we can make is whether the angry feeling self as a real or an unreal basis. This we cannot know until we hear the child out, but an angry child cannot be permitted to go around kicking other people on their shins or on the other inappropriate violations of other humans write.

Timmy is angry because he has to be pulled himself away from watching television to have dinner with the rest of the family. There is reason for his anger. His father says, come to dinner Timmy, whether you want to or not. Lots of times people have to do things they don’t want to do. I feel the same way you do now. “When I have to leave a job I’m interested in doing here at home. When it’s time for me to go to the office to work, but I do have to go to work every day.”, the father says. Feeling of not liking to do something is Timmy’s personal privilege. He should not be denied these feelings, even though he must leave television to come to dinner. When a child is battling with an intense emotion, a parent can take the empathizing, “I know just how you feel approach to far sometimes. ” But it is important not o give in to the child’s demands because of his feelings. Acknowledge them as they are real and important to him, but do not let those feelins become demands or control you. At such times, the child feels desperately in need of a powerful and resourceful adult upon whom he can lead and to whom he can look for help may get the impression that the parent is helpless to. This is further upsetting to the child since he is seen to his hoped-for source of help crumble before his very eyes.

“I don’t like you anymore!” shouted an enraged seven-year-old Jamie when her mother disciplined her for playing in the busy street which the child knew was a dangerous and forbidden play area. Lots of children don’t like their mothers when their mothers have to spank them for being disobedient. When I was a little girl about your age, “I felt that way sometimes too.” replied the mother. This kind of approach is usually better than I know just how you feel routine which can give the child a feeling that the mother is helplessly dangling at the end of her emotional rope. Just as much as the child is this intensifies the child’s emotional state.

One grandmother tells of having her grandson come to spend the day with her. When the child’s mother had not come for him by early evening, the grandmother telephone to ask when the mother wanted her to bring the child home. Quick as a flash the mother replied, how about when he 16. Maybe by that time he won’t have so many negative feelings. That mother has some basis for her hope she can accept her child’s negative feelings now and let him talk them out with her. A part of a parent’s job is to learn to be a good shock absorber for the child. When this has been done, the child finds it easier, as he grows older, to absorb his own emotional shocks and to redirect them towards constructive ends.

Responding to another person’s peelings is closely related to friendship and constitutes the basis for real interaction. This is as true in parent child relationships as in any other relationships. A parent who demonstrates daily interest in his child’s feelings by listening with appreciation, understanding, and patience to whatever the child wants to say will win the child’s confidence and trust. This warmth of relationship established over the years is that parents best assurance that his child, as a child or in later years, will not stray too far from the biblical path of living. It’s certainly not always easy to keep calm when a son or daughter is expressing ugly feelings, especially if those feelings are directed against the parent. That parents, however it’s helping the child to gain emotional maturity when he can acknowledge the validity of the child’s emoitions and hear him through to the finish.