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Homeschool Learning Styles

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Understanding homeschool learning styles can mean the different between head butting or propelling ahead in your homeschool. Here at Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus, I have many tips to help you determine what is your child’s learning style.

Over 20 years ago, I not only started educating myself on the value of learning styles but helped other homeschool parents and my children to understand their learning style.

I remember reading a Swahili proverb that said “The greatest good we can do for others is not just to share our riches with them, but to reveal their riches to themselves.”

Best Homeschool Learning Styles Tips

For example, recognizing a need helps to identify a way to succeed. 

Learning styles are similar.

Educate a child about his strengths and weakness

When a child has a talent, we are quick to expand on that?

However, when a child has a weakness, we can equally be eager to help him understand tips in how to deal with his weaknesses.

Learning styles imply refers to a personality, the way a person likes to learn and the subjects he likes to learn.

Cathy Duffy is queen when it comes to helping us to understand learning styles.

Up until the time she coined the terms Perfect Paul, Sociable Sue, Wiggly Willy and Competent Carla, only trained professionals could understand what a concrete sequential learner was versus an abstract thinking learner. Uh? Sometimes they couldn’t understand either. That’s just between us though.

Also, much has been said about using the right or left side of our brain as the dominant side.

left brain drawing by Eden
right brain drawing by Eden
{Drawings Copyright Eden @ geeden blogspot} Please Pin from original source.

Why Your Child’s Learning Personality is Important

Because teaching styles are only part of choosing curriculum easily, I’ve included a link to my online course Identifying Your Homeschooled Childs Learning Personality.

How to Determine the Best Learning Styles Approach for Your Child? Determining the best learning style approach is much easier when you know about homeschool learning styles. A learning style is not something I thought about when I started homeschooling or even when my kids were struggling. However, had I taken time to learn what is the best learning style for each of my children, I would have saved myself unnecessary stress.

YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How to understand the way your child prefers to learn so that you can teach him in a way that he enjoys learning;
  • How to pinpoint your child’s learning personality;
  • A starting point in understanding (barring any special learning challenges or disabilities) and accepting your child’s preferred way of taking in information;
  • Understanding when the learning personality emerges; and
  • Teaching tips for each learning personality to stop the head-butting.

Too, much has been written about encouraging children to use both sides of their brain in a balanced way.

However, while I believe we should encourage use of both the analytical and creative sides, I also know we’re born with natural bents.

These natural bents are our personality or learning style.

Like a default setting, we can’t always reset it.

However, as homeschool educators we want to teach a child to use his strengths and to understand why he may struggle in other subjects.

How Homeschool Approaches Can be Aligned to Learning Styles

Too, we know there are many homeschool approaches in the homeschool world.

I’ve learned through my many years of homeschooling that approaches can be matched to learning styles.

But first, it’s important to determine what is your learning style and your child’s learning style.

How to Match Curriculum With Learning Style

Then, one of the most important reasons to understand learning styles is to help you make better choices when choosing curriculum.

Furthermore, the workbook, worktext, approach matches a learning style that normally does well in an academic setting.

Best Homeschool Learning Styles Tips
Homeschooling Learning Styles What's The Difference Anyway @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

When Should I Start Teaching Spelling in Homeschool?

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Spelling is more than just associating letters with sounds and deciphering them. Spelling is an essential element to writing clearly and convincingly.

Although I valued the usefulness of spelling prior to teaching my sons how to spell, it wasn’t until I started actually teaching that I was able to see that learning styles affected how each of my sons learned to spell.

I couldn’t possibly understand the struggle of spelling at the beginning of my journey because Mr. Senior 2013, like me, is a visual learner. He looked at words, formed a mental map in his head, and spelling came naturally for him.

I taught him phonics and he began to write the letters he knew associated with the sounds. Pretty easy I thought. Rocking along thinking that I was actually teaching spelling, Mr. Awesome came along and everything I thought I knew about teaching spelling could fit in a button.

My second child was not a visual learner, but a hands-on learner. Laying the foundation for spelling, which is phonics instruction took longer with him.

The Difference Between Readiness and Formal Spelling Instruction

Look at these these tips that I learned and want you know when you formally start teaching spelling.

Don’t be so quick to add formal spelling to your day.

Some programs start testing children right away like at Kindergarten level.

Teaching spelling is one thing and testing spelling is quite another thing.

Before you can test output (which is making the letter or letters the sound makes) a child needs enough time for input.

We live in an educational society that is impatient on seeing results. We have instagram and instant messaging, but there is no such thing as instant education.

Children need enough time manipulating letters and sounds in the formative years or before Kindergarten.

Phonics is the springboard to spelling.

I feel you should be very selective as to when you start testing or beginning a formal program; I feel equally important that stringing letters together to form words should not wait.

Teaching phonics early even before a child can write is foundational to strong spellers later.

One thing I did right in teaching my sons how to spell was to spend a great amount of time on manipulating letters.

Look at these activities that I mean by manipulating letters:

 

Do not let your child’s fine motor skills hold your child back from stringing letters together to form words.

When I started teaching Mr. Senior 2013, one of the very best investments I made was to purchase Spell Time.

 

It was pricey but I knew that I had at least 3 kids ahead of me to teach phonics and using it with each child for several years, I got 6+ years use out of it.

A few things that I loved about it was that it was portable, had several letters of the vowels and I could grab a few letters to teach one child spelling while my oldest son could play with the letters and put them on the mat.

The mats are self-teaching meaning that on the back of the letter tiles are pegs which fit only in the correct spot on the word mat.  It is self-checking because another letter won’t fit.

Bottom line, Mr. Senior 2013 could practice spelling alone while I was teaching the other boys.

Using this great teaching tool, I was able to give them a strong start to phonics before they learned how to write.

Spelling rules are just tools.

Remember too that in English the pronunciation of a word at times gives very little help as to the spelling.

Through the years, I feel I have swung like a pendulum back and forth between constant memorization of rules to very little work remembering them.

I have learned that balance is needed instead of swamping them with too many rules or not giving them any.

Your child needs to understand that though beginning phonics is easy, the English language is not predictable all the time.

Giving my middle son not only direct phonics instruction but memorization along with the rules armed him with tools he needed to encode (spell).

All About Spelling

So it takes time for a child to understand those rules and this is best done after they have been immersed in phonics instruction.

Most spelling programs as I mentioned earlier are focused solely on the testing part of the program instead of activities like games, songs, stories, puzzle word search and fun unscrambling exercises to help a child learn through all senses.

It has been my experience that waiting to the end of first grade or the beginning of second grade to introduce formal spelling, which requires output immediately, gives your child a lot of hands-on practice with sounds.

Natural spelling through writing  and copywork were also key things I did in our day.

By delaying formal spelling until second grade, my middle son came in armed and ready to tackle the tests.

He even jumped two levels in spelling one year because we were immersed in letter fun.

Do immerse your children with the fun of sounds and don’t be so quick to add a formal spelling program if the emphasis is on constant testing.

When Should I Start Teaching Spelling in Homeschool @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

 

 

 

 

 

You’ll love these other tips:

What grade do you start formal spelling?

Hugs and love ya,

 

3 Smart Tips to Avoiding Busywork in Homeschooling

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

3 Smart Tips to Avoiding Busywork in Homeschooling @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool PlusAvoiding busywork in homeschooling is one of the lures that drew us to homeschooling.

We understand busywork to be any resource that goes beyond what the child needs to master the material.

Should our Homeschool Schedule Include Planning Every Minute?

Simple enough. But, does busywork have practical value or is it – well just busywork?

Look at these 3 smart tips to avoiding busywork in homeschooling and knowing when to turn busywork into meaningful review.

Measure the work for your child and not a classroom.

I made this mistake when using curriculum.

For example, one of my favorite grammar programs is Rod and Staff during the younger grades.

Shortly after using it, I realized that there was an enormous amount of review for a classroom setting.

There was way more review than my sons needed to master the concepts.

Key to avoiding busywork was to find just the right dose of work needed for each of my sons to master the material.  It was different for each of my sons but it wasn’t ever close to what a classroom needed.

Can busywork change to meaningful learning?

Too, I learned that I had to change my thinking about some of the activities I had planned.

For example, doing a craft by a child could be meaningful or meaningless, depending on his personality or needs.

I have shared many times that coloring pages didn’t particularly make my boys squeal with delight at any age.

However, when I switched to museum quality coloring books like Dover Nature Coloring Book or like a Edupress Solar System Coloring Book, coloring took on meaningful learning.

Coloring then became a valuable part of our learning day instead of busywork I added at the end of the day.

Create balanced lesson plans that work.

The last tip has to do with your experience in balancing your homeschool day.

If your day is too short, your children may have too much time on their hands. In other words, sibling rivalry may follow because children are not busy.

The value of play and time alone to stimulate their imagination is an intrinsic part of homeschooling.

However, while children are being trained to wisely use their time with meaningful projects they savor like legos, creative play and pursuing hobbies, they still need help to make their day productive.

If you find that your day ends too short, then add activities to guide your children to make their time purposeful.

When an activity is adding no value to your day, then it’s busywork.  It is a time drain and busywork can be at the very heart of why it can be hard to get done all that is planned for the day.

Don’t forget to look for ways to turn activities into meaningful learning.

The learning style of your child is important because you may need to add more crafts and activities or he may be the type of child that rolls his eyes when you mention crafts. Give him a book instead to read about what he needs to know and move one.

It takes practice to gauge the amount of work each child needs to master concepts.  Remember you can always add more review if they are not grasping a point.  But you don’t want to breed a resistant learner from constant review or busywork when it is not needed.

Lastly, if you find that your day is too short and the children are not filling their time with productive play, guide them to the activities you want them to do.

My boys knew I didn’t like a messy house but I was hindering them from spending productive time exploring a broken computer they wanted to take apart.   Sometimes they need a little coaxing from you and too they need to know that it’s okay to spread out their hobbies.

How about you? Can you use the 3 smart tips to measure your homeschool day?

Also, look at these tips:
Stop the Homeschool Time Drain
How Can I Achieve Simple Homeschooling?

Hugs and love ya,

 

Homeschooling for the Love of Learning – Does It Really Work?

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Besides building Godly character, homeschooling for the love of learning was also one of the primary reasons homeschooling pioneers touted homeschooling.

Does that philosophy still hold true today?

Are the Methods of Homeschooling Outdated?

Does homeschooling for the lifelong love of learning mean you are more interested in having fun than in helping your child advance in academics?

Some homeschoolers think so.

Not every homeschooler recognizes the value of instilling the love of learning in their children.

Homeschooling for the Love of Learning - Does It Really Work @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool PlusTake a look at some of these attitudes that can go from determined to succeed to devastating effects in the long run.

  • When your sole focus is on planning long term only for academic advancement like AP and CLEP.
  • When your child’s desire to love learning is secondary to your foremost goal of achieving academic excellence.
  • When your homeschool plans are constantly pushing your child through the grades regardless of his age.
  • When year after year, your homeschool lesson plans seem to be always ambitious.
  • When you know that your child is capable of college level work in junior high so you pile on the academics because he is bright and hard working.
  • When complaining by your child is met by you with a tough attitude.

Only you can determine what course you are on.

Instead of getting you to change your philosophy, I want to share the results of some of the families I have known through my 12+ years of homeschooling.

Many of those young kids are now grown.  Some are in college, some have started families of their own and some are considering homeschooling their children.  However, some are not considering homeschooling their own children.  Why?

From Childhood to Homeschooling Curriculum

The adult children are now pushing back at their parents.  Robbed of a childhood where they could have spent endless hours playing, adult children recognize that they were burdened with adulthood too soon.

Other families were met with resentment and outright hostility much sooner in their journey like when their teen started high school.

Instead of following the course the homeschool parent set out for him, one teen I knew rebelled and move out while still in high school.

How sad for those parents who now lost their opportunity for a relationship with their son.



Teens and homeschooled adult children have a way of biting back.  It is dangerous to deliberately year after year put an enormous amount of pressure on a child, gifted or otherwise.

It is one thing for us as parents to want our children to succeed, but it’s quite another to be over demanding of our children and cause them to lose their only childhood.

It is amazing too that while a homeschool parent can sabotage a child’s love of learning they can also be the one that rejuvenates a child’s love of learning.

The power we wield as parents should not be taken lightly because it affects a child lifelong.

When a child’s intrinsic love of learning is fed naturally while balancing a high academic standard, these families have been the ones to not only succeed academically but to maintain a strong bond with their adult child.

Homeschooling for the lifelong love of learning is not only the building block to a strong character but it is the impetus for self-learning.  Self-learning is like a glue that sticks way beyond your few short years of homeschooling.

Do you allow enough free time for self-discovery which will propel your children to homeschool for the lifelong love of learning?

Hugs and love ya,

 

Read on:
What is REAL Homeschooling? Homebound, Co-op, or Public School at Home.
When You Feel Like a Homeschool Failure
3 Reasons You Wouldn’t Want to Homeschool

Should You Switch to a 4-Day Homeschool Schedule?

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Switching to a 4-day homeschool schedule for a majority of my journey is not only one of the best homeschooling tips I can share, but it saved my sanity when many things about home and school collided. Addressing some of your concerns first and then sharing the numerous reasons why the advantages of homeschooling a 4-day week outweighed a 5 day schedule, I hope these tidbits will help you too.

One of the greatest factors for those hesitant to switch to a 4-day homeschool schedule has to do with the amount of weeks or hours needed to meet state requirements.

4-Day Homeschool Schedule

While it’s true that you need 45 weeks instead of 36 weeks, you can still homeschool a 4-day schedule if you stretched out your homeschool year.

It doesn’t even mean you have to school year round, though I am here to tell you flat out that the advantages of homeschooling year round blew away an abrupt stop and start each year.

Should You Switch to a 4-Day Homeschool Schedule?

Schooling year round doesn’t mean all work and no play, but that is another topic. You can check out How to Plan for & Homeschool Year Round here.

Also, be sure you look at my YouTube video How to Create a Homeschool Schedule You Can Stick to

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The second concern I have seen is a mindset that unless we school 5 days we are not really schooling or that we could get behind.  Maybe this idea stems from the fact that we are pressured to conform to the schedule the workforce is keeping.

Clearing my mind of how I thought school was suppose to happen, I set out to do what was best for my family.I do want to mention too that the ages of your children makes a difference in shaping your viewpoint on adopting a homeschool schedule. Having homeschooled from the beginning when all of my kids were little and having no help with the housework gave me the power to move against the norm.

Balancing the weeks we needed to school with the needs of my family took priority.

Advantage of 4-day Homeschool Schedule

Look at some of the advantages of a 4-day homeschool schedule.

When I switched, I maintained more consistency.

Nothing sets back a homeschool year more or builds resistance quickly in a child then to constantly start and stop because you get behind on housework or are just worn out from the constant grind.

When we started a 4-day homeschool schedule, the days were more full and my weeks more consistent because I didn’t start my week depleted of physical energy.

The quality of my teaching went up.

If you are the kind of person that can proceed forward with the house somewhat messed up (I promise I tried hard to do this year after year), I am still learning to follow your relaxed manner.

This is something that can’t be ignored when you are homeschooling.

Either you are more relaxed about your surroundings not as tidy or you are not as forgiving about a messy atmosphere. There is no right or wrong on this because as moms we are wired differently. It is just what is right for your personality.

I realized right away that I could not function when I felt chaos existed in my home. The measuring point is if it hampers and paralyzes you from giving your children 100 percent for the day then it needs to be addressed.

When my mind was heavy with thinking about things I have to still do in the house, it did not make me the kind of teacher I wanted to be.

Instead of thinking it wasn’t important to have my mind relatively free of stress, I embraced my need to have things organized before I started my day.

I used Mondays for cleaning, to have a slower start to my week, to get some of my cooking done, and to look over my lesson plans for the week.

Your week ends or begins on a positive note each month and that triggers a sticking power to homeschooling.

Homeschooling Tuesday through Friday like I did for many, many years or homeschooling Monday through Thursday gave me more control over my time.

It propelled me through each year because I took time on the front end of the week to prepare for school. It ended up being a power booster to keep on homeschooling.

There was a plan for the unexpected.

Another surprising advantage was that I planned for the unexpected.

I find this ironic because I love to plan, but I never gave myself an option for the unexpected in my life.

If I was running a public school classroom this would make no difference, but I am not.

Being at home where life happens, I was more organized because I didn’t have every moment of my life planned.

Feelings of being behind and stressed out that we were not covering what we needed to started to fade.

The bottom line was I had wiggle room in my schedule each week.

Dad’s schedule and support is important.

Though a majority of the teaching was always done by me, it was important to me that when my husband’s scheduled changed that we could spend more time together.

For a good part of our homeschooling journey, he had a set work schedule.  But there were many times during the years that our business was slow and he took advantage of spending that time with us.

Having a 4-day week lesson plan always ready, it didn’t matter which day we took off.  We always had a day to spend with dad because our week did not have every day planned.

Dos and Don’ts of a 4-Day Homeschool Schedule

Look at some of these dos and don’ts when switching to a 4-day homeschool schedule.

Don’t cram 5 days into 4 days. 

Avoiding stress is my goal and so cramming 5 days of lessons into 4 days of school is not a doable plan to keep you homeschooling for years.

This may be good for one or two years if you need it, but it is a recipe for exhaustion if you implement it for many years.

Schooling year round made my 4-day homeschool schedule doable.

Just relax and plod along and remember that schooling year round doesn’t mean you can’t have off weeks or months. They are just spread out during the year so that the time off fits your family.

Do decide how to use the day off.

Deciding to switch to a 4-day homeschool schedule only works if you value the reason you are switching.

For me, because all the children were little and I had very little help with the housework and in running our business, I knew I needed a day at the beginning of the work week to unwind when the Mr. was back at work.

I wanted a slower start to the week and doing that gave me momentum for during the week.

Though I say it was a day off, it ended up turning into a day of relaxed housework and savoring my lesson planning time.

As the kids grew and got older, I had them cleaning the house after school.  We still kept a 4-day schedule but started taking off Fridays.

We used that day for field trips, shopping, swimming or just enjoying the slow days of summer or beautiful weather in fall.

Again, I find it amusing how life and homeschool has turned out now as I look back.

Though I say I followed a 4-day homeschool schedule, my kids still did many educational activities, though unplanned by me on our day off.

They ended up watching educational movies, doing a project, or even if it was just playing outside and in the dirt, they were still investigating, exploring and learning.

A lot of weeks, I counted our day off as homeschooling because of some of the projects the kids would find to do.

Do write our your schedule and study it.

I am a huge advocate of writing it all out because seeing where your homeschool year starts and ends keeps your goals clear in mind.

Too, you are not bothered with the hype of homeschool schedules because you have set a pace that works for your family.

Don’t worry that your stress free schedule seems effortless. Do you really need complicated homeschooling?

Homeschooling is complicated enough. There is no need to constantly question ourselves because we don’t have all the struggles everybody else is having.

Finding your groove to homeschooling can be not only fulfilling, but painless.

Managing your time means to make your time more meaningful while maintaining spontaneity.

A 4-day homeschool schedule was key to not only maintaining my house suitable for us to live in, but advancing to more rigorous academics.

Sitting down to begin our week, we were armed with a full day of activities, rested, and ready to learn!

What about you? Are you still struggling with a schedule that works for your family?

Should You Switch to a 4-Day Homeschool Schedule?

You also love these other tips:

Hugs and love ya,

Should You Switch to a 4-day Homeschool Schedule @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus