homeschool

Homeschool Learning Styles

June 4, 2015 | 9 Comments
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.”

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.

{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.

6 Easy Ways to Identify the Charlotte Mason Homeschool Style

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.

35+ Best Homeschool Curriculum By Learning Style (free printable)

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

Mega List of Workbook Style Homeschool Curriculum For K to 12 Kids

8 Best Classical Style History Curriculum for a Classical Learning Style

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

Rules for Homeschool Co-ops. Essential or Excessive?

May 20, 2015 | 3 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Whether rules for homeschool co-ops are essential or excessive shouldn’t depend on whether you are the hard working homeschool leader or the appreciative homeschooling attendee.

Unfortunately, this can be the case when you have a structured homeschool co-op.

There are several things that can affect whether a homeschool co-op has rules that literally fill up a booklet or they have informal guidelines.

One thing that can affect rules, which are hotly debated go to the very root of parenting style.

Understanding why rules are in place always helped my family to not let it sour us about attending homeschool co-ops.

Not only do some leaders have rules in place because a tragic incident may have happened before, but when you rent a room, normally the establishment has rules in place too.

For example, one place we rented had a very busy parking lot. With cars backing up and constantly going back and forth, we had to have rules in place for the kids’ safety.

Though none of the girls serving on the board of the homeschool co-op I led were helicopter parents, we would never want any harm to come to any child. We had to make rules, like a child could not go alone to the bathroom or wander around alone at the building.

Middle and high school kids did not have to be accompanied but you would be surprised at how many parents thought it was okay for a younger children to go accompanied because they felt their child was old enough to watch for traffic. Maybe so or maybe not.

Too, our group was responsible for cleaning the bathrooms after the co-op. Many moms expressed their gratefulness for cleaning a bathroom where young kids were not left unattended. Enough said.

Another rule we were adamant about that would sometimes bristle the hair of new families attending our co-op is that our co-op was not a drop and run place.

We required the parents to be there for the co-op. We were not a babysitting service, the disciplining police or teen dating chaperones.

Some co-ops are very large and have parents assigned for those roles. However, because we chose to run our co-op informally and not a mini version of public school, we required parent attendance.

As the homeschool leaders we went to great lengths to treat every child like our own when they were misbehaving. Kindness and love is always the way to treat every child at the homeschool co-op.

What Keeps Your Homeschool Co-op From Getting Better?

However, when that didn’t work, mom and dad know their child best. Discipline has to be applied in the right measure with each child and because kid’s feelings can be very tender, it is a role for the parent.

Being reasonable is also a must for every homeschool leader. When needed we made reasonable exceptions to our rules.

For example, we had one family that was expecting another child and mom couldn’t attend one of our biggest co-ops of the year. She asked another family to be responsible for her kids who didn’t want to miss out on the fun.

We were more than glad to accommodate this family because all of their kids were so well behaved and supportive of the co-op.

The very basic rule for any of our excursions or co-ops was that children were well-behaved and showed up ready to learn.

Of course for toddlers, it was always okay for them to toddle around instead of mom having to fight and hold them all the time in her lap.

When our older children were still, whether standing or sitting, our toddlers eventually modeled the example of our older children as they grew older.

It is very normal in a lot of co-ops for toddlers to move around and we expect our older kids to learn the same way they do when they are home, which is to tolerate the little ones and learn to listen even if the toddler is a bit distracting.

It is different if a toddler is loud and crying, then our moms would address their needs. However, toddlers can learn early on that when we come together, it is for the purpose of learning together and it starts by letting them see what is going on.

Our toddlers were not in danger of being ran over because older kids did not rough house. We simply did not have to put up with kids that couldn’t behave.

Having a few, but meaningful rules was essential in our homeschool co-op. We always appreciated it when parents would ask the thinking behind the rules because we didn’t make them needlessly.

When the formal part of the homeschool co-op was going on, we expected the same behavior as if they were at home doing school. When the co-op was over and it was time to have fun and socialize, our group still followed the rules.

We were blessed to have a great group of moms and dads who cared about all the kids’ safety and understood that rules were in place as a protection.

How about you? Do you attend a homeschool co-op where you feel that some rules are meaningless?

Hugs and love ya,

Also, look at:
Unlocking the Homeschool Leader Within You
Look at my 5 day series of a Homeschooling Co-op Convert

How can I be sure I cover EVERYTHING this year?

April 19, 2015 | 18 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

When I hear the question how can I be sure I cover EVERYTHING this year, my mind flashes back to my many years of homeschooling when I too felt the same way.

Teaching EVERYTHING In Your Homeschool

One point I stress is to be balanced in your teaching. This is important because it gives you a changed direction to your efforts.

Switch your direction from checking off a list of subjects for the day to intentionally teaching educational independence.

Instead of focusing on EVERYTHING, focus on the skills your children need to have so they can learn ANYTHING.

This is a completely different concept from the way most kids have been taught up to the time you begin homeschooling.

How can I be sure I cover EVERYTHING this year?

Teach your children to be independent instead of daily spoon feeding.

We already do it if you think about it.

For example, the other day Tiny tried to ask me a question, which he should have known.

Instead of looking up what a word meant, he wanted me to simply tell him the answer.

Each situation is different and at times, I do explain what a word means.

But as the teacher, I also knew what kind of effort he had been putting forth in writing his composition for the day.

He was in a get it over with mood because his mind was more interested in the games he could play later after school.

Instant Education – Do Our Children Pay the Price?

Teaching him to value his independent learning time and also because I knew the meaning of the word would stick, I required him to look up the word.

Yes, it would have been easier for me to give him the answer so that he could finish with his composition and move on to the next subject, but in the process I would not be teaching him everything.

It is not even realistic nor a trait of modesty to think we will teach our children everything.

When our eagerness turns to anxiety, it can have a devastating affect on our children.

Personally, I never thought that pushing EVERYTHING onto my children as being a lack of modesty on my part because I certainly did not know everything.

What was I teaching my children? That we could read a few books and be an expert in that subject? Certainly not.

Also, my pushing an everything education at them might be depriving my children of a childhood because I expected instant performance.

The public educational system is in a hurry to label our children as behind, ahead, gifted or whatever new politically correct term that will arrive in the future.

Skills our children will need are ones that will last a life time like reading, math, research skills. and technical know-how in this modern age.

Too, whenever did life skills and plain practical sense like opening a bank account, trying to live a debt free life, running a household, making good decisions as the head of a household ever be counted as less important?

Are we raising dependent or educated independent children?

Harmonious Homeschool

Do you know that some children do not know how to use a library let alone research resource materials?

Equipping our children to weigh valuable resources found on the internet versus valueless ones is vital today.

With the amount of information overload we have access to, kids need to know the difference.

Children’s dictionaries, student dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias and atlases are resources that are priceless as we teach our children a lifelong love of learning.

Too we want resources that give us an idea of basic subjects because we don’t want to compromise our rigorous standards.

The most basic subjects are arithmetic, language arts, history and science.

Public schools nowadays cut back on subjects that also enrich our lives.

Enrichment, the very thing that causes children to accelerate in their education is the first thing stripped from it.

In homeschooling, we can add art, foreign language, drama, PE, dance, 4H and sports.

All of these subjects help to round out our children but more important they instill an appetite for learning everything that is not easily quenched.

Curriculum, course of studies, and checklists are just guides, but they don’t take importance over the goals we have set for our family.

Therein lies the secret to equipping our children with everything they need to know.

When looking back now, it’s liberating to know that teaching children how to learn everything they want to know is easier than I even imagined.

Self-Education. Expert or Novice Status

The key was to give them the freedom to explore what interests them and then give them keys to self-education.

There are those that will always scoff at the ideas of self-education thinking and that we only cover broad strokes.

It has been my experience that a scholar can be born from a slacker and infused to knowing everything about the details of any subject he deems worth to cover.

So next time someone asks you how are you going to teach EVERYTHING, let them know you don’t have to.

We don’t know everything. You are leading them to teach themselves ANYTHING they want to know.

Beside, we were made to learn lifelong and not in just the short few years our children reach high school and graduate.

How do you answer those who ask you about homeschooling gaps?

Look at these other helps and tips:

Hugs and love ya,

6 Ways to Organize Your Homeschooled High School Teen

April 17, 2015 | 7 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Organization is not something we should just learn our self, but it’s a blessing we need to pass on to our homeschooled high school teen.

6 Ways to Organize Your Homeschooled High School Teen @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Look at these 6 ways to organize your homeschooled high school teen.

1. Dedicated space.

Source: PBteen

There is nothing more important to helping your teen stay organized than having a place for “it all”.

From the time they start learning to drive until the time they graduate, they have a mounting amount of things to take up their space.

Like you, they too need to know that when they put something away, somebody else will not move it.
Having both a dedicated space to store their items and to study at will help them to learn to manage their space.

2. Coloring is for High School.

If you have a teen that loves to organize, then something that makes a young organizer get giddy is a not only a new set of high lighters, but a color coordinating system.

I allow high lighting in books at any level if it will help my boys retain their information.
Yes, I know the book won’t have any resale value, but I am foremost concerned with teaching my boys a method to study.
They are all visual learners and so having an easy system for remembering new words and key points when studying is one I encourage.
Finding answers to questions happens when the answer is highlighted or underlined.
Too help them develop a code for each color.
For example, we used green for new words, then reviewing material becomes a snap.

3. Written or Digital Planner.

Though I love techie things, I found that having a paper planner or just even a daily checklist if a planner sounds cumbersome to a teen was a better fit for us than a digital device.

Student Planner 15 min increments editable 1

Student Planner 15 min increments editable 2

(2 Page View for the Student Planner – Tracking in 15 minute increments.)

I managed my boys’ time on line and because being on the internet was something they could not do in private, we found it easier to manage their time through easy paper checklists.

4. Subject Balance.

Taking their notebooks, planners or checklists with them in their bedrooms gave my kids time to look over what they actually did versus what we planned.
Like us, they can over plan.
Learning to balance the time they spend on each subject is critical to keeping the flow to their day balance.
High school is the time to learn to organize subjects differently.
For example, like a lot of college or upper level subjects, they may tackle one or two subjects intensely and then move on to others.
What matters is what is accomplished at the end of a semester or at the end of however your track a school term.
Let them try different approaches to organizing the approach they take to school subjects while they live with you.
That is the time to see whether a creative idea works or not.

5. Paper Management.

Mr. Senior 2013 came up with his own system of managing pages for assignments for the week.
Actually, it was a perfect example of how our children will model our behavior if we put forth a bit of effort.
He adopted a system I had used for years, which was pulling the pages out of a workbook or printing them off for the week from the internet and placing them in an organized bin.

Homeschool High School Student Organization @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

One of the reasons I fell in love with this system was that it showed my kids what was expected each week and they could get started quickly without waiting on me to present their work to them for the day.
Nowadays, they call it a workbox system, but I still love organized bins that hold weekly assignments.
They are super compact if you are short on space and everybody can access them and see what is expected each week.

6. Supplies Matter.

Get your teen excited about an organized lifestyle by providing them with cool supplies.

Whether you’re starting a new school year or want to get your teen excited about organizing, sleek and snazzy supplies can infuse a crush for organizing.
One or two snazzy pieces to organize their supplies will give them a kick start to organizing.
In a world that teaches that we constantly need more of everything to be happy, our teens will be faced with the same decisions about trying to keep their lives clutter free.
Organize your homeschooled high school student now because organizing chaos never worked.
Organization at the high school level is not only the beginning to successfully learning how to follow a workable schedule but to mastering the skills needed for savoring life.

What about you? How do you organize your teen for high school?

Homeschool Day: 3 Smart Strategies to Fitting It All In

April 6, 2015 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I can’t drive and talk on the phone at the same time and have any kind of quality conversation much less pay attention to my driving. Add in a homeschool day and In this day and age it’s called multitasking.

I really don’t like that term in my homeschooling day because it makes me think that I am not giving 100% to the task on hand.

Not only do I not feel productive while driving and talking, but in a lot of places it is illegal because of the dangers.

Simply put, we can get side-tracked.

Homeschool Day: 3 Smart Strategies to Fitting It All In

1. Homeschool Prioritizing = Important Things First

Prioritizing is a term I prefer to use because that is really what a homeschool day is about.

Did you know that prioritizing is the secret in not surviving homeschool, but treasuring each day?

Homeschooling is a long trek and stacking all the things we want to do in our day by multitasking can leave us sidetracked with very little ability to do what is needed.

Prioritizing your tasks in order of importance is the key to a stress free day.

I am not really even talking about getting an early start in the day even though this proves very successful for most homeschoolers.

What you need to remember is that what ever time is first in your day, that time needs to be your school zone.

Your teaching needs to be given priority so that before anything else comes up, you have accomplished some of your goals.

2. Do Opposite Planning

Another mistake I was making for many years is setting my homeschool schedule to the beat of my oldest son.

If your household is filled with lots of little ones, your rhythm needs to beat to the youngest and not to the oldest child.

Many years ago, I heard David Hazell of my Father’s World give the best piece of advice.

He said the oldest child needs to be dethroned.So true! In other words, quit setting the schedule to suit them.

We worry so much about our oldest child that he may view his time as absolute to the other children’s time.

It is okay to worry about doing school with them, we need to be conscientious.

However, the lessons we teach our oldest child about patience, forgiveness and an independent attitude to pursue some learning on their own is what homeschooling really is about.

How does this fit in with getting it all in the day? We are moms first and it always take priority.

Caring for our family’s needs, whether it means cradling the toddler, hugging the preschoolers or wiping the tears of a hormonal middle schooler, our homeschool schedule needs to work around our family.

3. You Have to Plan

Sample Homeschool Schedules

Another tip for maintaining a calm flow to your day is to plan it or schedule it. Don’t let a schedule stranglehold you.

A homeschool schedule is a like a vacation plan. You use it to be sure you don’t miss any of the important things along the way.

It is a guide to your day but should never be viewed as another stress inducer. It points your direction so that you keep going along.

Look at two of my homeschool schedules I followed for quite a few years.

Older Household

Mon. off.

Tue – Fri. School

9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

2:00 – 4:00 reading time, chore time and quiet time.

Younger Household.

Mon. off

Tues – Friday School

10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

1:00 p..m. – 3:00 p.m. school (school, hopefully while the toddler and preschooler napped)

3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. chore time and quiet time.

I even did school on Saturday one year when I had a toddler and a newborn. The Mr. was home and I could get so much accomplished with my oldest son.

If you love white chalkboards like I do, then you’ll love this whiteboard for organizing.

Instead of panting through the day and giving homeschooling, cooking or caring for the little ones with meager energy, prioritize your day.

Seasons of time pass by quickly. Don’t spend precious homeschool days that won’t last forever by pushing your limits to the max.

And if you need more help, you’ll love my book, Homeschooling 31 Day Boot Camp for New Homeschoolers: When You Don’t Know Where to Begin Paperback.

You’ll like these other posts and helps:

Homeschool Day. 3 Smart Strategies to Fitting it ALL In @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

What does your homeschool schedule look like now?