Acceptance the Start of Independence

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One of the first things you need to do when looking to develop independent learners is to accept your child/ren for who they are. Understanding their interests and learning styles. Of course, you need to realize their interests and learning styles might change as they mature, so this is an on-going process. 🙂 Understand this though, acceptance is the the start of the journey toward independence.

Types of Learning

Whether you have an audio, kinetic or visual learner makes a difference in the materials you purchase for them. The right materials make it easy for students to do their work. Despite that though, there will be days when they will need help.

What kind of help? Perhaps permission to sit back and stop when something is too hard. Perhaps it’s just to answer a question or to show another way to get to the correct answer. Or perhaps it’s just how to organize their workload. Don’t make assumptions about the help that’s needed, ask questions and work it out together. Though do pay attention, sometimes the best help you can give is not helping at all.

And sometimes the very best help you can give is the gift of organization. Organizing your legos, art supplies, office materials and the like. Helping your child organize their time and/or workload. And offering grace for mistakes and hard days.

Types of materials

There are so many different options to use for homeschooling as well.

You can do math using an online program, textbooks, unit studies, living books, hands-on manipulatives, and more.

History can be field trips, living books, textbooks, conversations with people, and can encompass food, music, geography, as well as art.

Every subject you can take has multiple ways in which to approach it. What works best for your child?

When my son was young we were watching the rain fall and he noticed it ran in streams. He was so excited by this he ran and got some little boats and small toys and went out into the rain. Which way would his boat go? Could it carry one of his toys? He spent a glorious hour out in the rain learning about water flow, dams, currents, flow speed, buoyancy and all things watery. It was a great afternoon of exploration. I followed it up later in the week with books from the library about water, rain, dams and more.

Letting him run through all his explorations, offering suggestions and wonder during his time of play, and then later filling in some of the gaps for him… the best learning ever! This has often proved the best way to learn with my lad. Explore the idea, run with it, and then fill in the gaps later.

Methods of Teaching

Unschooling, Charlotte Mason, unit study, classical, Robinson method, principle approach, Waldorf, and more. What style suits you?

There are so many different methods to homeschooling, and they don’t fit everyone (hence the variety). Will you choose a particular method, or become more eclectic over time? What method suits you and your children best? Take your time to examine the options and know that what suits you at one point might change into something different over time.