One of the most beautiful things about homeschooling is that there isn’t just one way to do it. Chances are that the way you conduct your classes on the first day will not be the way you will be conducting it one year from now. You will learn by experimenting and you will see what works best for your children. You will eventually find yourself creating a unique style that suits your family best.
Just as every family and learner is unique, every homeschool is unique. As you aren’t bound by social conventions and a school system, it is really up to you to shape your home learning environment. It should be done in a way that suits your children’s individual needs. In this section, we will explore a few things you can experiment with.
Homeschooling or Unschooling
The most radically opposite would be unschooling. Unschooling is the philosophy that children don’t need instruction or syllabi and will learn whatever they need to learn on their own whenever the time is right. Unschoolers tend to leave their children to play and trust them to learn on their own whenever they want to. We prefer some way of evaluating how much my children are learning and so we follow a set syllabus for Maths, English, Urdu and Islamic Studies, yet we also leave aside time daily for them to explore and learn whatever they want to learn.
By doing so, I am able to homeschool them for a few hours a day focusing on the most important subjects, while leaving them to unschool for the rest of the day. Experiment with these different styles to see which one suits your family best.
Few hours or many hours of homeschooling
We arrived at this conclusion after trying various methods. We learned earlier on that if we try schooling them for five hours, they get very drained and tired and end up remembering less. If we keep it short, they complete all their work faster and remember it better too.
In this way, our homeschool has become one of short lessons covered in a few short hours, leaving the kids with enough time to be themselves, play, explore, and learn on their own.
However, we do know of families that prefer to sit intensively for many hours a day focused on homeschooling, and it seems to work for them. Try out both options and see which method suits your family better. Morning, Afternoon, or Evening, as already explained, you are not bound by social norms. This means you don’t even have to homeschool them in the morning if you are not a morning people.
In fact, one of the reasons that we love homeschooling is that our entire family can wake up at 8 am and start school at 9 am and nobody will bother us for waking up late. We don’t have to sit in morning traffic on the way to school either, which is a huge bonus for us.
In our home, homeschooling takes place between 9 am and midday, while my kids attend Islamic classes between 3 pm and 5 pm. This gives them enough time to relax and play and helps them absorb whatever is learned in both sets of classes.
Some families prefer to homeschool in the afternoon, thus allowing the kids to wake up late and play all morning. They find this easier, and it works well for them.
Some families conduct homeschooling in the evenings. This is a good idea for families in which both parents work. The children can spend the daytime having fun and then study with their parents in the evening after work.
Every family is different, and you can explore and figure out which times of the day your children learn best and make that your official homeschooling hours. This is just another thing to experiment with.
Homework or not
Some may disagree; you may even disagree. This is something you will have to experiment with and figure out for yourself. Perhaps you would prefer teaching them for three hours and then giving them extra homework for the evening to consolidate it. If this works for you, then why not?
To me, homework is part of the school system as the teachers are not able to give students individual attention or cover as much work as they would like in class, so they need to do work at home to make up for it. With homeschool, this isn’t the case, and children are able to learn whatever they need to learn within schooling hours, so I personally see no need for homework.
Creativity and Experimentation
Don’t stop experimenting with ways to make homeschooling the best possible learning experience for your children.
