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Archive for the ‘High School’ Category

by Romona Weston

Many parents like you have thought about the possibilities of homeschooling their children through high school. After all, every responsible and loving parent wants the very best for their offspring. The simple truth is that whether you send your child to high school or teach them yourself, your decision will impact them for the rest of their lives. I think it’s a decision worth taking some time to think about.

Some Advantages of Home Schooling through High School

• Greater Focus on Learning – Studies have shown that only a third of the average school day is focused on academic subjects. By having one-on-one support, either from yourself or an online tutor, you can maximise your son or daughter’s learning time.
• Reducing Peer Pressure – In the school environment, there is a lot of pressure to ‘fit in’ with a group. Some sensitive youngsters can be influenced into misbehaving in order to appear ‘cool’ to their classmates. Even if your children manage to withstand peer pressure, its very existence can disrupt learning.
• Avoiding Sex and Drugs - You have probably worried that, one day, your innocent child will be exposed to the realities of sex and drugs. In high school, this might happen far earlier than you are happy with. Home schooling enables you to protect your son or daughter from the harsh realities of life until you feel they are ready to cope with them.
• A Safer Physical Space – It is impossible for teachers to see everything that happens during school, especially in the schoolyard. Physical and verbal attacks and ongoing bullying can make school a terrifying place for some children and even general play can lead to dangerous risk-taking. Home schooling protects your offspring from some of these dangers.
• More Extra-Curricular Time – With no travelling time to and from school, your child has more time available to get ready for and attend any extra classes, groups, choirs, musical interests, community service, church involvement that they are drawn to.
• Prolonging Parental Influence – As loving and moral parents you have already built a secure foundation for your child’s future. With home schooling you can continue that process, guiding and mentoring your son or daughter through the ups and downs of academic life.
• Building Strong Families – With your children effectively out of your care for six to eight hours a day, family bonds can be eroded and your cherished values can start to slide. With home schooling, your family relationships can continue to grow from strength to strength, creating a happier home.
• Customize your Child’s Learning – One of the greatest benefits of home schooling is your ability to tailor your child’s education to their own learning style, areas of interest and pace. In high school, your offspring are in competition with the rest of the class and can get bored or left behind if the pace doesn’t suit them.
• Increased Flexibility – Another great reason to consider home schooling is flexibility. Not only can you structure the learning day to suit your family life, you can take family holidays at convenient times.
• Results – At the end of the day, the most important reason to turn to home schooling is that it works. Children who have been taught at home are typically more mature, better socialized and have a bigger vocabulary than their high school counterparts. Research carried out by Dr. Brian Ray revealed that children who were home schooled were no less likely to enter college and were more satisfied with their work, happier with their lives and more involved in civic life than their high school peers.

Drawbacks of Home Schooling

Of course, home schooling is not an educational cure-all; there will still be bumps in the road. Here are a couple of common worries:

• Learning Difficult Subjects – One of the greatest fears for parent-teachers is that they will be unable to master the subjects themselves. Although some subjects will be unfamiliar at first, perseverance will not only bring success, you will be providing a good role model as you show your child how to be an independent learner.
• Having No Time Away From Your Children – Spending most of every day with your children may be something you are looking forward to or are dreading. Either way, there are bound to be times when you both get fed up with each other’s company. Will you be able to adapt to this level of intensity?

If you do decide that home schooling is for your family, you will need to check out your state’s requirements first. Sometimes (e.g. in Texas and Michigan), you won’t even have to inform your state that you are home schooling. In New York, on the other hand, you may need to undertake teacher training and agree to home visits.

In preparation for home schooling, you will also need to consider which core courses you have to include in your curriculum, which electives and what extra-curricular activities, based on your child’s interests and goals.

Whatever your decision, you owe it to your child to consider carefully whether home schooling is their path to a happy, successful work and family life.

Romona Weston and her family lives in the beautiful Amish countryside in Lancaster County, PA. She is a mom to 7 beautiful children and a wife to a wonderful man. Romona has been homeschooling for over 20 years, and loves every aspect of learning as a family. In her spare time, she loves to hike, write and organize. She is a Web Publisher who started a review blog on the best stainless steel top kitchen islands carts and rolling kitchencarts. As researcher rather than a seller, she presents an unbiased view of products. You can read her reviews at http://www.kitchencarts360.com

by Kenneth Williams

“Mom, I just can’t do Algebra.” Of course you’d love to help. But ‘Algebra’? It’s a bit outside of a parent’s Job Description isn’t it? The good news is you CAN help. And you don’t have to be mathematically minded, either.

All you need is some patience, a little creativity, and being able to see the world through your child’s eyes. Imagine being led into an Egyptian temple, being shown a wall full of weird-looking hieroglyphics, and being asked to translate them. That’s how Algebra feels to some kids.

Your mission is to help your kid understand why we’re using hieroglyphics. And then how to use them to solve simple problems. Here’s how you do that:

*** PHASE 1: Get used to the language ***

Algebra uses abbreviations. It’s therefore vital your child is comfortable using abbreviations in daily life. Explain what abbreviations are and how they’re used.

For example, the name Frederick is abbreviated to Fred. The United States is often abbreviated to the USA or even just the US. And US states are also abbreviated. New York becomes NY, New Jersey becomes NJ.

Once the basic theory is understood, start introducing abbreviations around the home. There are many ways of doing this. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

~~ Throw a party ~~

Use abbreviations to build up a guest list of invitees.

Bill becomes B.

Marcy becomes M.

And if there’s a Jim and a John, use J1 and J2. Or Ji and Jo. Or use surnames to get JW and JS.

~~ Try some home cooking ~~

Teach your child how to make pancakes and give them the recipe as a formula:

2f + 2e + m + s

Where: f=flour, m=milk, s=sugar, e=eggs.

(Okay, I’m no chef, but you get the idea.)

~~ Design a ‘healthy eating’ schedule ~~

Yes, a little home algebra can even help your family eat more healthily. Create abbreviations for oranges, apples, bananas, broccoli, celery, etc. Then plan out your weekly schedule:

Mon: o + a + ba + 2br Tue: 2ce + p + o + a Wed: m + 2o etc.

Once your schedule is drawn up, ask your kid to add up how many of each item you need to buy at the grocery store. You’d never have guessed a shopping list could make such great algebra training, but it does.

When your child is comfortable with the basic language of Algebra, it’s time to move on to the next stage:

*** PHASE 2: Solve some problems ***

Much of Algebra involves finding an unknown value, also known as the “x factor”. The best way to develop problem-solving skills in kids is by playing simple games and puzzles. Here are two particularly useful games for developing the algebra mind:

~~ “Dollars & Dimes” ~~

The idea is to give your child a formula, and they tell you the amount of money.

So you say something like:

“2d plus n plus i”.

This means two dollars plus a nickel plus a dime.

(Notice how the letter ‘i’ has ingeniously been used to represent a dIme. This is because the letter ‘d’ has already been reserved for the Dollar.)

The answer should be “Two dollars and fifteen cents.”

Play this a few times using several combinations of notes and coins.

You can also tell your child an amount of money, and ask them to give you the formula.

So if you say, “Four dollars and five cents”, your child replies: “4d plus 5c”.

Ideally they should give you the answer using the least amount of coins possible. So for “fifteen cents”, they should say “n + i” or “i + n”. Not “15c”!

~~ “Think of a Number” ~~

This is a classic you can play anywhere. Try it on long car journeys. The objective is to guess the mystery number.

You say: “I’ve thought of a number, added 3 to it, and the result is 7. What is my number?”

Make the questions as easy as possible to start with. As your child gains confidence, make the questions are little harder. At some point, say you’re going to call the mystery number ‘x’. Then ask the question in equation form.

Now don’t panic. It’s simple.

Suppose your question is: “What number plus 3 makes 17?”

You call the mystery number ‘x’. And so your equation is:

x + 3 = 17

You ask your child “if x plus three is seventeen, what’s x?”

You can also reverse roles and ask them to give you some puzzles. Most kids enjoy this. And it trains them to think more creatively about algebra too.

*** Summary ***

Just a few subtle changes in the way your child thinks can have profound effects on their results in the math class. Don’t overload your child. Go in very small steps with lots of similar examples to give practice and confidence.

Even the smallest thing may be a stumbling block. Like understanding that ‘x’ means ’1x’ (the ’1′ is not usually written down). Give lots of praise and reward to create and reinforce the ‘feel good’ factor.

As in any kind of teaching, it’s better to ask lots of questions rather than keep telling someone something. Take enough little leaps and at some point your kid will experience the “Aha!” moment when the whole algebra thing suddenly clicks into place.

Kenneth Williams is author of Fun With Algebra at http://www.FunWithAlgebra.com

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