Homeschooling- typically referred to as home education in the UK – comes with many benefits, but it is also completely natural to have some concerns too when deciding whether or not to go down this route with your own family. Sometimes parents worry about whether they can provide the same level of education as they would receive in school. After all, you don’t have the funds or resources of a school. Secondly, there’s the myth about lack of socialisation if they are homeschooled. These concerns are easily addressed though and here is how to overcome those home education worries…
Connect With Your Local Homeschool/ Home Education Community
You can find local and national support from other home edders, both online and in real life. It is a good way of finding out what home education activities are already available in your area, organise events yourself, set up a co-op (in other words pool your expertise) and find groups of home ed friends to meet up. All of this boosts your confidence in home educating and solves the socialisation aspect too.
As well as home ed specific activities during the days, you can also sign your child up for extra-curricular activities. In essence, you can sign them up for things like sports clubs, Beavers or Cubs, Brownies etc… These are all things that they can do outside of school hours throughout the week, giving them further opportunity to go and see other children, and make friendships. If anything, homeschooling ensures your child has a wider and more diverse range of friends, rather than being limited to the children in their class at school.Â
Seek Out Your Own Methods To Facilitate Learning
The reason we refer to it as home education more commonly in the UK is because home education does not have to replicate school at home. Homeschooling conjures up an image of this and in reality is not reflective of other approaches to education. There are many ways to provide a suitable education, depending on the needs of the child and what works best for the family.
If you feel you need to target specific subjects in a more formal way, and are unsure how best to do this yourself at home, the good news is that there are plenty of resources out there! Home ed groups, classes, tutors, workshops, websites and videos are a few examples. There are loads of physics and maths tutors out there that can help your children learn challenging subjects. Basically, you can pick any subject that you struggle to teach and you will be able to find an online tutor for it. Your child gets taught over video calls, enabling them to get one-on-one tutoring that can be a lot better than the teachings they’d get in school from a maths or physics teacher!
In summary, most concerns about home educating your children don’t need to be concerns after all.
*This is a collaborative post