| Home school is different than public school. Home | | | | and your coworker plays the violin. When people |
| schooled children don't just learn facts and skills; | | | | become learning resources, you teach children |
| they learn to love learning. They do more than | | | | about community. |
| just sit in desks writing spelling words and reciting | | | | Being Adaptable |
| multiplication tables; they learn how to think, how | | | | Plans fail. Curriculum grow stale. Children get bored. |
| to create, how to explore, how to ask questions, | | | | Eventually, you will need to adjust your plans, |
| and how to find answers. | | | | change your curriculum, and refresh your home |
| Therefore, the job of a home school teacher has | | | | schooling approach. What worked for one child will |
| several characteristics that are different from the | | | | not work for another. What worked yesterday, |
| average public school teacher. | | | | might not work for today. |
| Finding Resources | | | | Adaptability is an important trait for a home |
| Some parents fear that they will not have the | | | | school parent. Learning needs to be a living |
| knowledge or skills to teach their child what they | | | | process, always changing, always new and fresh. |
| need or want to learn. "What if my child wants to | | | | When it becomes old and stale, children begin to |
| learn football? I don't have the skills to teach | | | | hate to learn, which is what makes public school a |
| that," someone asked me. However, the truth is | | | | poor option. |
| that it is not our job as home school parents to | | | | Loving to Learn |
| teach our children everything they learn. Rather it | | | | If we love to learn, our children love to learn. |
| is our job to find the right resources and to teach | | | | When we take interest in books, they too love to |
| our children how to find those resources for | | | | read. When we play music, they want to learn an |
| themselves. | | | | instrument too. When we write, they want to |
| For us, the library has become a tool for learning. | | | | write. When we create, build, fix, or bake, they |
| When our science curriculum has a handout and a | | | | want to do it too. When we search for answers |
| short lesson on birds, we run to the library and | | | | to our questions, they too will ask questions and |
| find about twenty books on the topic. Some of | | | | find answers. |
| those books are boring, too easy, or too hard, | | | | Home school teachers need to unschool |
| and then some of them are just what we need. | | | | themselves, living the life of the historical |
| Friends and family are also great resources for | | | | explorers who innovated their world, like |
| learning new things. Perhaps Gramps knows how | | | | Michelangelo, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Christopher |
| to fish, or Grammy knows how to sew. Perhaps | | | | Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Edison. |
| your neighbor knows something about basketball, | | | | |