Home School Guidance
In reality, all parents home school their children to a greater or lesser degree. The problem I have seen as a public school teacher is that the degree seems to be less than it was some years ago when I began teaching.
The change in academic climate and achievement in the local school has little to do with the curriculum the school is offering, or whether it follows the latest fad in education. The big change has come from a change in the home background of the students.
I once had students who were so well read that they far surpassed me, their teacher, in knowledge of literature. I am a good reader and an avid reader of literature, but even I have not read all the titles on my recommended reading list. I have not read all the titles I’ve collected for my home library. I had a girl some years ago that had read all of the titles on my list, and many more besides. No wonder she was bored. I had students who would write research papers on topics they voluntarily chose as abstract and erudite as “The Slavophilism of Dostoyevsky.” Things have changed since then.
I tell my students that to reverse this downward academic trend, they must commit to bringing up their children to be academically successful. To do this, I tell them, read to your children from the time they are tiny infants. Read them poetry, nursery rhymes, nursery tales, children’s stories, Bible stories from a children’s Bible. Read them short stories, fables, mysteries. From there advance to children’s fiction. Also read them nonfiction. Find books in the children’s room of the local public library. Take part in the library summer reading program. Turn off the television set and read! Foster a love of reading and a love of books. Children cannot advance intellectually by watching television. They must be read to, and then they must read for themselves.
Even if parents send their children to public or private school, they can still teach their children at home during non-school hours: evenings, weekends and vacations. The most important thing a parent can do from an academic standpoint is to encourage each child to read. Expand your child’s vocabulary by reading books together. Re-read stories by famous authors. I find the short stories of Edgar Alan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the novels of Mark Twain, as well as his shorter pieces, work well for me. Silas Marner is a favorite read aloud novel in my home. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is a favorite poem. There is much more to read at a suitably younger level in children’s literature which shouldn’t be missed. I like “The Magic Porridge Pot,” The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper, and Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst.
To teach my two sons from scratch how to read, I used the Bloomfield/Barnhart volume Let’s Read. Beyond that I used my own reading program, The Language Enrichment Program. That is all it takes to get students “over the hump” and on to a lifetime of reading enjoyment.
For those who take the plunge to home school their children without sending them to school, the above description of reading to the children when they are very young, and continuing this reading for as long as you can get them to listen during a family reading time, is a key component to educating your child. I found transitioning from the world of fiction to nonfiction was a considerable hurdle. To successfully make the transition, I procured books from the public library on a subject I knew my son was particularly interested in at that moment. I chose three books, one easy, one medium, and one fairly advanced in difficulty, and had him read these books in that order. This reading ladder approach is the secret to growing student knowledge and vocabulary painlessly.
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