How Do Your Children Learn?

When we are trying to balance the homeschoolvspublicschool debate we need to understand how our children learn and how the different mediums teach. Public school is based on a read and learn technology, with a scattering of hands on experience. Most public education systems do not approach a solid hands on learn experience until the student reaches high school and a few never use this method.If your student reads well and understands this way they will probably do well in the public school system. But what happens to the student that is an audio learner or one who must have a hands on experience? Unfortunately they may be left behind their other classmates and begin to feel or be portrayed as not as smart as every one else!

Home school gives us the opportunity to approach the student in the way they learn the best. If they are an auditory learner then reading aloud the instructions on how to do something may clear the cobwebs from their understanding. Listening and viewing history programs can have a great impact on their learning and allow them to grasp concepts they had formally missed. The hands on learner will be able to  understand math better by using varying tools such as blocks of wood, clay for forming models, or even partaking in cooking exercises. Learning to track their own finances will touch on several different areas of instruction. History can be encouraged through the building of structures such as log homes or spinning wheels. This will give them an understanding of the difficulties that our ancestors faced.

My daughter,who is a great reader, was having difficulty grasping some ideas in math. When I realized that she was not  just being rebellious I decided to change the form that she was getting the information in. We purchased a white board and put the problems on it. With in a day she had grasped the concept and forged ahead in her work. By changing the way it was presented we touched on the way she needed to learn! Would she have gotten this attention in a public school setting?

Often students need a combination of mediums to really grasp the concepts that they are trying to learn. Home school gives us the perfect medium to meet our students at their level.