Essential Categories of Homeschooling Programs

When looking at homeschooling programs, there are three broad categories homeschool educators need to focus on:

• Home Learning Environment,
• Teaching approach, and
• Curriculum.

Each category is essential. You must be effective in all three areas to have a successful homeschooling program.

Home Learning Environment

Research has shown that learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat. Key elements of an effective learning environment include:

• A safe and secure environment where the child can relax,
• An opportunity to focus on the educational challenge with minimal distraction, and
• A family atmosphere that is inherently optimistic and encouraging.

The learning environment is probably the single most important aspect of an effective education, whether public school, home school, or even college. A poor environment will nullify the benefits of the very best curriculum and teaching abilities. A great environment will allow even a mediocre curriculum to be effective.  Do not underestimate the importance of your home.

Focus helps the child stay on the educational challenge.  Distraction will, at the very least, reduce learning efficiency. More often, distraction diminishes lesson effectiveness.

A stressful atmosphere can arrest educational development. Criticism without encouragement, family dysfunction, learning by coercion, sarcasm, or other sources of unrelenting stress are threatening to a child. Research has shown that the learning process stops when a person feels threatened; the brain releases chemicals that impede the learning processes.

Teaching Approach

We should use teaching methods consistent with the way children naturally learn. So our focus is on recognizing how learning naturally happens and strengthening our children’s decision-making ability. We avoid forced or manipulative methods. Natural approaches are more intuitive to put into practice. They also make learning easiest and most efficient for kids.

Understanding that your child’s brain undergoes extensive changes as they mature is a key to effective teaching. This recognition may seem obvious, but Modern Education is based on the opposite premise: they say that brain development has ceased by age 8 to 10. Research has shown this premise false. The brain continues to develop until the age of 21, and probably even older.

Acknowledging the age-dependent nature of brain development allows parents to select age-appropriate curriculum and explanations. It also guides you toward realistic expectations of your child’s academic understanding and performance.

There is no single best way to teach because there is not a single best way that everyone learns. The way a person learns is an expression of their individuality as much as the way another person teaches. When you combine age-related maturity changes and multiple children, the idea of the “best teaching method” becomes impossible to quantify; there are too many variables.

Instead, develop an intuitive approach that is an expression of who you are, and adapt to your children’s needs. There is no one that knows your kids like you do. Leverage that understanding. Encourage your children to love learning and discovery. Education then becomes a journey for your entire family, and you are as much a part of the adventure as your children.

The Learning Cycle is our recognition of the way God built people to learn. It outlines how the learning process occurs. Tutoring, storytelling, and mentoring are three different teaching approaches based the Learning Cycle. It is a central element in Christian Homeschooling’s approach.

Curriculum

Curriculum is the information we use to home school.  We typically think in terms of subjects, such as reading or math or history. We tend to segregate education into topics. Yet in a Christian worldview, where God is the center of all things, those subjects need to intersect each other.

Subjects are not so much about the information within them, but the thought processes and thinking patterns they engender. Math teaches us to handle abstract concepts. Science teaches us to be thoughtful observers.  Vocabulary words make our minds grasp deeper thinking, because words have subtly different meanings. The list goes on and on.  The various subjects shape our thinking because the principles that underlie each subject are transcendent.

A truly Christian homeschooling curriculum helps children to reason critically and clearly. It not only proclaims that God is at the center, but proves that He is at the center of everything.

Hierarchy

So is one of the three categories—home environment, teaching approach, or curriculum—more important than the others? The answer is no—and yes.

First of all, each category is essential. Failure in any category spells educational deficiency or collapse. In this regard there is no category that is more important that the others. But there is a hierarchy of impact.

At Christian Homeschooling, we recommend you focus on the home first. Evaluate and develop a good learning environment. Don’t isolate kids in separate rooms and separate desks. Make learning a family affair—in the dining room, family room, and kitchen.  Identify things that cause stress and negativity in your family. Act to minimize those influences.

Environment creates the opportunity for learning. As a result, a great home environment permits the full effectiveness of your teaching and curriculum to come through. A poor or stressful home life diminishes the learning opportunity and, therefore, the effectiveness of the other two categories. A badlearning environment ruins a good teaching approach and curriculum.

Next, focus on improving your teaching approaches and skills. That is the primary focus of Christian Homeschooling’s web content, equipping you to provide an effective homeschooling program for your children. A good teaching approach brings out the best in a curriculum. A bad teaching approach negates the benefits of a great curriculum. Teaching approach trumps curriculum.

Finally, optimize the curriculum. This is really the last step. Not because curriculum is less important. An adequate curriculum can be very effective and efficient when used in the right environment and with good teaching methods.

We encourage you to start with our curriculum. It is intended to not only teach your children, but to teach parents how learning actually happens and when parental interaction actually helps the educational processes. Over time you can then make informed changes based on your understanding of how the learning process is working in your family.

Homeschooling Programs-bringing it together

This hierarchy runs contradictory to the world of Modern Education, where curriculum is paramount, teaching approaches are constantly managed and changed, and the classroom environment is all but ignored. It’s no wonder that most homeschooling parents, who come from a public education background, flock to curriculum and programs first.

Research shows that kids learn best in a safe environment in which there is intimate knowledge of each child, their strengths and weaknesses. This means:

• There is no better place for children to learn than in your home,
• There is no  one better suited to teach your children than you, and
• The purpose of the curriculum is to establish patterns of thinking that allow young minds to reason well.

Every family is unique; each has its own personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. Sometimes good ideas for home life, teaching method, or curriculum won’t work as well in your family as others. Sometimes mediocre ideas work great in your family. Discernment—the ability to stand back and look objectively—is key to building your homeschooling program.

God made your family unique; don’t fight that truth by trying to conform to homeschooling ideas that don’t really make a good fit.