"Homeschooling with Ease: A Parent’s Beginner Guide to Simple, Harmonious Home Learning", is an inspiring, informative read for parents who are beginning to homeschool their children, or wishing to make homeschooling simpler and more harmonious.
Covering the topics of methods of homeschooling, the parent-child connection, learning styles, setting up a plan and schedule, learning through daily life, making use of your local environment, dealing with learning challenges, finding supportive resources and more.
This book is organized in an easy-to-read format with chapter summaries for quick reference, and inspiring quotes and images throughout.
Covering the topics of:
--The parent-child connection
--Learning styles and methods of homeschooling
--Setting up a plan and schedule
--Learning through daily life and making use of your local environment
--Dealing with learning challenges
--Finding the support you need and a list of resource suggestions
--Easy-to-read format with chapter summaries for quick reference
--Inspiring quotes and images throughout
"Homeschooling with Ease: A Parent’s Beginner Guide to Simple, Harmonious Home Learning", is an inspiring, informative read for parents who are beginning to homeschool their children, or wishing to make homeschooling simpler and more harmonious.
Covering the topics of methods of homeschooling, the parent-child connection, learning styles, setting up a plan and schedule, learning through daily life, making use of your local environment, dealing with learning challenges, finding supportive resources and more.
This book is organized in an easy-to-read format with chapter summaries for quick reference, and inspiring quotes and images throughout.
Covering the topics of:
--The parent-child connection
--Learning styles and methods of homeschooling
--Setting up a plan and schedule
--Learning through daily life and making use of your local environment
--Dealing with learning challenges
--Finding the support you need and a list of resource suggestions
--Easy-to-read format with chapter summaries for quick reference
--Inspiring quotes and images throughout
[From: Homeschooling with Ease: A Parent’s Beginner Guide to Simple,
Harmonious Home Learning, By Robynn Honeychurch, Copyright © 2021, ISBN- 9798598913406 ]
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you
don't.
~ Anatole France
Families choose to homeschool for many reasons, but one thing has become clear to me from my years of working with homeschooling families: homeschooling is a tremendous gift to give your child. Learning at home provides the family with more time together, and this increases the bonds between children and their parents. Strong bonds bode well for making it through the more challenging teen years with more ease. Homeschooling also provides families with the opportunity to set their own schedules and routines. This flexibility supports families who wish to travel, and those with demanding or unconventional schedules, such as children on sports teams, or those who are in and out of the hospital. Learning at home also supports children who need to work at a different pace from that which the public school system offers. This is the case for both children with learning challenges and those working beyond grade level.
Children who are homeschooled on a long-term basis learn to take personal responsibility for their education. This means they often do not require the motivation of external rewards to complete their academic studies. Public school is set up to motivate children to cooperate through the use of the grading system, as well as through reward and acknowledgment programs. This causes many children to feel that their job is to make others happy, to complete school work for the sake of pleasing teachers and parents, instead of to reap the self-satisfaction and inherent fulfillment that comes from learning something new. I have met many children who say that they dislike learning, but they have confused the rewards-based system with genuine learning. It takes time, when children transition to homeschooling, for it to become clear to them that learning has nothing to do with trying to satisfy other people. It takes time to re-learn that educating oneself is really about feeding one’s own curiosity about the world. When children are given the freedom, through homeschooling, to choose their learning topics and goals, and pursue them without the focus on grades, tests, and comparing with other students, a transformation can occur. Children can get excited about learning again. They can feel empowered to explore the world in ways that interest them, and this leads to the self-motivation to learn.
Homeschooled children become lifelong learners and make excellent university students because they take their education seriously. Children who learn at home may have more adaptable social skills as well, having many opportunities to interact with people of different ages and backgrounds when out in their community doing errands and activities with their family. Also, homeschooling parents usually interact respectfully and inclusively with their children, which helps children to feel more comfortable expressing their opinions and thoughts to others. This confidence in communication shines through in so many homeschooled children that I have met and worked with over the years.
Another advantage is that children have time to explore their own interests and discover their unique passions because there is more free time when learning at home. When parents pay attention to what their children are good at and curious about, they can feed these interests and help their children develop their strengths. You will have more opportunities to discuss and share your own family’s beliefs with your child. This process leads to children having a stronger sense of who they are and what they want to do with their lives. Having this sort of confidence in place when graduating from a high school program allows young adults to move forward into their adult life with clearer purpose and direction.
Because children in public school are required to learn a wide variety of subject matter throughout their 13 years of education, there is not always a significant amount of time or support for them to pursue their own interests. Commonly, public school students are not even sure what their own interests are.
It is also an advantage to be able to be there for all the beautiful and challenging moments in your child's life when you homeschool. When you send children off to school for the majority of their week, you miss out on so much of their lives. You can lose touch with what their learning journey actually looks like. Many parents do not know what their children are actually learning at school or how well they are doing. When you homeschool, you are responsible for your children's success or failure in the development of their academic skills, but you are also there to pay attention. This means you can catch their difficulties early on and guide them towards success sooner.
So many children fall through the cracks of the public education system because no one is paying attention to the fact that they need extra support, and often the funding for that extra support is not available. Whether it is difficulty learning to read, understanding math concepts, staying focused, speaking clearly, or using fine motor skills, many children have challenges that need extra support. When you are there paying attention, you will observe your child’s struggles, and be able to meet their needs immediately. So it is a tremendous blessing to be able to give your child the opportunity to blossom into the person that they are meant to be, guided by your love and presence, through learning at home.
In the last year or so with everything going on more and more families are switching to homeschooling. Whether by being forced into it by the schools closing, or fear of the unknown, so they decided to keep their children home. That makes the timing of Homeschooling with Ease perfect. Homeschooling with Ease is written by Robynn Honeychurch. Robynn has taught children for over 25 years, through tutoring programs, community classes, and working as an online learning consultant. She has supported hundreds of homeschooling parents and students from the ages of 5 to 14. Robynn homeschools her daughter and lives on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada, with her family.
Writing with Ease is a great introductory book about homeschooling. The author briefly addresses a multitude of topics, such as the advantages of homeschooling, styles of homeschooling, the connection between the parent and child, discovering the child’s interest and so much more. The author also included a small list of resources at the end of the book, that she found valuable for homeschooling.
I loved the quotes that were scattered throughout the book. I also loved the positive and encouraging tone of the book. As a veteran homeschool mom (10 years), there are still times you need encouragement and someone telling you that you can indeed do this. I appreciated the author gave a recap at the end of each chapter as well.
There was only one small thing that I did like about the book. It is mainly geared toward those with younger children. Other than that there was nothing else that I disliked about this book.
I would recommend this book to those who are new to homeschooling or have been homeschooling for a short while. I would also recommend this book to homeschooling parents who need some encouragement and motivation to continue homeschooling. This book is a great starting point. I would follow up this book with any of Cathy Duffy's Top Homeschooling books, they will cover the topics covered in this book in greater depth. 4.5/5 stars