Did you fail Algebra? Maybe you didn’t read until you were well into 3rd grade or you barely managed to pass Chemistry. Does this mean you aren’t qualified to teach your child?
Some parents agonize over whether or not they are qualified to teach their children at home. It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that you have to know everything first, from the periodic table of elements to Shakespeare’s top 100 sonnets, and then pick and choose from this extensive knowledge and teach your child. Like picking books off of a shelf.
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This is because no one knows everything. You readin’ this? Let me say it again: no one knows everything and they never will. Not even certified teachers!
What about methods and techniques for teaching? Do you question if you’re not a teacher, how do you know how to teach?
- How would you even begin to homeschool?
- How would you know what to teach your child?
- What all does your child already know and what’s next?
- How much does it cost to homeschool?
- Will I connect with my child on an educational teacher-student level?
- Could I do it?
I bet these are just a few of the questions that also pop in your head, right after the one that asks, “Am I qualified to even homeschool my child?” And I also wager there’s more where those came from.
Ease your doubts a bit and open up your mind for just a second. I have provided you with my opinion and experiences in which I, too, shared the same fears and doubt, wondering if I could successfully homeschool my children and how I could be able to teach multiple children at different levels. I have experience in teaching (and corporate training), but I am not a certified teacher and I’ve never organized a curriculum beyond preschool.
Here are some tips and discussions on how you, sister, can know whether or not you are qualified to homeschool your child.
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Knowledge of Your Child
No one knows your child like you do. Mom and dad can’t be beaten, not even by the well-meaning teachers. Even they do not have the personal investment and best interest in your child like you do. That’s just how loving parenting is – you have unique insights into what makes your child tick (or what stops your child’s clock) that you may not be able to put into words. That insight will enable you to see things with a strong clarity during the homeschool day.
You know your child’s strengths and weaknesses without having him fill out an About Me first-day-of-school questionnaire. As you watched your baby develop from babyhood into toddlerhood and then grow into school-age, you’re already well-familiar with how best to approach your baby, how well he responds to certain demands, how hard he already tries, how his learning capabilities are and more. Even now, you can dang well nearly predict his next words or next moves! What makes you think homeschooling your baby would be any different?
Another Part of You
You play with her, you cook for her and feed her the healthy foods, and you’re her #1 cheerleader whether you witness an achievement or see that she needs some uplifting words. This is exactly how homeschooling is. You can play right alongside her with math games. Teach her parts of science with cooking or baking. Educate her in proper health with good foods. And instill in her a moral character with words and with leading by example. You’ve been building your homeschool foundation all along!
You will both learn together side by side. In fact, this time around I bet you really enjoy what you learn. Not only will your child see how anchored you are to learning the concepts, but your enthusiasm for new lessons will be contagious. How exciting it is for you to expand on certain subjects again! And because you did this once already, you have the keen insight on how to deliver the messages to your mini-you. Because she is a part of you and also because you are well aware of how receptive she is to new concepts.
Outside Resources for Teaching Homeschool
I’m sure you already have a pretty good grasp of where your child is academically. Even so, there are countless assessment evaluations online for free and for a fee. Many curriculums have free assessments and placement tests on their website so that you know which level or grade to purchase their curriculum. You can also review the Scope & Sequence for your homeschool child by checking out the book I’m always going to (and is probably in the sidebar even now) called Home Learning Year By Year.
Various websites supply you with so many free homeschool resources and activities, such as already-made lesson plans, activities to incorporate into your lesson plans, puzzles, games, flashcards, worksheets, printables, and so, so much more, to implement into your daily lesson plans. Even seasonal and holiday resources, like Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Christopher Columbus Day, and so on.
I love finding good resources online to incorporate into our homeschool. There’s so many I couldn’t possibly list them all here. However, I’ll make another blog post on these resources for you. (Since this post is just an overview of thinking if you’re qualified or not, I won’t dive deep into how to teach homeschool in this particular post.)
On the flip side, you can also purchase already-made lesson plans and curriculum through the internet. We are eclectic homeschoolers, which basically means we mix and match a bunch of different curriculums, homeschool styles and approaches, and even include unit studies into our learning – however it fits for your family’s needs. Because of this, we are able to choose a science curriculum from one company and then choose a language arts curriculum from a totally different company.
Or, which is even better, say you don’t like the company’s spelling program but you do like their grammar, you can even pick and choose which language arts courses you want from various curriculum companies. I really like the freedom and flexibility in creating our own curriculum and also the ability to choose which homeschool curriculum best fits the needs of our family.
Since we are a traveling homeschool, I tend to steer clear from a complete curriculum-in-a-box approach. We did that our first year and that was a ton of books + shipping costs to tote around from place to place. Nowadays we tend to get curricula that do not involve 100 books for one course (exaggerating, but still, it’s a lot of books when it’s a curriculum-in-a-box). We go to the public library in whichever city we are currently in, according to our weekly homeschool schedule, in which the day is deemed Library Day.
Common Core Standards
You can check out the Common Core standards of your state and see why learning the Common Core standards for your child is important and which standards they are. This is the state’s equivalent to the scope and sequence. However, you can understand it much easier by accessing it via the book I just mentioned (I absolutely love this book and I’ve created my curriculum this year for the first time and used this book as my primary homeschool elementary curriculum map).
You can also go to your state’s Education Code and look up the requirements for homeschooling in your state. For example, we homeschool via the Texas Education Code, and Texas is extremely lax in their homeschool regulations. All that is required to homeschool in Texas, according to the Texas Home Coalition Association or the THCA, is:
The instruction must be bona fide (i.e., not a sham). The curriculum must be in visual form (e.g., books, workbooks, video monitor). The curriculum must include the five basic subjects of reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics, and good citizenship.
Texas Home Coalition Association
Therefore, Texans can keep track of their own records and attendance without being required to submit these documents annually, there are no mandatory assessment tests required, and we do not have to submit intentions of homeschooling per year with an outline of what we will teach, among other things. As I said, Texan is pretty lenient compared to other states.
There are a few other states just as lax in homeschool laws like Texas, but then again, there are states that are extremely strict in their homeschool requirements. Virginia is one and so is Pennsylvania. To see where to even begin homeschooling, I would check out your state’s education code and then I would check out Home School Legal Defense Association, or HSLDA, founded by two lawyers but popularly the go-to for homeschool laws, and look up your state for the state requirements.
Other Resources
As noted above, you can’t be expected to know everything or even to learn everything beforehand. And you won’t be expected to, either. You can learn right alongside your child in some subjects together AND/OR you can seek resources other than yourself to teach your child something. I know a fellow homeschool mom who hires a tutor to teach her children math because she just doesn’t have the patience or the attention to teach it, and honestly nor does she even like math.
For example, if your child is really interested in chemistry but it was never your strongest subject, look up chemistry lessons online or check out DVDs from the library; find local tutors; check out books to help you teach the subject; and, better yet, just get a science-chemistry curriculum that is “open and go” so that all you have to do is say exactly what the book(s) tell you to say to your child and do exactly what the book(s) tell you to do! No guessing in between! “Open and Go” curriculums are pretty straightforward and quite popular in the homeschooling realm because it takes the pressure off of planning everything for the subject since that curriculum has everything you need. Most science curricula even include lab/experiment supplies or they supply you with a list of supplies needed, usually basic household material that you already have anyway.
We used Apologia’s Exploring Creation Through Astronomy last year and also purchased the Lab Kit along with it, which included a separate spiral-spiral bound notebook for just the Lab Activities with extra tips, bonus activities (for purchasing the lab kit through them), and also served as a type of scrapbook/memory book where we could tape or glue our pictures inside.
It saved me a whole heck load of headaches and extra costs and planning supplies that year, something this traveling mama needs! I also purchased Junior Notebooks for my 2 kids that were going to use it (we did this subject together as a family), along with the MP3/Audio for it to narrate the lessons for me, which helped me out a lot when I needed to tend to the baby. Within the textbook, it directed you when it was time for the next activity lab, and they also include a recommended lesson plan schedule at the beginning of the book.
Another great resource is other homeschoolers. It’s amazing how many experts and knowledgeable people there are in so many fields! You can locate these fellow homeschoolers in several Facebook groups. Facebook has groups for just about anything these days, including homeschool. You can start by going to the Homeschool and Humor Facebook Page to follow and also join our Facebook group that’s linked to it. 🙂
We live in an information age. If it’s not at the library, it’s on the internet…and the library is probably on the internet too. It’s easier than ever nowadays to find the information you need in order to educate your child at home. Google a few questions and you’ll find hundreds of articles that will pop up from veteran homeschoolers just waiting to help you out.
I know when I first started, I was a wreck! I was confident that I could teach the kids but I also knew that I had a lot of research ahead of me in order to get a wrangle on how I wanted or needed to go about our homeschool lifestyle.
The very first homeschool book I ever read was Pam Barnhill‘s book called The Confident Homeschooler: How to Thrive in the Day-to-Day and, let me tell you, this particular book put so much into perspective for me and really helped me understand the basics of a beginner homeschooler.
Then I researched further on how to organize my homeschool, how to create a homeschool schedule, and also how to plan my homeschool lessons. Upon researching those searches I, again, found Pam Barnhill, but this time it was an organization course called Put Your Year On AutoPilot.
These magnificently laid-out plans include a 10-module course with homeschooling forms (that you’ll actually use!) with related training videos, and she really breaks down how to create lesson lists, schedules, and even procedure lists. By the end, you have a procedure for how you will run your homeschool day and a procedure for every subject that your kids will learn for the year. You can even create your entire year without needing to erase ANYTHING! It’s great stuff! And, again, something I desperately needed as a first-year homeschooler.
In fact, I love her stuff so much, including her Morning Time Plans, that I requested to be an affiliate for her! (Yes, the picture above is indeed an affiliate link. If you purchase through my link I will make a small commission but it absolutely does not affect your price or cost for the product at all.) Affiliate or not, I highly recommend that it’s worth a looksy at her AutoPilot course. I haven’t found anything else as of yet that comes close to the total value of Pam Barnhill’s autopilot course with REAL answers for REAL help to get you squared away in your homeschool and start it off right.
So, Are You Qualified to Homeschool Your Child?
Here are a few things to consider if you haven’t yet: A homeschooled child receives all the one-on-one time he needs. It always crushed my heart that I didn’t have but 2 or 3 hours to spend with my children after I got off work and picked them up from their afterschool program, always around 6:00 pm. And those 2-3 hours were spent cooking, cleaning, helping with homework, and bath. By the time we were done, it was bedtime. I hated it.
Nowadays? I spend all day with them and I wouldn’t change it for the world. We have established a special bond between us from doing homeschool that’s interwoven throughout the other areas of our lives. My son will bring up something and relate it to what we learned in history. My daughter will randomly say out loud a math problem or volunteer to cook using measurement units!
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Additionally, if he needs further explanation or time on a concept to fully grasp it, he can have it. If he needs more practice to nail it down, he’ll get it. If he needs individualized attention to really drive home a concept, you have that power to give him everything he needs. And just the opposite: if he quickly understands a concept, no need to keep repeating the same drills for weeks. Move on to the next lesson.
Read aloud books and bedtime books will not only add to your child’s expansion of knowledge but will also add more valuable conversations as a family to expound upon, in detail and as influences for additional activities to go along with the books. Sharing a book that the entire family is in on has a remarkable and unique air of magic; I can’t really explain it but most homeschool moms would agree. And I’m sure they could explain it better!
You will have full control of the environment of your child’s learning, which is something you do not have when a child attends public school. Neither will he have individualized attention. Nor will the teacher change her teaching methods and style to figure out another way for the student to understand. Nor will the teacher and classroom wait on your child to understand a concept, risking moving on to the next one and potentially jeopardizing the year. It happened to my son. Each child learns differently and education should not be perceived as a one-size-fits-all process.
We experienced something like the above examples with my eldest son that you can read on my About page for further explanation. Basically he needed more one-on-one time that the teacher wouldn’t or couldn’t give to him, thus causing him to fall so far behind that he ultimately gave up learning and withdrew within himself, causing my happy outgoing little boy to become quiet and introverted. Not that anything is wrong with a quiet introvert, but his behavior was the result of a lack of self-esteem and he thought he was stupid, to put it bluntly.
Now, 100% because of homeschool, I am very proud to say he has developed into a brilliant, sharp, self-assured boy who looks forward to school time. It still takes him a little bit to grasp a challenging concept, but once he’s got it he is flying through it! And that’s the beauty of homeschool – I can spend as much time as he needs for me to teach him, and I can modify my methods to complement his learning style or try a different approach that he needs at that time. Homeschoolers can be flexible all they want. They have full control of the entire education process, and they know exactly what their kids are and are not learning.
Here Is The Answer
So I can answer this for you: Yes, mama, you are. You are qualified to homeschool your child. You know your child more than anyone else on this earth. No person, no teacher, no body can ever replace you and your relationship with your child. Because you know your baby more than anyone, you have the advantage that no one else will ever have when it comes to shaping your child’s future. You and your family may need to make some adjustments in order to seriously rock at homeschooling, but you can do it.
Now, the question should really be… How could anyone else be more qualified to teach your child than you?
Are you looking for more information on homeschooling? How did you attack your first of homeschooling? If you’re considering homeschooling your child, do you have a plan in place already?
| There are all kinds of curriculum out there to look into, but I did you a solid and looked into a strong one for you. Don’t want to mess up starting right out the gate? Then check this bad mama jama out. It has everything you need to start your homeschool journey off right: My Complete and Thorough Review on The Schoolhouse Teachers {SchoolhouseTeachers.com} |
AM I QUALIFIED TO HOMESCHOOL MY CHILD
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As a homeschool mom, in Texas, of 18+ years, I have heard this question so many times. And it actually makes me giggle. I am more qualified than anyone to teach my child. And even though some choose to follow the common core standards, I do not. I never have and that’s one of the luxuries in homeschooling in Texas. I teach my child according to each one’s unique personality. Homeschooling Rocks!
Yes, you are more qualified than anyone to teach your child! I’m so glad you said that (which is the driving point I wanted to make by making that declaration the last sentence in the post)! It’s more like, who could possibly be more qualified to teach my kids that me as their mom?
We also live in Texas, so there are definitely some advantages to that, isn’t there? I love the flexibility to teach what I want to teach when I want to teach it, and to whom I want to teach it! My son and daughter are very different learners, so I don’t teach them the same way. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. This is not “public school at home”. We are not trying to replicate the classroom system into our home. I can teach my son a completely different way and at a different pace than my daughter. I can focus on a concept much longer and as needed for mastery if I want to, without worrying about “falling behind”.
The trick to it is, I know it’ll all wash out. There will be areas my kiddos will master much quicker later on that they might be a little slower to pick up on right now. My son can speed through math but mt daughter goes at a much different speed. And if we want to spend a year on the study of bees, then so “bee” it! Learning is learning! Everything actually does get interwoven together throughout their learning years. 😉
Thanks for your reply!
This post is packed with incredible information! I’ve been on the fence for years on homeschooling my two Twice Exceptional kids because I feel like we’re squeezing square pegs into teeny tiny holes in the school system. However, it’s hard because my husband and I work from home and I just don’t know that my kids will learn from me. We just found a new school called Prenda which is like homeschool but in someone else’s home! I’m still concerned about them keeping up to state standards and not having an educated teacher teaching them but this article is relieving some of those concerns. Thank you!
I’m glad you enjoyed it. Depending on the state you live in will determine how stringent or lax you are with the state standards. I like to keep aligned with the state standards, in a way, using it mostly as a loose guide. For example, if I choose to go a different route one year, I will plan ahead a year or two later to “wash it out”. But I live in Texas where the homeschooling laws are very lenient.
As far as working from home, I know many work at home moms and dads who also elect to homeschool their kiddos. It really just takes a bit of creative organizing and witty scheduling to fit it all together, but if you really want to homeschool them, you’ll find a way to make it work. Some moms use a tutor for certain subjects. Some moms sacrifice certain personal areas in order to homeschool. There is no wrong way to go about it, and I find that almost every family circumstance is different. So, again, if you want to find a way to homeschool them at home while you’re a work at home mama, your creative and witty ideas will get the job done, I bet!
Way to go for moving forward in getting closer to your goal. I hope everything works out for you! Let me know if you need additional advice or opinion (haha). I’m sure I can drudge up a few! 😉 Thanks for your reply and for taking the time to read. I’m glad it helped you!
As a homeschooling mom of 4 boys, there are definitely those days when you wonder if you’re up to snuff! 🙂 You’re so right, though. Parents know their kiddos best and if there are areas you lack skill or confidence, there are just so many resources out there! Thanks for the post!
Absolutely! Thanks for the reply!
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