Cultivate openness in your home school practice. Here are four tips.
Here's what you'll learn in this article:
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Openness and flexibility are powerful tools for living and for home school because they let you create experiences that are highly tailored to what works for you and your family.
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4 tips for cultivating openness in your home school experience.
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Answers to commonly asked questions about following specific approaches to home school.
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Key takeaways to ditch the extremes of following one approach and enjoy openness to finding what works in your homeschooling journey.
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Where to learn more about managing home school.
Cultivating an Open Mind Set to Homeschooling Allows You to Enjoy the Best of Varied Approaches
With so many approaches to homeschooling, sometimes it feels like you have to pick one, so you can focus on a singular approach and remove the noise of everything else. There are advantages of focusing, but not if it outweighs the benefits gained from openness and flexibility to allowing what works for your family.
Sometimes when we want something different we go entirely to the opposite approach and miss the good parts of what we had. If we consider scheduling and grade specific curriculum expectations, then we might place traditional school at that end of the spectrum and a lot of homeschooling approaches that emphasize no schedule or curriculum expectations at the other end. Each of these extremes can miss the good parts of each approach, so remaining open is key to reaping the advantages of both.
4 Tips for Homeschooling with Openness to Varied Approaches
Not ascribing to one particular approach to homeschooling, gives you the freedom to choose the approaches that work best for your family. Here are four tips for keeping an open mind:
1. Open to the Good Parts
Falling into approaches that operate at the extremes like scheduled each minute of the day or no schedule all year, is a sign that you might be missing the good parts of a more open model. All or nothing is rarely an approach for lasting engagement, especially life long learning.
When you are evaluating different approaches to home school consider what draws you to the approach and what gives you pause. While you may not want to be scheduled down to the minute, you probably see the value in some anchor points in the day. Let yourself be open to recognizing the benefits of varied approaches.
2. Flexible about Change
As you gain experience with home school and your children are growing, change is a natural part of this journey. Often times people don't enjoy change and can find it hard to accept.
If you struggle with your children's changing needs and finding new approaches to meet those needs, look to celebrate more milestones. Start seeing change as a positive that comes with ritual celebrations around the learning achieved.
3. Embrace the Freedom of Openness
It can be stressful to feel like you have to follow a single approach exactly. There is no need to put yourself through that. Embrace openness to your family's interests and preferred ways of learning. It takes the pressure off of feeling like you only have one way of learning.
When you consider varied approaches to home schooling and choose what resonates with you, it lets you cultivate openness to your own creativity, which is great to model to your children. You can show them how finding their own path lets them exercise their own ideas and ways learning.
4. Ditch the Labels
It can be hard to separate the real learning benefits from the branding and marketing of some approaches. If we see an approach that resonates with the 'look' we want for our home school, sometimes we can get drawn into that and miss the inevitable weaknesses and limitations relative to other approaches.
As much as possible, try and avoid labeling your home school experience as one approach. Homeschooling is much more than any one approach, and keeping that openness at the forefront is also really helpful when change is necessary. For example, if you follow one curriculum and let it become your home school identity, it can be hard to shift from that when middle school comes and that curriculum is no longer an option.
FAQs: Remain Open to What Works for Your Home School Needs
What If I Do Follow One Curriculum?
Openness to different home school approaches is about allowing your home school to be more than one thing. If you follow a single curriculum, by all means, knowledge that and give the platform credit. However, you likely also do other things in home school. Leave space for those other resources, materials, and learning experiences to be a part of your home school identity.
How Can I be Open to All the Different Approaches?
Being open to the benefits of varied approaches of homeschooling doesn't mean falling into the trap of extremes. Just like you don't need to exactly follow one approach, you also don't need to follow all of the approaches. A common model might be having a primary approach that fits your values and resonates with your children, while supplementing with elements from 2-3 other approaches.
Key Takeaways
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Cultivate openness. Being open minded to varied approaches to learning is an asset in home schooling and creating a relationship with learning that lasts a lifetime.
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Pick the good parts. When you are open to varied approaches, it lets you focus on the good parts of varied methods and avoid the weaknesses and limitations of a single approach.
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Let openness fuel your creativity. Letting yourself explore and try varied approaches lets you exercise your freedom of choice and creativity to do what works for your family.
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Avoid labels. Your home school experience is more than one approach, and embracing a varied identity will cultivate openness and flexibility to change.
Where to Learn More
Keep learning to manage homeschooling.
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