5 Reasons to Homeschool
- Morgan - Established at Home Co.
- Jan 20
- 4 min read
Homeschooling is on the rise and many more families are choosing this alternative way to educate their children. Let's explore some of the benefits and reasons families may choose to homeschool.
You can teach to your child's ability.
As a former public and private school teacher, I saw many children floundering in the classroom when the content was too difficult for them. Teachers often try to differentiate the learning process to meet the needs of all students, but in the end, they're still taking the same unit assessments and grade level assessments.
When you homeschool your child, you can teach to their ability! Maybe your 8-year old really struggles with math but excels in reading. You could give them a 1st grade math curriculum and a 4th grade reading curriculum to support them. They won't be constantly being compared to their peers and their abilities. As students get older, they can tell when they are in the struggling readers group at school during guided reading. They know when they're staying after school for extra math help or struggling with the homework at home.
Homeschooling allows your child to learn at their own pace, based on their individual giftings, without the additional struggles and comparisons that are inevitable in the classroom.
Customize curriculums and subjects.
Homeschooling gives you the opportunity to choose curricula and subjects that fit with your teaching style and your child's learning style. Some kids may love math worksheets so you pick a program that provides that. Other kids hate worksheets, and you pick a game-based math curriculum, or an online curriculum.
Homeschooling allows you to pick additional fun subjects that your child enjoys or that you think are helpful for them as they grow into adults. Things like personal finance, creating a small business, or learning a different foreign language that isn't traditionally offered in schools.
Homeschooling allows you to take a deep dive into topics your child is interested in. Teach a unit plan on survival skills, spend months learning about ocean animals, attend a co op class all about experiments.
You can also teach more practical life skills while homeschooling like how to grow a garden, learn to bake, wood working, auto repair, and more.
Strengthen your family bonds and family culture.
When you're homeschooling your child, you are reading with them, engaging in their content, and developing a common bond over what you're learning. Add multiple kids to the mix and you're experiencing this as a family.
Picture this: you read aloud Charlotte's Web to your three children and now you all have a common experience that can foster communication and togetherness. When you visit a farm later in the year, one child mentions that they see a spider web in the barn and the other children shout, "It's Charlotte!"
Contrast this with your children reading three separate novels at school and no one can discuss the books with each other.
Now, no one is suggesting that homeschooling automatically means all family members are getting along all the time - but it does give your family a chance to build good habits, healthy disciplines, and develop teamwork. You have a chance to foster stronger sibling and parent-child relationships. You get to create a family culture of love, learning, enjoyment, and growth.
Experience freedom and flexibility in your days.
School work can be accomplished in a much shorter time when you're working at home and don't have all of the normal transitions, bathroom breaks and behavior issues of a traditional school day. Kindergarteners can complete their work in 30 minutes to an hour. Your fourth grader can be done in two hours. Your middle schooler can be finished by lunch time.
Or, you might work in the morning, and you teach your children in the afternoon. Maybe you have a babysitter during the day and homeschool at night.
The point is that homeschooling gives you the freedom to work around your schedule to make it work for you! It gives freedom to your children to pursue their individual interests during the day and have plenty of free time to explore, play, and create.
Higher likelihood of experiencing stronger academic and social skills.
Homeschoolers are able to go to college, start small businesses, and get great jobs!
Here are some statistics you may not know:
87% of peer-reviewed studies on social, emotional, and psychological development show homeschool students perform statistically significantly better than those in conventional schools (Ray, 2017).
69% of peer-reviewed studies on success into adulthood (including college) show adults who were home educated succeed and perform statistically significantly better than those who attended institutional schools (Ray, 2017).
78% of peer-reviewed studies on academic achievement show homeschool students perform statistically significantly better than those in institutional schools (Ray, 2017)
The home-educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests
Homeschoolers go to and succeed at college at an equal or higher rate than the general population.
Sources:
So do not let that common argument of "but how will your child socialize?" stop you from pursuing home education if it is a possibility for your family!
If you're curious about homeschooling and want to learn more about how to get started, then I invite you to check out the online course, "Homeschool with Confidence."
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