A psychological assessment I recently filled out for one of my children showed a clear bias towards public schooling with these kinds of queries:
“Do they stay seated when asked to remain in their seat?”
“Are assignments turned in on time and complete?”
“Do they follow directions without additional prompting?”
As both the parent and teacher, I had a lot of questions to answer. Some were almost impossible because I had no knowledge of my child in a traditional school environment. We’ve always homeschooled, so I was making a guess.
Would they remain seated if told not to get up? Doubtful. Do I see that as a problem? No, not really.
It wasn’t long after I completed those questionnaires that I happened upon an article by my favorite psychologist, Peter Gray. Its title, Developmental Psychology’s Marriage to the School System, caught my eye since I was informed that my child tested on the low-normal range of cognitive development and showed other cognitive issues.
Of course, this is a child who has never had to parrot back information on demand or stay in a seat even though they wanted to get up. That hasn’t been their experience of the world.
Gray outlines five ways which the school environment creates a distorted view of child development and psychology. Here is his list of school characteristics and how they differ from a homeschool experience.
1. Adult Direction
School is a place of constant adult direction. Children are told what time they should arrive, when they are allowed to leave, how long to spend on each task, when they can eat, when to go to the bathroom, and what they must be focused on every moment of the long school day.
Compare this environment to homeschooling, where a child can sleep if they’re tired, eat when they’re hungry, go to the bathroom when needed, and be interested in the Civil War even if the state standards say they’re to study the American Revolution this year.
2. Work Versus Play
School explicitly delineates between work and play. Math class is not play; it’s a time for you to pay attention and stay in your seat. Recess, if you have one, is playtime, but even that can be micro-managed by adults.
“Play is the work of a child.” ~ Maria Montessori
Homeschoolers instinctively mix work, life, and play. When there is no artificial separation of work and play, learning can be effortless. Knowledge doesn’t have to be dispensed in the form of a worksheet to “count.” A family game can teach math skills just as well as (maybe better than!) a workbook.
3. Norms, Rankings, and Measurements
Measurements and norms are the areas where I think the co-dependent relationship between school and child psychology is most apparent.
Anecdotes are not a reliable measure for research or public funding; therefore, education and child psychology need each other. Could one exist without the other?
The schools need the tests and norms provided by the psychologists, and the psychologists need the research subjects. We then use these tests and standards to categorize children into different groups—the labels of which are nearly impossible to escape.
In homeschooling, a child has the luxury of just being who they are, where they are. They can continue working on a skill until they master it. They aren’t subjected to daily tests and assignments ranking them against every other child. There isn’t a “norm” demanded on a given day in a particular grade.
4. Age Segregation
Age segregation is the most defining element of school. Age determines when they must begin and age determines when they are free of compulsory attendance. Age determines what grade they are expected to be in and what tasks they are expected to perform.
This age segregation also contributes to bullying and extended adolescence. It creates a vacuum in which peer pressure determines what is acceptable and what is not.
Homeschooling doesn’t rely on age segregation for its function. Children spend their time with everyone from their grandparents to their newborn sibling, and doesn’t this resemble the “real world” more than a group of thirty 12-year-olds ever will?
5. Competition
School is a place of constant competition. From class rankings and grade point averages to being chosen as the lead in the play and making the football team, everything is a competition.
Now many will say that this is real life and that competing is good, but I find this to be a chicken and the egg argument. Do you believe that because life really is a series of competitions, or because you were conditioned by schooling to view everything as a competition?
Within a family, of course, there can be some inherent competitiveness, but ultimately cooperation rules. Choices must be made about the allocation of time and resources, and everyone’s desires are considered.
Institutional schooling and child psychology view all children as apples, and they’re treated similarly. Sorted and graded, some are chosen for the holiday gift box, and others are discarded, fit only for juice.
As homeschoolers, we have apples, but we also have oranges, lemons, peaches, and pineapples. No two are the same, and we don’t value an apple more than an orange.
So as I hear the conclusions of the psychologist, I trust my own instincts and doubt the “expert.” How can I expect my child, who has never spent a day in school, to be accurately judged based upon studies of children in a place of extremely limited freedom?
I can’t; they’re apples and oranges.
About the Author
Bethany is the mom of six always homeschooled children who one day realized she’d lost herself in the process, probably under a pile of laundry. Her eclectic style of relaxed homeschooling draws upon classical to unschooling methods and everything in between.
While homeschooling her children, teaching at a Project Based Co-op, and writing about learning outside of school, she still tries to find time to read a book, drink coffee, and pay the bills. Read more from Bethany on her site BethanyIshee.com: Real inspiration for the authentic mom.
My son rolled under the table in the back of the preschool room while his teacher read a book to the group, and I watched on in mild embarrassment. Why couldn’t he focus like the other kids? Why wasn’t he sitting and taking in the story as raptly as the others were?
He’s just a sponge, who takes in everything and internalizes things, making cognitive leaps so quickly.
As the teacher finished, I saw him creep back towards the carpet slowly, though he was still very wiggly, and stayed slightly set back from the others. She started asking questions—basic ones like, “What color is the hat the kid was wearing?” and “Why did he need to buy a new toy?” The children chimed in with simple answers.
My son crept still closer until he was in a position to join the conversation. He started by comparing the story to a television program his dad watched a few nights ago, and through that comparison, he applied the moral of the story to everyday life. The teacher looked at him knowingly. His mind didn’t operate on the same plane as that of the other children.
He then went back under the table, squirming while he waited for his sweet teacher to tell the others what they needed to do in their center work. Afterwards, she came over to give him a very different task to complete.
What is Giftedness and Asynchronous Development?
According to The Columbus Group (1991), giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching, and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.
Asynchronous development is arguably the defining characteristic of the gifted. This means that their development is out of sync with their neurotypical peers. For my four-year-old in the anecdote above, it meant that he was listening intently to that picture book, making incredible leaps from the the story, and connecting, then applying those thoughts to a news story and to life. All while rolling around on the floor like a typical four year old boy—although at an inappropriate time.
Homeschooling the Gifted Child
While the mom in me cringed at the sight of my kiddo being the only one who looked like he wasn’t paying attention and focused on the behavior rather than the result, the gifted specialist in me had seen things like this so many times before.
In that preschool room observing gifted asynchrony from a parent’s perspective, I realized that I never fully understood all that the parents of the gifted, profoundly gifted, and twice-exceptional children with whom I’d worked with for decades had been trying to tell me. And, in retrospect, I wish I’d realized then how important homeschooling would be to this particular kiddo, and had chosen to keep him home from the start.
Gifted children thrive in a homeschool setting where they can be themselves—wiggly and fidgety or laser-focused on a self-selected topic. They thrive when their tasks can be customized for them, or when they can follow rabbit trails of interest to them with a gifted homeschool curriculum.
We didn’t homeschool our son from the beginning, and those few years of schooling were hard.
Finding and Modifying a Homeschool Program for Gifted Students
There are just so many layers to giftedness, and that definition from the Columbus Group is crucial for parents—especially homeschoolers—to keep in mind every time we go to choose a curriculum.
The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching, and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.
The search for the perfect curriculum can feel overwhelming for the parent of a gifted child. It’s like the story of Goldilocks—too deep, not deep enough, too slow, too fast—it’s nearly impossible to find just right. And the truth is—there isn’t a just right curriculum for a gifted kiddo. (And if anyone tells you that they have developed a gifted homeschool curriculum, run away.)
Image Credit: Syeda@thepreciousyears on Instagram
Using BookShark Literature-Based Curriculum with Gifted Students
So, does BookShark work for gifted kids?
Absolutely.
But, like any other program, you’re going to need to think outside the box as you use it.
BookShark is an amazing, literature-rich program that is all planned out for you and full of wonderful books of all genres. It boasts a four-day schedule, with a very detailed and easy-to-use teacher’s guide. It’s literally an open-and-go curriculum.
For most people.
Needless to say, I’ve adapted the program heavily just like I would with any program for my gifted learners.
My kids want to hear the stories. They don’t want to stop after a chapter, so we binge read and finish 2-3 of the Read-Alouds in a week if that works for us. There’s no shortage of retention. The conversations in the van while trekking to theater rehearsals and science programs are rich and deep. The books inspire deep thinking, and my kids love the mental challenge!
The most important thing to remember as you’re using a curriculum like BookShark with gifted learners is that you’ll have to make it your own. For example, we skip the current event reports assigned in the Instructor’s Guide. While the reasoning behind doing them is solid and important as explained in the guide, my kiddos don’t need to do reports on current events because they already eat, sleep, and breathe critical thinking and opinions. Goodness gracious… the opinions in a room full of gifted children can overwhelm, but lead to fascinating conversations.
We also don’t follow the four-day schedule as laid out in the Instructor’s Guide. For many gifted children, the idea of jumping from section to section (or subject to subject) is a drag once they get excited to learn about something. Instead, we take a more integrative approach.
I look at each book suggestion and the activities that go along with it, see how they tie into any geography or timeline activities, go over the discussion question all at once, and then we read. It may take us a day or two to finish a book, or several weeks, but we take it at the pace we deem best, making a new decision with each title and our engagement in that title. And, actually, for the very advanced reader, a parent may not even ask any of the discussion questions while the book is being read.
I let my ten-year-old read as quickly as she wants to—and sometimes that includes several books in one day—and then we might chat about some of the questions in the guide once she’s completed the entire book and wants to move onto the next one.
The truth is that an Instructor’s Guide is just that—a guide. Parents of gifted children need to read through the guide to see the scope and sequence of a curriculum and what will be taught, but then the Instructor’s Guide serves as your springboard for devising a pace that works for you.
How Book-based Homeschool Curriculum Works for Gifted Learners
For a gaggle of gifted kids—or just one, for that matter—a book-based curriculum like BookShark allows them to push forward at their own pace, reading as much as they desire, sometimes finishing several weeks worth of content in a single week. It also allows for them to go deep when they find a topic they’re interested in and fall down a rabbit hole or two by pulling in more books, diving into writing or project suggestions, or just talking endlessly about their latest discovery.
In our case, the five and eight year olds will probably revisit this program and its books on their own in a few years when they’re reading independently. By then, they’ll breeze through two years in one because they’ll have the prior knowledge from which to draw.
The ten-year-old will probably be done with all the books and poems within a few months and will beg for the second year world history program so she can keep reading. For her, a child whose learning comes from what she reads rather than what she does or watches, she and I will talk about, journal, and debate the talking points that are in the teacher’s manual or the ones she comes up with on her own.
But for all three of my gifted children, the biographies, history books, and novels in the curriculum bleed into their play, into the stories they write, into the conversations they have with one another, and into the museum trips they want to take.
A program like BookShark, with its fiction, nonfiction, poetry, discussions, and Instructor’s Guide is a perfect spine for a gifted homeschool family because it allows for the depth and breadth, rabbit trails, and adaptation that an asynchronous gifted child needs most.
A homeschool program for gifted students like BookShark, with its fiction, nonfiction, poetry, discussions, and Instructor’s Guide is a perfect spine for a gifted homeschool family because it allows for the depth and breadth, rabbit trails, and adaptation that an asynchronous gifted child needs most.
And that wiggly, squirmy four-year-old in the library is now a thriving high schooler who often comes along with me when I speak to parents of gifted and twice-exceptional parents who are dipping their toes into the adventures that homeschooling brings. He’ll tell anyone that flexibility and outside-of-the-curricular-box-thinking is what one needs most to make it as a homeschooling gifted child.
Having a child who has been diagnosed with dyslexia can be overwhelming for any parent. For the homeschool mom, it can seem especially intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Since homeschooling offers flexibility and individualized instruction, it is the perfect environment to foster learning for the child with dyslexia.
Children with dyslexia process information differently. Therefore, they must be taught differently, or frustration, stagnation, and feelings of defeat can compound their struggles. To become readers and writers, they need to learn and access information the way their brains process information.
“Dyslexia is a neurological condition caused by a different wiring of the brain. There is no cure for dyslexia and individuals with this condition must learn coping strategies. Research indicates that dyslexia has no relationship to intelligence. Individuals with dyslexia are neither more nor less intelligent than the general population. But some say the way individuals with dyslexia think can actually be an asset in achieving success.”¹
A Multisensory Approach
Research shows that a multisensory approach helps a child with dyslexia learn.
“When taught by a multisensory approach, students have the advantage of learning alphabetic patterns and words with engagement of all learning modalities. Dr. Samuel Terry Orton, one of the first to recognize the syndrome of dyslexia in students, suggested that teaching the fundamentals of phonic association with letterforms, both visually presented and reproduced in writing until the correct associations were built up, would benefit students of all ages.”²
What is a multisensory approach? A child with dyslexia needs information repeated to them in a variety of ways. Therefore, using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile activities helps children learn and later access the information they’ve learned. A multisensory approach is the glue that helps what a child learns to stick to their brain.
A child with dyslexia also needs time and support. They need to learn at their own pace, in small groups or one-on-one. Below are a few strategies and resources to help children with dyslexia find success.
Reading and Spelling Strategies
When teaching letter sounds and how to identify them with their matching symbol, direct instruction works well. You can also use this method to help them learn to count syllables and to understand the six basic syllable types. Teaching about rhyming, base words, roots, and prefixes and suffixes also works well with direct instruction.
Repetition is Key
For a child who has been diagnosed with dyslexia, repetition is of utmost importance. There are multiple ways to incorporate this into daily learning. Children love to play learning games, which lend themselves easily to repetition. Another fun way to teach is by singing songs. This works especially well with younger children. However, older students can also benefit by repeating words, phrases, and facts set to music.
Keeping words with similar spelling patterns together is a simple trick that facilitates learning. Additionally, help your child to compile a list of their most commonly misspelled words. Then encourage them to practice the words regularly. Mix it up by using letter tiles to build words. Or give them some old-fashioned tracing paper to use with pre-printed words. Word search games are also a fun way for your child to learn.
Make use of your read-aloud time by having your child track the words and follow along. This also works with audiobooks. Or get them involved by taking turns reading aloud. Make sure that you read books that interest them. Let them have some fun by using graphic novels and comic books. This helps to break long passages into smaller parts to encourage learning without becoming overwhelmed.
Another creative way to incorporate repetition is to let children draw or write about what they’re reading. They can also make related hands-on projects. These might include making movies, games, or 3D projects that depict scenes from their reading material.
Reading Comprehension Strategies
Implement a variety of strategies while reading. For example, you can pause after a passage, page, or chapter and discuss what they’ve read.
Use different types of questions as teaching tools. Your child can better understand how to make connections when you ask how they relate to the story or its characters. Teach them how to make predictions by asking what they think will happen next in the story. Help them to learn to make comments about a story by asking what they think, like, or dislike about it. And show them how to recognize inferences in a story by asking what they understand even though it isn’t directly stated.
Your child learns to summarize for clarity when you ask them to explain what has happened so far in the story. You can also teach them to visualize by asking what they see in their mind as they listen.
Writing Strategies
As with reading, direct instruction is a good way to teach writing. It helps when learning fine motor skills and letter formation, along with the mechanics of grammar and sentence structure. Additionally, when teaching them how to break ideas into smaller parts, direct instruction is the most effective. They can also learn to organize their ideas using graphic organizers.
Variety of Tools
With young children, practice writing with fun pens, glitter glue, in salt or sand. Also, you can make words out of playdough or trace them in the air.
Typing might be a better solution for older kids. Assistive technology like Dragon,Naturally Speaking, Kurzweil, a Livescribe Smartpen, and Read&Write are good resources for reading, spelling, and writing.
Interest is Key
Let kids choose their topics and genres. Writing assignments that have a purpose and are meaningful to the child will encourage them to practice. Think outside the box. Emails, Minecraft, invitations, and comic books can be creative ways to assign writing. Even submitting reviews and comments on their favorite YouTube videos can allow them to practice writing.
The Writing Process
First of all, teach your child to brainstorm. They can use graphic organizers to plan their ideas and information. Then, they are ready to write their first draft and begin any necessary revisions.Typing can eliminate the frustration of having to re-write drafts over and over.
Help to simplify the proofreading process. Ask kids to look for only one type of error at a time. Teach them to use proofreading sheets and word walls as aids in the writing process.
Help Them Thrive
It is important that a child with dyslexia practices reading and writing in a variety of ways. Because of this, they need daily practice for short periods of time. Use materials and activities that offer a multisensory approach, repetition, and direct instruction.
Furthermore, children with dyslexia need to spend time doing the things they love, feeling success, and letting their brains relax. A child with dyslexia needs to learn differently. As homeschool moms, we can help them thrive by offering the support, strategies, and resources they need.
“Dyslexic kids are creative,outside-the-box thinkers. They have to be, because they don’t see or solve problems the same way other kids do. In school, unfortunately, they are sometimes written off as lazy, unmotivated, rude or even stupid. They aren’t. Making Percy dyslexic was my way of honoring the potential of all the kids I’ve known who have those conditions. It’s not a bad thing to be different. Sometimes, it’s the mark of being very, very talented.” —RickRiordan.com
NOTES
¹“Multisensory Structured Language Teaching Fact Sheet.” International Dyslexia Association | …until Everyone Can Read!, dyslexiaida.org/multisensory-structured-language-teaching-fact-sheet/.
²“Dyslexia At a Glance.” International Dyslexia Association | …until Everyone Can Read!, dyslexiaida.org/dyslexia-at-a-glance/.
About the Author
Kelly left teaching middle and high school English to homeschool her children and reclaim how she and her family spent their time. Followers of interest-led learning, her family’s days rarely look the same, but they tend to include a lot of books, art supplies, and time outside.
Kelly facilitates local writing circles for women and children, leads classes on Outschool, and blogs about nurturing the love of learning on her blog, Curiosity Encouraged. She loves to journal, read memoirs, hike, and travel. She seeks quiet mornings and good coffee daily.
Guest Gretchen Roe from Demme Learning says that math is like death and taxes: you don’t get away from either one. She urges parents not to shortchange kids in their math instruction by claim they’re just not a math-family.
Learn how a mastery-based curriculum is student-centric, allowing a child to work at the pace they need to fully comprehend the skills (instead of the curriculum determining the length of lessons and how quickly you work through them). Find out why manipulatives are key to learning math and why some kids discard them too soon. Are your math lessons too long? Discover the ideal length of a daily math lesson. The day-to-day math we encounter as adults mostly comes to us in the form of word problems.
Janna Koch (00:36): Welcome to Homeschool Your Way. I’m Janna Koch, your host and BookShark’s community manager. In the homeschooling community, much like any community, there are words thrown around with an assumption that everyone knows and understands the meaning. I, for one, hate when I don’t know what a word means, because if I don’t understand the term, how can I give my two cents? If you don’t know, by now, I’ll just come out and say it. I love to let people know what I’m thinking about in almost everything.
Janna Koch (01:09): Mastery-based learning may be one of those words. You may have heard the term, but can’t quite give your two cents yet. I’m here to help. I’ve invited Gretchen Roe, a veteran mom who happens to have a degree in psychology and child development and has spent the last 19 years in positions of homeschool advocacy, serving on a variety of nonprofit boards. Plus, she is a sales representative for Demme Learning, one of BookShark’s partners in math and spelling. She will help us master the idea of mastery-based learning and equip you to give your two cents about it.
Janna Koch (01:47): First, a homeschool hack. Keep it simple. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with your homeschool or with life in general, ask yourself, “Are these tasks serving my why?” If you don’t have a homeschool why listen to the episode [42] we did with Candace Kelly explaining the need for a why, or write down why you chose a homeschool in the first place. As you look at that to-do list, make sure it aligns with your why. My homeschool why has always been to foster the love of learning in my girls.
Janna Koch (02:20): There are times when I realize I’m doing just the opposite. If I allow the list or the curriculum to dictate my time, am I really fostering joyful learning? To be honest, I’m usually killing their desire to learn anything. So, keep it simple. Let your why fuel your day, not the list. If you have a hack you’d like to share, please go to bookshark.com/podcast and leave a comment.
Janna Koch (02:49): Gretchen, thank you so much for being here.
Gretchen Roe (02:51): Oh, it’s my very great pleasure to have the time to spend with you today.
Janna Koch (02:55): Now I know you and your history, but for those who don’t know, why don’t you go ahead and share a little bit about yourself and talk about what’s keeping you passionate about homeschool, after all these years.
Gretchen Roe (03:08): I had no intention of homeschooling. In fact, I had no intention of having children. We have six and we homeschooled 21 years. Four of them graduated homeschool from high school. And then our fifth was homeschooled to high school and our caboose was homeschooled to middle school. And it was the most joyful 21 years of my life. And I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. I have worked in the homeschool community and positions of homeschool advocacy now for 15 years. And I love the fact that we have the ability to guide our children to adulthood in all aspects. And so, I continue to be as excited today about the homeschooling journey, even though it’s not one that I’m taking right now. I just enjoy walking alongside other parents as they take that journey.
Janna Koch (03:57): So, how long have you professionally been involved with homeschooling?
Gretchen Roe (04:02): I became a homeschooler overnight in the middle of an academic year, when a teacher told my third grader, she didn’t need to memorize her multiplication tables. And I said, “Nope, that’s a wrong answer.” Something’s got to be better out there. And I really only intended to homeschool her from March to June. And it became a glorious adventure that didn’t end for a long time. And she turned 36 yesterday, so I think we did okay.
Janna Koch (04:31): Now how about your partnership with Demme Learning?
Gretchen Roe (04:36): I have known Steve [Demme, founder of Demme Learning] for 15 years. We spoke on a homeschool circuit together and a little over eight years ago, they asked me if I wanted to come aboard professionally. And I said, I wondered when you would ask me to do that because I loved the product. It was a complete game changer for me. When I came to work for Demme Learning, it was Math-U-See and they had just launched Spelling You See.
Gretchen Roe (05:01): The end of the pool, where the language arts happens, is my favorite end of the pool to swim in, and so I was really excited to see Spelling You See come aboard. But Math-U-See was a huge game changer for me. I’m not a confident mathematician. I think math is spelled with four letters for a reason, but I loved the fact that Math-U-See made it possible to educate my kids. So four of my kids are Math-U-See kids, and I never looked back. It’s been amazing.
Janna Koch (05:44): Gretchen, a lot of parents ask me when I talk about Math-U-See, “What is a mastery-based type of learning?” And it definitely is not the type of learning that I had in traditional school or even in my homeschool years. So, it was very unique to me as I became aware of your product and started using it in my home with my children. So, could you just walk us through this philosophy of what this actually means and what it will look like for parents?
Gretchen Roe (06:15): Sure, absolutely. So, there’s two kinds of ways to teach mathematics instruction. One is incremental, that’s the one, most of us are familiar with. Someone pre-determines how many times you will see an individual concept, and so perhaps they present that concept three times and then it falls out of rotation or sequence. The challenge with that kind of learning is if you’re not solid in your understanding, then your understanding is incomplete. And there’s no way to assess that incompleteness as you go further.
Gretchen Roe (06:50): And because math is sequential and cumulative, it becomes really essential for us to get it right. And that is one of the reasons that I love a mastery-based program. At Math-U-See, we say we are student-paced. So. As a student can demonstrate their understanding to a parent or an instructor, they can move forward in the curricula. They’re not bound by a predetermined number of math problems per se, and that makes a tremendous amount of difference.
Janna Koch (07:22): It does. Now, when you found out about Math-U-See and fell in love with this program, what differences did you see in your children as you started using it?
Gretchen Roe (07:33): One of the things I think that’s really important is my background is in child development and child psychology. I actually was enrolled in a PhD program when I found out I was expecting my eldest son and so he’s my PhD, but I love the fact that I can bring more than one sense to the table. Not all of us play on a level field, as far as our understanding, we all have different gifts, but if I can teach a student in as many modalities as possible, it makes it possible for a student to learn. So, I can teach a gifted learner, I can teach a struggling learner and they can all have a level playing field because they are bringing their talents to the table in as many ways is possible.
Janna Koch (08:22): Now I was a family who came into the program later on. So, my daughter was 12 when we started using Math-U-See, because I started to notice that other programs just weren’t cutting it for us. And by that, I mean, it was taking over an hour and a half and there were tears every day. And so I thought, not only is she miserable, but I’m miserable as her mom to see her struggling. And I’m also miserable as the teacher, going “I don’t know how to say it a different way. This is how I learned it.” I was unwilling in a sense to learn a new way of teaching because it works for me, why doesn’t it work for her? And it worked for her two older sisters, which is really what threw me for a loop as a homeschool parent. Why this last one is this not working for? What am I doing differently? And we’ve talked about this in the past.
Janna Koch (09:07): So, when she came into it, she’s not using the manipulatives a lot of the times. And part of me is like, well, if you’re going to do it, you need to do it right and yet she is seamlessly moved into the program and working through it beautifully. So, the type-A in me that’s struggling with there’s manipulatives for a reason, you must use them. I can’t be the only parent that appreciates your program and yet uses it and adjusts it to my child.
Gretchen Roe (09:38): Sure, and isn’t that a definition of homeschooling, we adjust to meet the needs of our child. The truth is in a Math-U-See experience, the manipulatives hold a very special place. And the place that they hold is they allow a student to bring as many senses to the table as necessary to fully understand and grasp a concept. And the other thing that the manipulatives allow us to do is to take a concept that a student understands and give them the resources or the tools to teach that concept back to a parent. If they don’t have the language to do that. At 12, both our daughters, because I came into Math-U-See at the pre-algebra level. So, my daughter was 13 and they pretty much have a well developed language resource at that point, but a six year old, maybe not. So, that’s where the manipulatives help us in that process.
Gretchen Roe (10:35): You’re not going to walk around with plastic blocks in your pocket. As Steve says, the blocks serve a tool to allow us to step along a continuum from the concrete understanding of the initial exploration to representational understanding what do you know in your head to the abstract end of the equation, which is really those Arabic numerals that we force kids to understand math. And so they serve as a tool to help a student facilitate their understanding. And they’re a tool as long as they’re necessary.
Gretchen Roe (11:09): Just like you said, if your daughter is getting the concepts and teaching them back to you and not needing the manipulatives, then she’s moved beyond them. I do have to say sometimes I encounter older students who stepped away from the manipulatives because manipulatives… “We don’t need no stinking manipulatives.” And the truth is they shouldn’t have, because they didn’t have that full conceptual understanding that really allows us to put it in our heads. And what the manipulatives do is they allow us to put that learning into our long term memory in the proper place. So, it can be retrieved later. That really is the goal of the manipulative experience.
Janna Koch (13:14): Well, what about parents who say my child is artistic? My child is a writer. My child is, and math isn’t their strong suit. And so, we’re really not pushing math or we’re really not looking to change for them to just get through it, to just get by, because we know that they’re not a math person, we are not math people. And I’ve been guilty of myself as saying it, but as I’ve matured and grown older, I understand that is so not true.
Janna Koch (13:47): So, you were explaining that in your younger years, your child psychology and so math wasn’t necessarily your thing. But now you’ve been working with this company for eight years and you’re very passionate about math. So, help me understand as a parent who maybe I shouldn’t worry about my child really understands algebra or not, why we need these higher types of learning in these processes in order to make it a better experience as adults.
Gretchen Roe (14:20): Sure. The truth is math is like death and taxes, you don’t get away from either one. And we have developed a culture here in the US of thinking that math literacy is not a necessary skill set, and because of that payday loan companies thrive. It’s up to us to keep the doors open for our kids mathematically. And I would’ve taken that argument to the wall with you 15 years ago with the kid who brought me to Matthew, see, she’s now 30. And she was 13 when we found our way here. And we had been through two different curricula and really struggled. And I said, those very same things, well math just isn’t her thing. She’s my daughter, blah, blah, blah. But the truth is as parents, our goal is to keep as many doors open as possible for our kids. We don’t know what the future holds for our kids.
Gretchen Roe (15:17): And if we make suppositions, we narrow their ability to be flexible. And if I’ve learned anything since 2020, it is that flexibility is a great sign of intelligence, so we need to keep those doorways open for our kids. And as a matter of fact, we have this misapprehension that if you are artistic and you’re creative, you’re not mathy, and that’s not really true, Leonardo da Vinci comes to mind. And I think the important thing is we don’t know what the future holds for our kids. So why would we start narrowing the pathways? Let’s keep the doors open wide and regardless where they choose to go academically, they have the wherewithal to be successful. I’m glad I kept the doors open for that particular child because that non-mathematical artsy kid is a research biologist today. And if I’d closed doors on her, she wouldn’t view where she is today.
Janna Koch (16:24): My daughters were in their guidance counselor’s offices and he was explaining that they didn’t have to continue on to a higher level of math anymore. They’d accomplished what they needed to according to the standards, and so they were like, yeah, free ride, we’re done. And I loudly interjected and reminded them that the reason they needed a parent there for these sessions is because I am the voice of reason. And I said that very thing. I said, “You don’t know your interests are going to change. You could read one book, you could hear one lecture and it could change your life and the trajectory of what you want to do. Do not shut that door by saying, “I’m not going to take college algebra now because I’ve completed what I need to complete.” And we’ll see, jury is still out if that was helpful or not. But I think the other thing is, as a society, I have noticed that we tend, I’ll speak for myself, tend to take the easy way out, the path of least resistance.
Janna Koch (17:22): So, if something is a challenge in a fixed mindset, well, then I don’t want to do it because I don’t know how it’s going to turn out or if I’m going to do it well, but with a growth mindset, it goes, this is something I’ve never learned. As you were talking, I was thinking I’ve never done calculus. I think maybe I might just pick up some Cal. I want to, if I’m sitting here teaching this to my children, I want to be demonstrating to them as well. That’s what they’ll be like, why you only did mathematical investigations when you went to college and your master’s degree had no math, which actually is not true because there was some finance and business and statistics that I had to take. So, you have to know how to do those higher processes of math, but I don’t want them to limit themselves.
Gretchen Roe (18:08): Well, I chose my college degree based on what I thought was the least amount of math necessary to get a degree, looking down through the course catalog, not realizing I’d have to have two years of psychological statistics. And then I made it worse on myself, I split those two years by a seven years, summer vacation. So, you don’t know what the future will hold. And I always say to parents, what are your students’ plans? And parents are like, well, he is a 13 year old boy. Great. That’s awesome. Let’s keep the doors open then because we don’t know what he wants. And kids’ desires change as they age. And I think mathematical literacy is as important as book literacy and it’s part of our educational process. And we, as parents, are obligated to teach our children to be self-sufficient in society. And that means we have to have mathematical literacy.
Janna Koch (19:09): I have never heard the term mathematical literacy before, and I think-
Gretchen Roe (19:12): It might have just made it up, but you know what?
Janna Koch (19:15): I think it’s beautiful.
Gretchen Roe (19:15): It’s very relevant. So I always am impressed with my own lack of mathematical literacy. When I sit down every year and I’m like, oh, taxes, I got to do this. How does this work? Because if you don’t do something with frequency, you don’t remember it. And here’s a tip, here’s another reason why mastery in mathematics is so important. In our world, mastery is demonstrated by teaching someone else what you know. And isn’t that the highest form of proving knowledge is to be able to explain to someone else why you know this particular thing works.
Janna Koch (20:01): Unfortunately, I think we have seen in our society a lack of mastery in so many things, because people don’t know why they do things or why they don’t know what they know, right? And so, I think as homeschool parents, it’s another privilege of ours to be like, hey, here is a very serious topic that is relevant and current in our society. Let’s talk about it. How do you feel about it? Well, what are your friends saying about it? Okay. What do you think about what they’re saying? It was one of my favorite things about being a parent, really, is being able to walk with my children through these hard things in life, and then seeing, okay, we don’t have all the answers.
Janna Koch (20:43): Nobody has all the answers, but let’s work the process at each step of the way so that we can gain a confidence in what we do believe, the decisions that we do make. And I think math is a perfect example of that. Like you said, if you don’t know, and you’re making financial decisions, I mean, we live in a country, we have so much freedom. We’re able to choose how we spend our money. If you don’t understand how money works, how adding and subtracting and multiplying, and God forbid, even like you were saying compound interest in all of these things, you’re going to be lost.
Gretchen Roe (21:20): Sure. Well, I think back I mentioned, my eldest daughter just turned 36 when she was 19 years old, she got a $53,000 SBA loan and opened her own coffee shop. And at that point in time, she had a little old ancient mercurial cash register that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t and she found that she could only hire homeschool kids to work in the coffee shop. And the reason was because when the cash register went on, the fritz, most kids couldn’t calculate the change in their heads to know what change to give back. And so she very quickly learned that her staff was going to be homeschoolers because they could do that mental math. And so much of mental math is not part of the mathematical experience anymore. I’m glad it’s part of Math-U-See.
Janna Koch (22:13): I am too. I think one of the biggest things that annoys my teenage daughters even now is I will say, okay, what are they going to give you back and change? Don’t look at them. And of course my twins are 16 and they’ll be like, stop it. You’re embarrassing us. And I’m like, I’d rather embarrass you now with the safety net of me standing right here than when you have a job, like you’re saying, and something goes wrong and you can’t count it back to somebody. And then you know that anxiety, how that feels when you just don’t know what to do in the situation. It’s like, wow, as your mom, it’s my job to help you avoid situations like this by embarrassing you now so that you have the skills later. Might be the title of my next book, I’m here to embarrass you now.
Gretchen Roe (22:57): I like that book. That’s a good one. We could probably co-write that.
Janna Koch (23:00): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Gretchen Roe (23:02): My husband always says our goal is to raise kids who have character who are not characters, so we’ll see.
Janna Koch (23:10): Yeah, well …
Gretchen Roe (23:10): Boat’s still out on the caboose and the train. We’ll see.
Janna Koch (23:15): It is fun to look at all of the different ones and their different personalities and how you think you’re parenting the same, but then birth order and different, multiple intelligences in different ways just really affect all of that, which is what makes us so unique and beautiful. And that is part of also expressing to our children that everyone is unique and has beauty. Let’s find it. What is beautiful about this? And I feel the same way about education. We love to read in this house. We love to discuss, we are all talkers, but where’s their beauty in math. Let’s talk about it. Oh my gosh, there’s patterns. There’s patterns all out in the world in nature and in math and math is just kind of mimicking that and it’s helping us understand it. So let’s look at it that way instead of, oh my gosh, I have to now do my math.
Gretchen Roe (24:03): Right. Well, and I think part of that is anybody who was raised in a public school environment remembers an hour or gosh, my son has a friend who is in a block schedule classroom situation. And her math is a 90 minute experience in a day. And you don’t love things that linger painfully for you. So, I think in some ways parents have to revisit their own math experiences and maybe shed some of that stuff, so we can help our kids be successful. At Math-U-See, we say, “If you’re in our Greek series, the colored books back here, you’re looking at 15 minutes a day, because your child has an attention span of their age, plus two to three minutes for new material. And so if you’re spending an hour a day doing math, you have 15 minutes of quality instruction in 45 minutes of obedience.”
Janna Koch (25:05): Mm-hmm.
Gretchen Roe (25:07): And that makes a tremendous difference for kids.
Janna Koch (25:09): Yeah. And for a parent, maybe even going a step further and translating it and saying, well, now you have 45 minutes of exercise of something that you actually despise, right? We’re not talking about paddle boarding, because if you told me I had 45 minutes paddleboarding, I’d be out there in a heartbeat. You couldn’t give me back off. But if you told me I had 45 minutes of running, how could I possibly psych myself up to do that? It just isn’t possible. And I think we do forget that even in that 45 minutes, like you said of obedience, that is exercise to them of something that doesn’t come naturally is not on the top of their list of boy, I want to sit here and do something for 45 minutes that I don’t necessarily like, but gosh, darn it, I’m going-
Gretchen Roe (25:53): Well, there’s a corollary to that as well because as parents, if we’re not fond of something, we look to shuttle it off. And I often have conversations with parents who will say to me at what age can my child do math all by themselves? And I annoy them when I say, well it depends because every child is different and mathematics is a language. You can’t learn it in a vacuum. And frankly you can’t learn it from a computer because a computer’s a tool. It’s not a teacher. So you got to be able to engage with someone in order to test your understanding and make sure that it’s solid and be able to move that forward.
Gretchen Roe (26:38): And that was one of the things that impressed me so much about Math-U-See is, yeah, a mastery math program sounded like a great idea, but he didn’t realize how understanding the process of mastery would translate into all of my kids’ other academics. Because if you talk yourself through something and you say, all right, what do I know? And you walk yourself through that process, that habit of learning to walk yourself through math then goes into your science and goes into your language arts and your history and those other things, and we become a more well rounded learner.
Janna Koch (27:18): Mm-hmm. I think that circles us back to Leonardo da Vinci, like what the Renaissance man, right. He was the epitome-
Gretchen Roe (27:26): That’s right.
Janna Koch (27:26): … of being well rounded. And yet unlike Leonardo, I say I’m the jack of all trades master of none, but it has suited me. It has suited me just fine in my endeavors in life. But I do love the idea of having mastery in all areas. Just like you, just like what I caught onto that word you said literacy. If we could look at math as a type of literacy as parents, then that would translate to our children as, okay, this isn’t just numbers, and we have to memorize and we just have to get through it.
Janna Koch (28:04): How can we start writing a story with math? And yes, you’ll use numbers because as a kid word problems were like, ugh, please. Not the word problems. They never made sense to me. I don’t know who the author of these were, but I’m thinking maybe another book we might collaborate on is getting a fiction writer to start writing our word problem, so that we can make them engaging with students, but that they can actually see that there’s two languages being woven together is math-
Gretchen Roe (28:36): Right.
Janna Koch (28:36): … and vocabulary and certain structure.
Gretchen Roe (28:39): Well, the hard part in most endeavors, when I talk to parents who are like, ah, yeah, I hate work. My kids are great on computational math, but they hate word problems. When math comes to us as adults, it’s a word problem.
Janna Koch (28:52): Mm-hmm.
Gretchen Roe (28:52): So, we have to give our kids a degree of facility. And one of the things that we say at Math-U-See is the word problems are where you prove your application and understanding.
Janna Koch (29:04): Mm-hmm.
Gretchen Roe (29:04): Because if you can take the conceptual understanding you developed in the worksheets and then apply it in the word problems, then you really have both sides of that mathematical coin.
Janna Koch (29:15): Yeah. And then their literacy would be even higher. So, [inaudible 00:29:20].
Gretchen Roe (29:19): Absolutely.
Janna Koch (29:22): I love [inaudible 00:29:23]. One more thing Gretchen, before we go, what would you like to say to a parent who is maybe struggling with several things, deciding whether or not homeschool has actually worked for them, really struggling with the idea of, are we going to re-up again next year? And maybe this is all coming from a place of, I’m not seeing the results that I set out to see. So, if you had a parent come into your booth and or call you on the phone, what would be your best words of advice for them for those things?
Gretchen Roe (29:56): Don’t read other people’s highlight reels. We all are involved in some sort of homeschooling endeavor where there’s the child who has every kudo and accolade going on. And we’ve got the child at home who couldn’t find their shoes to go to the homeschool co-op in the first place. And the truth of the matter is your journey is your journey and it is equally valuable, and this is a hard job. You’re going to invest a lot of time and blood and sweat and tears. And you don’t see the return on your investment right away. But it doesn’t mean you’re not making a tremendously good investment, but you are fully capable and equipped to teach your children and figure out what worked this year and celebrate that because it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Janna Koch (30:54): Yeah, man. And nobody wants to run a marathon, Gretchen.
Gretchen Roe (31:00): I know it. I know, but you find yourself there, you know what our kids are going to grow up. So do you want to influence them or do you want somebody else to influence them?
Janna Koch (31:08): Yeah. Well, good advice coming from a mother who has seen it from start to finish and is now helping other parents as they are along their journeys.
You might not be sure about homeschooling, not to mention child-led learning. I know that I had a skeptical reaction initially. As someone who came from a public school education, it only seemed natural that the teacher was the boss and that learning had to happen in the classroom.
But when it came to educating my own children, I quickly realized that this type of model did not work for us. So after homeschooling my kids for more than two years, I can confidently say that homeschooling is the best because it allows for genuine child-led learning.
What Exactly Is Child-led Learning?
In broad terms, child-led learning is allowing your child lead the way. The child has a say in what they want to learn and how long they want to spend on activities. It also means encouraging children to learn at their own pace and in a way that suits them best.
Your initial response to child-led learning might be that this seems impractical. You may think:
Children don’t always know what’s good for them. They need a varied and broad education, but would they choose that on their own? And if I’m going to educate my kids myself, isn’t it safest to replicate the public school experience at home?
Let me give you some insight into what child-led learning in a homeschool can do.
The Benefits of Child-led Learning
A child who learns what they want, is going to be interested, engaged, and motivated.
A child who has the time and encouragement to learn something deeply and fully, is going to become an expert.
A child who takes ownership of their learning is going to develop a sense of self-confidence.
A child who can learn in a way that suits them best, is going to be successful and is also going to develop a love for learning.
Don’t these benefits sound exactly like what you want for your children?
How Can I Move Towards a Child-led Experience?
Even though child-led learning is not just for homeschoolers, it is definitely easier to offer in a home-ed environment. Unfortunately our education systems have a long way to go yet. So my first recommendation would be to consider homeschooling as an option.
Then encourage your children’s learning journey:
Offer them many different learning experiences so that they can discover what sparks their interest. This could mean taking them on field trips, showing them documentaries, and allowing them to use the internet freely (but safely, of course).
Hand over a curriculum catalog and show them the programs that would be a good fit for their age. Then let them choose what programs to study for the year.
Show them where to find information and take them to the library. You could also give them the opportunity to speak to people who are experts in their fields.
Give them the tools they need to do what they want. This could be equipment, resources, curriculum, or travel.
Be supportive and encouraging. Praise their efforts to be independent.
Lastly, set aside your expectations. Let them lead and don’t try to force your visions or ideas on them.
Child-led learning does take a lot of involvement and energy from parents. But once your child has found their way and is deeply involved in an academic pursuit, you will see the magic of child-led learning happening.
About the Author
Charlotte Jones is a multi-tasking mom who works from home. She spends her days blogging at My Little Home School, homeschooling her twins, and teaching English online.
Her home is a small house in a quaint little town on the coast of South Africa. You can often find her swimming in the lagoon or hiking in the forest with her husband, special needs twins, and furbaby.
She loves her family, spending time in nature, running, red lipstick, and drinking too much coffee.
Think back to your favorite textbook growing up. You probably read it word for word, right?
The weight of textbooks in our backpacks is often more memorable than the textbooks themselves. Not that they aren’t chock full of information. On the other hand, books like the fiction and non-fiction literature that make up the BookShark curricula conjure up images, characters and narratives. Certain books are so meaningful and memorable that when recalling their stories, the characters feel more like real people who you knew in your life than constructed characters from lines of text.
What if one of those special childhood books took place during the Civil War? It’s likely that the reader would learn about the Civil War in a more intimate way than they would through textbook. A young reader would “meet” the characters that represent the opposition, the leaders, the enslaved, the soldiers and the women and children left behind. The characters become real, and the reader feels empathy for them. The reader also learns a holistic view of the Civil War, and can place the event in their memory quite clearly.
Why Literature-Based Learning Works
This notion of experiential learning through reading is the basis of a literature-based curriculum. Reading a novel or a biography allows students to become deeply engaged in a story, and understand a wide range of topics more intimately from a more intimate perspective.
The engagement doesn’t end with the student and the book. Great books spur engaging conversations between teachers — in this case parents—and children. Parents can ask questions about the books, add their own knowledge about a place and time represented, and easily see where the child has gaps in understanding. This interaction is core to homeschooling through BookShark’s book-based learning program. Students receive individualized attention, genuine verbal interaction, and easy engagement when taught with books. This even holds true when it comes to literature-based learning for science and mathematics.
The Proven Benefits of Reading
The value of reading for children and adults alike is tried and true. Here are some proven benefits of reading:
The Reality is Reading Has Decreased in Our Culture
But where did this reading, and its numerous benefits to children as they grow into adults go? The Boston Globe reports:
Only 30% of 13-year-olds read almost every day.
The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9% in 1984 to 19% in 2004.
The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day watching TV and just seven minutes reading.
Only about a third of high school seniors read at a proficient level, a 13% decline since 1992.
Unfortunately, the quiet work of a person and a book is often replaced with social interaction online, streaming content, television programming and digital games. Computer tablets, chat windows on computer screens, and smart phones are an all too tempting and easy distraction from reading a book.
The decline in reading is a problem that homeschooling parents can actively counteract. Give your children the love of deep reading, and that love will prioritize their free time throughout their development. As we know, strong routines build habits that stick with us through adulthood. Do your child a favor and create a framework for them to develop that habit. In the meantime, they will be learning, and more intimately understanding history, culture, language arts, science and even mathematics.
freedom to choose the curriculum you want to follow
freedom to do schoolwork in the morning, afternoon, or evening
freedom to shelve schoolwork for a day and take a fieldtrip
You, as the teacher, are the one shaping your child’s education.
Yet most of us homeschooling parents, especially those of us who ourselves attended traditional school, have trouble letting go of the brick-and-mortar school mentality. It’s deeply rooted within us, and we may not even realize how much it is influencing us and our decisions when it comes to our children’s education. These hidden assumptions are demonstrated clearly in the many misconceptions people have about BookShark.
Misconception #1: BookShark Levels Are Equivalent to Grade Levels
Many people look at BookShark curriculum, and they automatically assume that each level corresponds to a grade, i.e. Level 5 is for a 5th grade student. While a 5th grader can certainly tackle Level 5, what most people miss is that BookShark gives an age range for each level. Level 5, for instance, is recommended for ages 10-13, which means it can be used for what is traditionally thought of as 5th – 8th grades!
I encourage parents to choose the BookShark curriculum along the upper end of the age range instead of the lower one. Using Level 5 for ages 10-13 as an example again, I suggest this curriculum is better suited for the typical 12 and 13 year old (the upper age range) than the lower range of ages 10 and 11. You know your child best. Is your child sensitive? Go with the upper age range. Is your child especially mature or gifted? Then you may want to try the lower range.
This rule of choosing along the upper end of the age range is especially valid for higher levels that include sensitive topics. For instance, my son used Level 5 in 7th grade at age 12. One of our favorite books was the read-aloud A Moment Comes which deals with weighty issues. While he would have understood the book at a surface level as a 5th grader, his added maturity as a 7th grader helped him catch nuances and implications that he would have largely missed at a younger age.
Misconception #2: Your Child Will Fall Behind If He Isn’t at the “Right” Level
Even after hearing the advice to teach your child using the BookShark Level where he is at the higher end of the age range, many parents just can’t do so. Why? They’re afraid that their child will “fall behind” if they’re doing Level 5 as a 7th grader. They worry that if their child is doing Level 7 as a 9th grader, he’s actually completing a middle school curriculum as a high school student.
Yet look at everything your child is learning. In Level 7, your child will read 26 novels. I’m sure that most brick-and-mortar high school freshman are not reading that many books, nor are they reading books of the same quality.
However, it is true that you may need to change some aspects of the curriculum if your child is at the high age range. For instance, a high school freshman is not likely in pre-algebra, which is the math curriculum used for Level 7. That situation is easily remedied by customizing your Math selection. Just choose the Algebra package instead. (By the way, for help customizing a package, just email or call BookShark.)
As a parent who loves BookShark and has seen what tremendous knowledge children get from being on the higher end of the age range, I say your child will not be behind his peers with this curriculum.
Misconception #3: Students Aren’t Learning Because They Aren’t Taking Tests
Here is the last, and perhaps strongest, misconception from our own school days—to learn something, a student must take a test.
Think back to your school experience with tests. Was it like mine? I crammed furiously, hoping the information stayed in my brain long enough to make at least a B on the test. Then I promptly forgot it all because I didn’t learn the information in a genuine way.
We all know that an A on a test doesn’t mean the information was internalized. An A could merely mean that the information was memorized, only to disappear in a few weeks or months.
Because BookShark students are learning in a genuine way that is more likely to pique their interests, they’re more likely to remember what they read. In addition, after every section of reading, there are questions to monitor your children’s reading comprehension and to dive more deeply into the events and ideas. These discussions about what you are reading is one of the best parts of BookShark, and they are a superior substitute for tests.
Students are learning more—without tests—because they’re learning much more deeply.
If you bring a brick-and-mortar school mentality to BookShark (and it’s hard not to if that’s the way you received your own education), you may have these three misconceptions. But rest assured, BookShark provides a quality education, just in a different way than a traditional school. For me, that makes it a much stronger curriculum.
About Our Author
Melissa is a homeschool mom to three kids. BookShark is her primary curriculum, and she and her kids love it! When she’s not homeschooling, she’s either shuttling kids from one activity to another or working from home as a freelance writer. You can read more about Melissa’s homeschool journey at her blog Moms Plans.
When you first make the choice to homeschool, what you need and want most is support. And naturally, where do you look first for that support? Family, and almost always, your parents. Now if grandparents have been unsupportive and critical of your parenting decisions from the start, their criticisms of homeschooling probably won’t surprise you. But if, on the other hand, you are used to unwavering support for your parenting choices, opposition to homeschooling may come as a shock.
Whatever your experience in the past, keep in mind that unless you are a second-generation homeschooler, homeschooling isn’t an obvious choice. As much as it has progressed over the years, homeschooling is far from mainstream. You are choosing an educational option that is far from vetted with no guarantees of a successful outcome—at least in their minds. You are putting their precious grandchildren’s future at risk, and they probably won’t keep quiet about it.
Personally, my parents are former teachers and administrators in the public school system. They seem to love the fact that my kids aren’t exposed to the (what they call) garbage of public schools, Common Core, and the non-stop standardized testing. But at the same time, they often make comments about homeschooling that seem a bit disparaging of my choice.
So what can you do when grandparents voice their criticisms and concerns of your choice to homeschool? For all of you dealing with more extreme opposition, my heart goes out to you. Homeschooling is hard enough without grandparents hating it. While the interactions I’ve experienced haven’t been that extreme, I want to offer you the tips and advice that have helped me thus far.
1. Remember Grandparents Want What’s Best for Their Grandkids
While this isn’t always the case, most grandparents love their grandchildren and want the best possible outcome for them. When they express concerns—directly or indirectly—it comes from a place of love and concern. They probably don’t want to pick a fight.
2. Resist the Urge to Engage the Negative Comments
When the negative comments and questions come, resist the urge to engage in a debate or lengthy conversation. It’s kind of like politics on Facebook: pretty much no one everhas changed their mind because of a political debate in a Facebook thread, right? We share things that reinforce what we believe to be true, and other side does the same.
You are probably not going to change their mind about homeschooling with a conversation. Hopefully that will happen when they see evidence in the superior outcomes that your style of education provides. Choose to quickly move past the comments and change the subject. If they insist on returning to it, see the next tip.
3. Devise a Canned Response
In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to say things we regret. Or worse, in my opinion, to get flustered and look like an idiot just when you want to impress them with your witty response. Instead, choose a predetermined response that leaves no room for debate or discussion. Here are a few I keep handy:
Homeschooling is the best choice for our family right now.
I’m glad regular school worked best for us growing up. Homeschooling is working really well for us.
I appreciate your concern, but right now, homeschooling is working really well for us.
I’m sure you can come up with better ones, but make sure they are not baiting, sarcastic, or defensive. Make it short and sweet, polite but firm, with no room for further discussion.
4. Set Boundaries with Grandparents
Depending on how antagonistic—or passive-aggressive—the grandparents actually are, you may need to set firm boundaries about what they can and cannot say to your kids. For example, have you noticed that certain people love quizzing homeschooled kids? They are determined to prove that homeschooling is a poor educational choice.
While some kids can take that kind of interrogation without batting an eye, some kids will walk away from a Q&A session extremely anxious, wondering if they measure up. Other times, grandparents might suggest to your kids all the fun things about school they are missing out on:
“Wouldn’t you love to see other kids every day?”
“Buying school supplies is so much fun!”
“Putting on the school play was one of my favorite memories from school. Don’t you wish you could be in a play?”
Whatever grandparents might say to your kids about homeschooling or traditional school, make sure you have a conversation with them to establish guidelines for what is okay and not okay. Those guidelines will likely vary based on how anti-homeschooling they actually are and how confrontational they tend to be. It doesn’t need to a be a long conversation, but you should be clear about a few main points:
You hear and understand that they don’t love homeschooling.
You are the parent and you will continue to make the best decisions you can for your kids, including the educational ones.
You hear and understand that they don’t love homeschooling.
They cannot undermine your decision via your kids. And if they persist in their attempts to do so, you will need to set stricter boundaries about how often they interact with your kids alone.
Surround Yourself with Supporters
When the people closest to you don’t agree with your choice to homeschool, you can start to doubt your decision. Those first few months of homeschooling can be so tough. You don’t really know what you’re doing yet. You haven’t fully found your footing, and you desperately need to believe that you made the right choice.
You need to surround yourself with like-minded homeschooling parents—both newbies and veterans. You need cheerleaders, parents who will encourage and support you. Whether you find that those people in person or online, make sure to set aside time to find them. You’re going to need a place to vent, a shoulder to cry on, and a pat on the back to let you know you’re doing great.
Final Thoughts on When Grandparents Disagree with Homeschooling
Change is hard. Change is even harder as you get older. When our society has so normalized school that any other choice is taboo, you need to expect questions and stares and criticisms, even from those closest to you. People fear what they don’t know. Grandparents might also have experiences with homeschool families that are less than ideal—the ones who give homeschooling a bad name.
Either way, remember to stay humble in all of this because honestly, we don’t know our kids’ educational outcomes either! We can do all the right things, but we still cannot guarantee a fantastic educational outcome for our kids, any more than traditional schools can. The schools just happen to already have the benefit of the doubt. As homeschoolers, we are still earning ours.
Grandparents might eventually come around, when they see homeschooling really working for your kids. But it may take them longer than you’d like. Hang in there while you wait. And whatever you do, don’t let their negativity make you question your choice to homeschool.
You will always find people who don’t love your parenting choices. You can choose to let the questions cripple you, or you can choose to let them strengthen your parenting muscles and increase your confidence. The choice is up to you.
About Our Author
June loves deep discussions about homeschooling, parenting, and minimalism. When she’s not homeschooling, decluttering, or blogging at This Simple Balance, she loves to enjoy perfect silence while sipping a hot cup of coffee and thinking uninterrupted thoughts—which, of course, with four kids ages eight and under doesn’t happen very often!
Homeschoolers are record keepers! Depending on our state’s requirements and personal preference we fill folders and boxes, create portfolios and transcripts, write lesson plans, make charts, take hundreds of pictures, maybe even blog.
Here in Indiana, even though I’m not required to turn records into the state, I keep my children’s projects, encourage their goals, and document their learning. I want to capture our time together. I want my children to see and remember their progress. And when doubt sets in as to whether or not I’m doing enough with them, my records remind me that yes! Yes, I am.
A number of years ago I came across the work of Ryder Carroll. The creator of The Bullet Journal, Carroll offers an analog method to, “track the past, order the present, design the future.”
I love journals and organizing, so I immediately took to bullet journaling my grocery lists, to-do lists, goals, the books I read, the books I wanted to read . . . When I found that many of my pages included bits and pieces of our homeschooling days, I realized we needed a homeschool bullet journal.
I won’t go into specifics as to how to bullet journal, since you can find out everything you need to here. But remember that the point of bullet journaling is to make life easier, not harder. I have not found that keeping my calendar in my bullet journal is especially helpful.
I prefer an actual calendar and don’t have time to write our daily comings and goings multiple times. Instead, our homeschool bullet journal captures our past, present, and future more thematically.
Your BookShark Instructor’s Guide could serve as a basis for your journal, but you may find it too bulky and inflexible for day to day record keeping. If you want to use bullet journaling, you’ll probably want to use a separate notebook. A homeschool bullet journal typically goes beyond lesson planning and incorporates the extras from your larger family life.
Once you set up your homeschool bullet journal, you just have to remember to use it. Put it on your bedside table and spend time each night recording and reflecting. Or put it by your coffee pot and use it to begin your day. Pull it out to help you plan for the week, month, and semester. If you have older children, let them add to it and check off the things they accomplished.
It can be challenging to organize all the information and remember all the things. A homeschool bullet journal won’t shrink your child’s LEGO model of the Seven Wonders of the World, but it will remind you they made it. It will keep your book lists, goals, grades, achievements, and reminders safe and sound and all in one place. They are both easy to create and to use. Give homeschool bullet journaling a try.
About Our Author
Kelly left teaching middle and high school English to homeschool her children and reclaim how she and her family spent their time. Followers of interest-led learning, her family’s days rarely look the same, but they tend to include a lot of books, art supplies, and time outside.
Kelly facilitates local writing circles for women and children and blogs about nurturing the love of learning on her blog, Curiosity Encouraged. She loves to journal, read memoirs, hike, and travel. She seeks quiet mornings and good coffee daily.
I’ll admit it; the giant blue binder that came with my daughter’s BookShark Reading with History curriculum was a little overwhelming. I remember unboxing day. While my kid flipped through her new books, excited by all the stories she was going to read, I unwrapped a reamof paper—my Instructor’s Guide (IG).
Never having had success with a boxed curriculum before, I’ll admit, I was a little skeptical. But BookShark felt different. The BookShark Science curriculum and US Elections Lap Book we had already used were a hit with both my daughter and me, so . . . deep breath . . . I needed to give this history curriculum a chance. I’m so glad we did!
Not only does our BookShark curriculum reduce the amount of time I need to prep for our lessons, it provides us with countless opportunities to read and learn together. I’ve found the teacher’s guide is just that, a guide. We can easily choose which lessons we follow, where we want to take a deeper dive, and which ones we skip or return to at a later date.
Feeling overwhelmed or a little uncertain about the plethora of materials in a BookShark curriculum? Never fear! You don’t have to do it all. Here are ways to pick and choose from your BookShark curriculum so it’s a perfect fit for you and your homeschooler.
Let BookShark Be a Flexible Guide
When it comes to curriculum, I can get caught up in thinking I need to do it all exactly the way it’s laid out. The problem with this is sometimes my homeschooler wants to do things a little differently or needs a lesson altered. Sometimes she needs more time to read a book or buzzes through an activity and is ready to move on.
What I’ve found, thanks to BookShark, is a good curriculum offers options and ideas I can easily take and make my own. Below are the ways I adjust BookShark curriculum to meet the needs of my homeschooler.
The Weekly Schedule Pages
One of my favorite parts of BookShark curriculum is the weekly schedule grids. (See samples here.) Easy to read and modify, they lay out a concise plan. You can follow it as is, working down the assignments for each day. Or if your child prefers to stick with a book rather than skipping about, you can work across the page, reading the full week’s worth of passages at once. It’s up to you!
Here’s how I use the IG pages. Each week, I flip to the new week’s plan and skim through what is suggested. Then I go back to the previous week and check to see what we are still working on. I cross off the things we’ve completed so it’s easy to see which lessons, pages of a book, or activities we have yet to finish.
To keep track of what we’re working on, I put a sticky note on the weekly schedules we need to complete. There’s plenty of room on these sheets to write down other things we’re doing or any modifications. On the rare occasion we are going to skip an activity or reading, I just cross it out.
36 Weekly Dividers
The weekly dividers are useful guides in that they help me keep track of the units we’re working on, but I don’t worry about what week we’re on or push my homeschooler to finish everything listed in one week’s time.
When we started our BookShark Reading with History curriculum, she was not a confident independent reader. We used the independent books as Read-Alouds, so it took us longer than was suggested. This was okay! I homeschool because I am not interested in flying through lessons just to get them done.
Now, just three months in, my daughter reads on average a book a week independently. Her remarkable achievement is a testament to how reading awesome books and discussing them does, in fact, grow readers. Moreover, it’s possible that by the time we’re in the second half of the curriculum, she could be ahead of the weekly schedule. This is also okay!
BookShark curriculum is organized in such a way that we can easily adjust the lessons and move at our child’s pace.
So you can follow the weeks as they are outlined in the IG. Or you cand do what I do and just work through the material in the order laid out but not necessarily in the time frame (week by week) that it’s laid out.
BookShark Books
The number of books provided with the BookShark curriculum is impressive yet can be overwhelming due to sheer quantity.
Remember this: The great thing about a book is it doesn’t expire.
Again, I had to remind myself of this when we started our curriculum. It’s okay if your child doesn’t read every single book provided or if they don’t read it at the exact time it’s suggested.
Guess what?! We have skipped a book here and there, and it’s okay! Why? Because my daughter was ready to move on or we wanted to take our time with a book she was really loving. We can always go back and read the books we skipped later.
Permission to skip books is fully granted!
BookShark Lessons
My daughter is learning all about the Eastern Hemisphere. She loves filling in the maps, reading and discussing the novels, and exploring the different countries and cultures. Taking notes is challenging however, since she is listening to me reading about a country’s history or reading about it herself. We use the history text provided as a guide as well. We use it for its maps and pictures, skim it for information, and supplement the text by finding documentaries and videos. We also use the notes provided for me in my IG to help her write down notes. She’s learning all of the information she needs to learn in a way that works for her and that’s what matters.
No one knows our kids like we do, so finding a perfect curriculum that meets every one of their needs is unrealistic. BookShark clearly understands this, so their curriculum’s provide learners with an organized Instructor’s Guide and tons of resources that can easily be adapted to fit the needs of each learner. Nowhere in the curriculum does it suggest you have to do it all. Our children will get a well rounded education no matter how we tailor it to meet their needs.
Follow the plans weekly or as you see fit.
Read all the books or read some now and others later.
Choose which books your homeschooler reads independently and which ones you read together.
What’s important is your child has a guide (that’s you), and you have a guide—your BookShark curriculum. With both of these in place, the love of learning happens over and over again.
About Our Author
Kelly left teaching middle and high school English to homeschool her children and reclaim how she and her family spent their time. Followers of interest-led learning, her family’s days rarely look the same, but they tend to include a lot of books, art supplies, and time outside.
Kelly facilitates local writing circles for women and children and blogs about nurturing the love of learning on her blog, Curiosity Encouraged. She loves to journal, read memoirs, hike, and travel. She seeks quiet mornings and good coffee daily.
