Are you homeschooling through the summer? Whether you do or not is an entirely personal decision. Let me give you two views, one reason to take the summer off, another for continuing to homeschool. I will tell you up front, that we homeschool through the summer.
If your child has many public school friends, then the summer is the time when they will be able to get together and do things. The public school students will have the summer off. And your children will want to be off as well. Sometimes the parent is more in need of the break than the child. Taking the summer off can give both you and your child the opportunity to reduce stress, and do some really fun things in the time that you would normally be doing school.
In the case of our family, we school through the summer. There are a couple of reasons for this. Our weather is extremely hot and humid in the summer, to the point of being dangerous at times. When you add ozone air quality alerts, it just makes sense to spend time in the air conditioning. If we school through the summer then we can take time off when the weather is more pleasant.
Schooling through the summer also means that we don’t get burned out during the rest of the year. This may sound odd to you, but schooling during the summer means that we can take more frequent, shorter breaks through out the year. Schooling through the summer also means that my child doesn’t get the long summer months to forget the progress we have made, or have to review a lot when returning to school in the fall.
In the end, it is personal preference whether you and your family homeschool through the summer or take it off. Consider the pros and cons of each and make the decision that best suits your family!
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Learning Styles: Visual
One more learning style for you…visual. That is not to say that kinetic, auditory, and visual are the only learning styles, but they are good examples of three of the major styles.
So, visual learners. They learn by seeing. Often the more colorful and animated a lesson is, the better. Some researchers think that our children are having more visual pathways formed in their brains at an early age because of the amount of input our children receive.
Consider a child from the era when public schools were being created. There was no television, no internet, no video games, and no smart phones. Books and a black board were the height of visual stimulation in those classrooms. Today, children have all of that visual stimulation, much of it before they can even read.
We know that language pathways in the brain form early, usually before the age of three, and other pathways are not an exception to this rule. If you wire a child’s brain to rapid visual input, then it would follow that that might be how they learn best.
Visual learners think more in pictures than in words, they may dream in color, they are better at multi-tasking than some other styles of learners. Where they do not excel is in linear tasks, or multi-step tasks. Don’t be surprised if your visual learner doesn’t do well in long division, or even math in general.
After describing three of the main types of learning styles, you may not see a clear picture of your child. This is because many children are combination learners.You may even see that your child learns one subject visually, another kinesthetically, and a third by an auditory method. Being familiar with different learning styles means that you have tools in your tool box to help your child learn in a manner that works for them.
So, visual learners. They learn by seeing. Often the more colorful and animated a lesson is, the better. Some researchers think that our children are having more visual pathways formed in their brains at an early age because of the amount of input our children receive.
Consider a child from the era when public schools were being created. There was no television, no internet, no video games, and no smart phones. Books and a black board were the height of visual stimulation in those classrooms. Today, children have all of that visual stimulation, much of it before they can even read.
We know that language pathways in the brain form early, usually before the age of three, and other pathways are not an exception to this rule. If you wire a child’s brain to rapid visual input, then it would follow that that might be how they learn best.
Visual learners think more in pictures than in words, they may dream in color, they are better at multi-tasking than some other styles of learners. Where they do not excel is in linear tasks, or multi-step tasks. Don’t be surprised if your visual learner doesn’t do well in long division, or even math in general.
After describing three of the main types of learning styles, you may not see a clear picture of your child. This is because many children are combination learners.You may even see that your child learns one subject visually, another kinesthetically, and a third by an auditory method. Being familiar with different learning styles means that you have tools in your tool box to help your child learn in a manner that works for them.
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