Homeschooling seems to be the latest flavour of the month here in Singapore!
Many people are expressing interest in a topic that was unheard of just a few years ago. It was usually seen as something the expatriates did. Now, you almost always know of someone who is either homeschooling or knows someone else who does.
What is homeschooling? And why has it become so popular?
Homeschooling at its very simplest is teaching your child at home. That’s it. It really is no big deal. Think about it. Who taught your child to speak? To put on his clothes? To count? To sing nursery rhymes? To say grace before partaking his food? YOU! So there you go, you are already homeschooling your child! See? Anyone can homeschool But that would be another post.
I am definitely no authority on homeschooling having only started formally homeschooling my children 3 years ago in 2004. So this is just my very personal take on why it is so popular.
In Singapore, most people will raise their eyebrows at you if you haven’t sent your child to formal school by 3. In fact there are actually structured playgroups for children as young as a few months old! IMO these playgroups are more for the mums! Lol!
But there is a rising minority of parents who are protesting against this scenario. They feel that children should be carefree & not stressed by schoolwork at such a young age. They want their children enjoy their childhood so they look for schools that are less structured & teach through play, rather than use worksheets & drills. However, these schools are expensive! So these parents decide that they can do it themselves!
Then they find that their children do as well or even better than the public schooled children because of many factors, such as – the one-on-one attention, the fact that the child is on his own homeground and because it is mum who’s teaching him!
So the popularity of homeschool has spread. So I have had many mums with very young children being very keen to start homeschool their toddlers and asking how to do it!
I am probably going to offend many with what I am going to say but I will say it anyway To me, teaching the toddlers & pre-schoolers is not real homeschooling. There is no real need for a formal curriculum. You just go with the interest of the child.
If he is interested in fishes, then you show him & teach him all about marine life. If his interest is in nature, then you bring him to the parks often and explore God’s world with him. And if all he wants to do is play with legos or playdough, let him. He’s learning something there, too! A young child learns through play.
Homeschooling in the early years is really easy! Academically, as long as they can decode simple words and count by the time they are 5 or 6, you’re done! Anything else that you manage to teach is bonus. So what if you didn’t manage to teach them the workings of the solar system? Or that that the stuff that comes out of volcanoes is called lava?
What’s important in these early days is to train their character. Teaching them to obey and to obey immediately, cheerfully and completely is worth much more than being able to recite the 12 times table
So there you go, homeschooling is simply teaching your child at home so that he can learn at his own pace instead of following some artificial guideline posted by some “expert” out there. It is not daunting at all.