Flexibility and Freedom to Learn

Flexibility and Freedom to Learn! These two concepts make a major difference in the home-school environment. Some families are still struggling with online schools or virtual school programs. Some children find virtual schools boring, uninteresting, or not challenging enough. Others find the blocks of time required for certain subjects to be restrictive or too limiting. These issues all hinder the real learning children could be pursuing.

Virtual school programs – as an alternative to face-to-face learning – might sound okay. To some, virtual schools might seem similar to homeschooling. But as most homeschoolers know, homeschooling isn’t “school at home.”

Homeschooling is a whole-child, well-rounded, natural way of learning that occurs every day – just as children naturally learned and acquired necessary skills from the time they were born, with guidance and care from parents. True homeschooling automatically puts your child’s happiness, health, unique learning style, innate curiosity, life skills, life goals, and real interest in learning first and foremost.

Keep Flexibility and Freedom to Learn in mind this week – and in all the weeks to come. If your child is interested in cats this week, read books, picture books, and illustrated articles on cats of all types – pet cats, domestic cats, feral cats, tigers, lions, cheetahs, panthers, cougars, leopards, jaguars, ocelots, pumas, and more in the Felidae family of cats and wildcats.

Watch cats in real time, online, at rescue centers or zoos, view images of cats and their anatomy, compare their likenesses and differences, compare their running speeds, distances they can cover, their habitats, their behaviors and characteristics, the way they care for their young, the challenges they’ve faced in the past and could face in the future.

Allow children plenty of time, flexibility, and freedom to learn all they want to learn about cats – or dogs, birds, bears, whales, fish, frogs, insects, spiders, snakes – wherever their interest lies this week, or next week, and in the weeks to come.

Maybe it’s robots that excites your child this week. How many different types of robots are there? Walking robots, talking robots, flying robots, swimming robots, crawling robots, one-legged robots, bipedal, tripedal, quadrupedal, hexapods. Who knew there were so many different types of robots!

What types can your child design or build? There’s wheeled robots, mobile robots, stationary robots, remote-controlled robots, autonomous robots, virtual robots, military robots, space robots, social-services robots, industrial robots, domestic robots!

Robots, alone, could encompass an entire month or semester of learning! And with freedom and flexibility, this one topic would include all areas of learning: reading, creating, drawing, describing, writing, calculating, programming, math applications, scientific applications, historic applications, creative thinking, critical thinking, analytical thinking, logical thinking, reasoning skills, inventive skills, and problem-solving skills.

All children deserve freedom and flexibility to learn about a wide variety of subjects and to pursue topics that capture their interests. That’s the beauty and the benefits of homeschooling!

Hundreds more learning ideas and educational activities are provided by EverythingHomeschooling.com for a well-rounded, interesting school year.

Happy homeschooling!

Virtual Field Trips!

Enjoy Virtual Field Trips from the comfort of your home!

See Animal Cams, Baby Polar Bears, Explore Mars, National Parks, Zoos, Aquariums, and more!

Learn About: Habitats, Animal Behavior, Animal Care, plus Geographic Details and Scenery across the nation.

A Printable Field Trip Form provides space for kids to describe their Virtual Field Trips, what they liked best about the trips, and space to draw pictures depicting the field trips.

Happy homeschooling from EverythingHomeschooling.com!

Homeschool Activities + Homeschool Lessons + Unschooling

Homeschooling begins to wind down for many families in May and June. However, your children can continue learning with fun, educational projects all Spring and Summer at EverythingHomeschooling.com.

It's a great time to try the "unschooling" method of homeschooling, too. Our site provides a section just for unschoolers or for those of you who would like to incorporate some of the unschooling strategies into your homeschools.

You might be so impressed with how much your children learn through "unschooling" over the Spring and Summer, you'll continue unschooling year-round! If so, come visit us often at EverythingHomeschooling.com, and watch for our expanded "Unschooling" section debuting soon on our Everything Homeschooling website.

Happy homeschooling!