Home Study

source: mb.com.ph

MANILA, Philippines -- One of the considerations about entering the new school year, is how to get the kids to campus on time.

Options include enlisting them with an expensive school service, commuting with them though the city while battling heat and rain, or hastily dropping them off at school en route to work. But Mia Tiongson doesn’t have to worry about the logistics. When her two boys need to go to school, she simply goes into their bedroom.

That is because Mia is one of the growing numbers of moms who choose to homeschool their kids. “it was originally a decision based on financial considerations. My husband Randell, had chosen to give up his full time job to take on consultancy work. So, from a fixed income, we switched to a variable income. At that time, we had one girl who was already taking up college in a big university, and another who was studying in an exclusive school. We had friends who were already homeschooling their kids and we were encouraged to give it a try with our seven-year-old son, because we knew how much we could save on the tuition. Now, she says that she has continued homeschooling her son, who is now nine and in grade 3, and their youngest who is six and in grade 1.

It was a challenge at first, she recounts, especially since her older boy had attended a regular preschool, and she was feeling her way around. “I started out with the traditional classroom setting, where I was a Teacher. I was not familiar yet with concepts such as learning styles. At one point, I lost my patience and raised my voice. He cried and said that homeschool is not fun anymore.”

That struck a nerve, she said, and it spurred her to start educating herself on how to teach. “I asked for advice from friends who shared ideas with me and I read helpful books on Discovering, Developing, and Nurturing Your Child’s Strengths and Discovering Learning Styles. It was then that I started building on the fact that my child loved to draw and was a very visual learner. We started practicing mind-mapping [a learning technique that uses a diagram or drawing to represent words, ideas, or tasks that are arranged around a central key word or idea]. I am happy to say that capitalizing on his learning style has helped him to remember today, things that we studied when we were starting out.” She points out that this is one of the advantages of homeschooling that a traditional school may not have.

Here are other advantages that Tiongson identifies:

1. There is one-on-one coaching. She says there is room to discover the child’s learning styles and adapt to them. Because you set your own timetable, it is also easy to teach the child at a pace that you are both comfortable with. “For example, if we are done with a lesson in 30 minutes, we could move on to the next,” she explains.

2. You can create your own curriculum. “You can choose to follow the DepEd curriculum or set your own. You set your own seatwork, projects, and exams,” she enumerates. With homeschooling, you grade your own child based on a grading system. Then the child will only have to pass a DepEd exam at the end of the school year in order for him to be eligible to move up to the next level. She adds, “Having the freedom to create your own lessons list will give you leeway to introduce subjects that are not included in a grade level, such as astronomy. I teach this to my kids because they are interested in it. Who knows, because of this, they might be able to invent a powerful telescope one day!”

3. You set the schedule. My class starts at 10:30 or 11:00 in the morning. That is because the boys stay up late at night. We are able to adjust to their sleep schedules and I can allow them breaks every 20 minutes to let them move around. Another quirk that is definitely not allowable in

a traditional class is that she allows her boys to listen on their iPods while they are doing their seatwork. “I think it helps keep them focused, and it teaches them to multitask.”

4. Learning continues outside the classroom. Since you are familiar with the progress of their lessons, you can give them hands-on challenges. “What I do is give my child P20 at the grocery store, and he can choose items to buy without going over his budget,” she illustrates. The physical “classroom” that we are all familiar with does not apply here too. She says, “some homeschooling parents hold classes in a separate room in the house, while I usually have it in their bedroom – which is free of distractions, like toys. Other parents teach in the garden, in the living room, or wherever suits them.”

5. The cost. With the rising tuition fees these days, do we really need to say more? Tiongson says that homeschooling costs a fraction of what schools ordinarily charge. “Aside from the more affordable tuition, you choose your own materials, and you can often borrow materials from other parents. There are also free resources on the web.”

There are no special qualifications needed to be able to homeschool, says Tiongson, who, herself, is an Interior Designer by trade. Even high school graduates can do it, she says. It is not the qualifications, anyway, but the qualities that are needed to be able to be effective, and these are Patience, Dedication, and Commitment.

source: mb.com.ph