THREE PRINCIPLES FOR EDUCATING YOUR CHILD
Educating your children is going to take a lot of investment. In beginning stages the things you need are free or cheap but you will need to invest a lot of time. As the student gets older the materials will cost more but each student will be capable of more independent work. Regardless of where they are on that journey some principles will always be guiding you as you parent and teach. I’ll suggest 3: Homeschooling is a way of life. Follow and grow interest. Be brilliant in the basics.
HOMESCHOOLING IS A WAY OF LIFE TO PREPARE THEM FOR LIFE
My wife took note of the three educational placemats on the table and jokingly told me that my homeschooler was showing. Then our kindergartner dropped a geographic fact into our dinner conversation that she had picked up from that placemat. Does that mean dinner and lunch count as instruction? Of course not, but she learned something outside of school hours because her environment as a whole is educational.
Homeschoolers sometimes take the practice of making things educational too far and suck the fun out of…well anything…but it’s because learning is never far away for homeschoolers. As with many things our old friend Aristotle has the right of it: too much or too little of a virtue is a vice. Sometimes though (this is still Aristotle) one vice is worse than another. His example uses Courage as the virtue, too little is cowardice and too much is foolhardiness. Of those vices cowardice is worse and so we err on the side of too much courage. For homeschooling, the error of too little education is worse than too much education and so the wise course is adding just a bit more education than you think is ideal.
