If it’s difficult to imagine being at the study desk with your homeschool student for every grade and getting them to study independently is a goal, you as the homeschool parent must prepare them for it. There are some skills that your child will need to develop before they are able to handle some aspects of their studies on their own.
Enhancing their Reading Skills
Read out loud with your young children. Get them used to holding the book while you read out the story. Have them point to specific words in the text to get them used to the correlation of the sound and the sight of the word. Remember to keep things interesting and light. Read books that are fun for them. As reading captures their imagination have them read a page out loud to you. Young children enjoy the opportunity to show off what they can do. Capitalize on this natural ability to learn and share.
Enhancing their Writing Skills
This one can be tougher for younger children who don’t have the patience to sit in one place for very long. Often their fine motor skills are not as well developed, and they may actually find it painful to continue writing for long periods of time. So keep the assignments you give them short. Mazes are a perennial favorite game that help greatly with building fine motor skills. Even using butter paper to trace on top of letters can be an activity that helps. Eventually they should be able to write with ease, but this skill takes patience on part of the homeschool teacher.
Setting Clear Learning Goals
Every child learns at his or her own pace. So the homeschool teacher must be aware of the capacity of the homeschool student to work in a day. It’s not realistic to expect a 6 year old to write number names from one to hundred in one sitting. It’s better to split it up into goals of ten to fifteen numbers in each sitting. Let them know exactly what you want them to achieve in the self study time. This should be followed with some fun activity, which acts as an additional motivator to get the work done in time.
