7 Psychology Tips for Homeschooling

On August 12, 2021, 5:56 AM

Whether you’re new to homeschooling or an experienced homeschooler, these tips will help you relieve stress and encourage a love of learning within your child.

1. Habits reduce the need for self-control.

It takes self-control to sit down at a desk and open a workbook, right? Well, sort of. When that behavior is routine—it’s done every day at the same time and place, in the same way—enacting that routine starts to require less self-control over time. After 2-4 months, doing it will require much less self-control than when you started.

If your learning routine and environment are haphazard, more self-control will be required to complete that routine. The more consistent your routine is, the more automatic it will become, and the less self-control will be required from both your child and you.

In particular, cue the start of your learning sessions in the same way each time. You should follow the same routine for getting started. For example, you might start with math each morning. To begin your session, you get a drink, do a little yoga stretch, and get your materials ready. What the routine is doesn’t matter much, only that it’s very consistent. The same activity should lead into the routine too. For example, your child starts their math routine after putting their breakfast dishes in the sink.

Use this procedure for any lesson in which your child is struggling with the self-control needed to concentrate. The more you keep your routine the same, the easier it will become for them and you.

2. Understand the Zone of Proximal Development

The zone of proximal development is where children learn. It’s the gap between what a child can do on their own and what they can do with help. The benefit of 1-on-1 homeschooling is that you can hit this zone in a way that a teacher supervising 20 kids can’t. Working in this zone represents the most challenge your child will be able to handle.

3. Alternate easy, medium, and hard tasks.

Behavior and mood are worst when all the tasks we need to do are very hard (too much challenge) or all the tasks we’re required to do are very easy (too little challenge).

Include some easy tasks, some medium tasks, and some hard ones in each of your morning homeschool sessions and your afternoon homeschool session.

When homeschooling, it’s tempting to challenge your child to the brink of their capacity constantly, because this seems most efficient. However, if you do this, their behavior and mood will probably deteriorate. And yours will too! Include some easy tasks that reinforce prior learning in-between more challenging ones. This will help your child not associate all learning with the thought, “This is so hard.”

4. Teach other subjects through the subject they like most.

My child loves art. Left to her own choice, she will draw and craft all day. Therefore, I include art components in other subjects. For example, drawing flags as part of social studies, or drawing pictures to represent the steps of science experiments.

To succeed with this tip, you’ll need to be very creative and know your child very well.

5. Utilize their non-school interests.

My child collects Hatchimals. These come in different types, e.g., goldies, mermals, pixies. At this point, she has multiple of each type. We taught her bar graphs by making bar graphs of how many Hatchimals of each type and color she had.

If there is a TV show they like, try to utilize that in their learning. For example, a project about the characters from SpongeBob.

If your child loves YouTube (and don’t they all?), encourage them to make videos of themselves demonstrating and explaining their projects—for example, for interested grandparents or cousins.

5. Cross-train.

Furthering the last point, you’ll find lots of opportunities to teach two to three subjects at the same time. For example, we recently taught my child about the countries with the largest populations. We Googled the list, found these on her globe, and then made a graph of these.

6. Primarily teach skills, not content.

As kids, we all probably learned about the different types of dinosaurs, now can’t remember, and never needed this information. By and large, learning facts is unimportant.

Some basics are critically important because of how much they’re the foundation for other types of learning. Primarily, this is reading and math.

Other than that, you are mainly trying to teach your child transferable skills, like how to find and synthesize information, how to make and improve prototypes, how to follow instructions, how to formulate and ask questions, how to troubleshoot when something isn’t working, etc.

Outside reading and math, whatever subject you’re teaching, keep in mind that the content is largely irrelevant. You’re trying to teach them how to learn and think.

Consider all the skills that virtually all knowledge workers need (e.g., project management skills), and explicitly teach those. Think about what a skill will look like for a child of different ages. What project management skills does a 5-year-old have the capacity to master? How about a 7-year-old? A 9-year-old? Think this through now, starting with your child’s current age, so you can see the big picture.

7. Take advantage of the fact they’re not in school.

Some parents eschew traditional school and go the route of world schooling or unschooling. These involve allowing your child to learn about what they’re interested in. You can and should dabble in these approaches if you’re homeschooling. For example, my child loves a YouTube channel in which the creator does a series called “thrift store makeovers” in which she buys an item from a thrift store and up-cycles it using paint and other art supplies. We can easily replicate that. It provides an opportunity to incorporate math by setting a budget for the project. It also provides an opportunity to teach planning, strategizing (e.g., which sections of the thrift store to look at first), and project management skills.

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re not already following these tips perfectly. Being a homeschool parent is a challenge, and we all want to do it well and our doing our best. The more you use these tips, the happier and more successful your homeschooling experience is likely to be for both you and your child.

Story By Psychology Today