Educating your children at home, as opposed to sending your children out to a school each day, can in either situation be the best thing that ever happened to them or the worst.   There are some key aspects that need to be considered before you decide to homeschool your children if you are wanting it to be a successful endeavour.

1. Am I disciplined enough to ensure that there will be learning time on a regular basis?
2. Is there structure to my day (routine/rhythm) so that healthy habits around learning can be established over time?
3. Is there space available for learning to take place? Is there a bench or table to work at for written activities which can be a quiet zone when needed?
4. Am I prepared to provide the resources necessary to learn? Be they home made or purchased will there be the basic supplies in the house to use for a variety of activities?
5. What are my patience levels like? Do I have strategies in place, or am I willing to learn some new strategies, so that the learning sessions are successful and don’t result in a stressful encounter between myself and my children?
6. Do I have the means to go out of doors and into the wider environment to immerse my children in different situations and experiences? Perhaps the park, a museum or library, a lake or river environment.
7. What are my thoughts on how I will socialise my children outside of our home? Will we join a club or take swimming lessons? Will we become members of our local homeschooling community and join them for excursions?
8. Have I thought about what type of education I would like my children to receive and who will be delivering it and planning for it? Am I going to be the sole teacher and do all the planning and prepare/deliver all the lessons by myself?
9. Will I use a pre-approved curriculum that I purchase and follow along with? Will I mix my teaching in with another program for a combined effort? Will someone else plan and deliver the lessons, while I provide the learning space, resources and the time necessary?
10. If I wish to be the teacher, do I have the education and knowledge to undertake this task? How confident am I that I can deliver the curriculum up to what age group? If I wish to upskill myself how will I go about doing this and in what time frame?
11. If living in a household with more that one parent, do I have the full support and backing of my spouse? Are they on board with my desire to educate our children at home?

Although there appears to be a large number of things to consider, they are all valuable questions to ask yourself before you embark upon homeschooling.  Having an environment around your children that is conducive to quality learning makes all the difference.   It is important to create that environment by having healthy habits of regular learning, a nice space in which to learn, with the tools required to complete the task.  Having some quiet space for concentrated work mixed in with time to be outdoors and moving around and having supportive adults around who will encourage the learning are all needed for a successful education.

No-one is perfect and we can’t all be expected to be qualified teachers with a household that runs on a strict schedule.  There will be a lot of growth along the way for you and your children, and it is expected and encouraged to learn from the situations that challenge you the most.  The key is in the willingness to try and in the figuring out of how to obtain the skill you need to progress.  Just having a plan of where you are heading and some ideas of where you could get advice or help along the way is actually enough to get started.

Homeschooling works for a large number of families.  They have great successes and really enjoy the process.  Some educate at home for only a few years, others for the entire journey of their children’s education.  It is a very flexible and very forgiving system.

Believe in yourself that you can do it.  Put plans in place so that you can have success and be willing to take advice and learn new things along the way, because the one thing that I can promise you is this – it isn’t just your children who are learning, you too will learn just as much.