Homeschooling can be a flexible and personalized learning experience, allowing you to set your own pace and tailor the curriculum to your child's individual needs and abilities. At Master Books, we encourage you to create a rhythm of learning, exploring, and doing life together that meets your family’s needs. These five tips on setting your own pace will help you win at homeschooling.
1. Start with a Clear Plan
It's important to have a clear understanding of what you hope to achieve through homeschooling and to set goals for your child's learning. This can help you create a structured plan for your homeschooling schedule and ensure that you are staying on track.
At Master Books, we recommend prayerfully creating a family mission statement to guide you on your journey. Your mission statement will help you choose curriculum, create a schedule that works well for your unique family, and adjust your family’s pace when needed. We also recommend creating a name for your homeschool based on your educational and spiritual goals. While creating both your mission statement and school name, let your focus be on the whole child considering their stage in brain development as well as emotional, physical, and social needs.
Master Books offers the Cumulative Record to help you plan and track your child’s spiritual, intellectual, physical, and social growth. This record keeping system is very affordable and easy for you to implement for each child. You will find it also helps you see what needs to be accomplished so you can set the pace according to the timeline and your child’s needs.
2. Consider Your Child's Learning Style
Different children learn at different speeds and in different ways. Take the time to understand your child's learning style and adjust your homeschooling schedule and curriculum accordingly.
The Master Books method of education uses a whole child approach to learning. We incorporate multi-sensory learning opportunities in our homeschool curricula choices. You will find a variety of daily activities, optional projects, and suggested resources to help you meet the learning needs and styles of every student. Look for additional teaching tips and helpful resources included in the back of several courses.
Homeschool families using Master Books have shared how easily they are able to modify the curriculum to fit their student’s individual needs. Online enrichment videos and printables are also available to supplement the courses.
3. Be Flexible
While it's important to have a plan, it's also important to be flexible and adaptable. If your child is struggling with a particular concept, it's okay to take a step back and spend more time on it. Similarly, if your child is excelling in a subject, you may want to move more quickly through the material.
Our curriculum solutions offer you the opportunity to focus on your student’s skill level rather than their grade level. This allows your child to follow a path of acceleration based on their level of understanding instead of forcing them to be on pace with others.
The easy-to-follow schedule included in each course can be easily adapted to slow the pace for a student who is struggling or advance the pace of a student who is highly adept at that subject. This flexibility also helps your family adjust if your life suddenly changes due to a newborn, job change, relocation, or any other transition that causes your school schedule to need modification.
Along with the flexible scheduling options, Master Books curriculum is designed as “open and go” so you can easily take the perforated worksheets on road trips, to appointments, and even the local libraries or coffee shops. The pace you set for your students will greatly impact their ability to pay attention and retain what you are teaching.
4. Ask for Help
4. Don't be afraid to ask for help: If you are feeling overwhelmed or unsure about how to proceed with your homeschooling journey, don't be afraid to reach out for help. There are many resources available for homeschooling parents, including online communities, homeschooling groups, and educational consultants.
Master Books has an amazing online community of support and help from other families using the curriculum as well as our authors, coaches, and other staff. In the Moms of Master Books Facebook group and the Master Books app, you can be encouraged and have your curriculum questions answered quickly. We invite you to join our livestream Curriculum Q&A sessions on Tuesdays in our app.
5. Take Breaks and Have Fun
Homeschooling can be demanding, so it's important to take breaks and have fun. Incorporate activities and subjects that your child enjoys into your homeschooling schedule and make time for activities like field trips and hands-on learning experiences.
Homeschool moms who use the Master Books curricula options love the fun built into our various courses. Hands-on activities, field trips, and more are incorporated to break up the book work and help meet the needs of the whole child. Here are a few homeschool family favorites:
- Optional trips to the zoo and aquarium in Elementary Zoology
- Local field trips in the My Story series
- Recipes in Math Lessons for a Living Education, Elementary Geography & Cultures, and Elementary U.S. Geography and Social Studies
- Hands on learning activities in the Let’s Talk Science series
- Trivia travel games built into Meet the Chief
- Art projects in Living Art Lessons as well as Language Lessons for a Living Education
Check out the Master Books app for fun family art projects and activities throughout the year as well as parent book clubs. Master Books Academy is another excellent resource for unique and additional extra-curricular and elective courses that your students may enjoy.
Find even more practical ideas for implementing these pace-setting ideas for your homeschool in the Homeschool Teaching Tips live stream. This weekly show airs live on Thursdays at 3pm central in the Master Book app.
