10 Reasons to homeschool

You know someone who knows someone who teaches their children at home and you’ve read a few articles on the topic, but it’s not something you’ve seriously thought about, is it?

If not, here are 10 reasons you should consider home educating your children. (Yes, it is legal and yes, you can do it!)

1. It is centred on your child’s learning pace: Home education allows parents to meet their children’s individual learning needs. Whether you spend extra time on concepts your child finds challenging or move ahead in areas that are more quickly understood, all learning happens at your child’s pace.
2. It promotes one-to-one interaction: Having a dedicated educator means that your child can ask questions without fear of being judged by peers, and they can receive help with difficulties as and when they arise.
3. It offers a safe learning environment: Parents often turn to home education to avoid school bullying and violence, negative peer pressure, unwanted influences, substance abuse and other factors that impact on their child’s wellbeing and education.
4. It offers flexibility: You don’t need to follow a specific curriculum and you don’t need to follow a typical school day – you can teach anywhere!
5. It fits with your family’s beliefs: If your family has philosophical, ideological or religious objections to traditional schooling, home education offers the perfect alternative.
6. It supports children with health concerns or special needs: Children who can’t attend school regularly due to illness or who are recovering from critical health events can benefit greatly from home education. The same applies to children with special learning needs, who tend to cope better in their home environment with a familiar caregiver as their educator.
7. It builds stronger family bonds: Many families believe that home education helps foster closer family relationships and a stronger family unit while instilling core values.
8. It encourages the development of broader social skills: While traditional schooling forces children into an artificial network of same-aged peers, home educated children mix with people of different ages, resulting in broader social skills.
9. It increases independence: Children who are educated at home work individually, measuring themselves against their own performance and not a class average. As such, they learn to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, and to take responsibility for their performance.
10. It solves distance and quality problems: If you live far from schools – or simply far from a good school that meets your child’s needs – home education offers the ideal alternative.

By choosing to teach your children at home you are not only investing in their emotional, social, physical and intellectual development, you also get to accompany them on their journey to adulthood every step of the way.

Impak is a curriculum provider for home, tutor and school education. Visit www.impak.co.za for more information