The Essential Guide to Homeschooling Your Preschooler in India
Learning starts from birth. Most parents, grandparents, and extended family members homeschool from an early age. Many parents have to choose between learning at home or formal preschool. But that decision is not always between two distinct paths. Most mother toddlers, playgroups, and kindergartens running for less than 4 hours in a day. By extension, most parents have to get involved in their child’s schooling.
Malvika Joshi and her mother Supriya are an inspiration to many. She has homeschooled her way to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a degree programme. This article will focus on the form of homeschooling that is more universal ie. before a child enters primary school. Homeschooling a child until the age of 6 years can be a daunting task. But if you are considering it, there are several resources to make the road easier, more enriching, fun and organised.
What is homeschooling?
Homeschooling is in its simplest form, schooling at home. Often undertaken by mothers (but sometimes fathers), the education of a child at home can be an exciting journey. There is no ideal age to start homeschooling. But the best way to know the appropriate time is by trying. If it does not feel right in your gut, wait before giving it another go.
What are the pros and cons of homeschooling?
Benefits
- Reduced peer pressure
- Bonding with your child in a very unique way
- Customising your child’s progress according to their own temperament and timetable
- Freedom of time, planning and scheduling; Ability to take advantage of off-peak times for vacations and field trips
- Savings of expensive preschool fees and related costs
Drawbacks
- Less time for yourself
- Full responsibility for your child’s early years
- Being too close; possibly missing learning difficulties
- Possible lack of social interaction with other young children
- Inability to leverage an early childhood educator’s expertise
The Guardian notes flexibility as one of the best reasons to home-school. While The Times of India lists individual growth and the absence of school bullies as benefits.
Scary Mommy writer Annie Reneau homeschools her three children. She considers the weight of responsibility, a messy house, the absence of alone-time, and self-doubt as some of the disadvantages. But, she delights in the fact that she has been part of every step of her children’s childhood. She continued her own learning, and that each child could learn at a tailor-made pace.
This goes both ways: some kids are fast learners and need extra stimulation so that they don’t get bored. Others need more attention and dedicated guidance through certain parts.
What pedagogy, resources (time, material, etc.) and processes (daily routine) are to be followed?
For parents that prefer a homeschooling curriculum for preschoolers, there are various options. Create your own with available resources like Spielgaben Guide. Or buy one like Learn & Grow Hands-On preschool Curriculum by Michelle Caskey.
You can also look at sample schedules and routines for homeschooling preschoolers.
In this homeschooling article, Charity Hawkins makes the case for parents to believe in their abilities to homeschool.
If you can read and write with a will to make it work, there is not much holding you back. Charity’s advice is to take it one year at a time. You can always reassess.
On her website ‘The Homeschool Experiment’, she lists some of her favourite resources for preschoolers by age. These resources cover various elements for mastering fine motor skills, sensory activities, phonics, reading, maths and science.
To start with, she suggests focusing on character and exploring the world around them. Fun activities that work on gross and fine motor skills, pave the way for handwriting later on. Other concepts are literacy (reading, conversation, little poems, rhymes, finger plays) and math (counting, shapes, etc.).
She lists various options from using puzzles, colouring books and play clay to involving children in everyday chores by counting, recognising shapes and building vocabulary. She says that it often doesn’t need a huge monetary investment — only time.
Even then, a 3-year-old boy might only be able to concentrate for 5–10 minutes at a time. So making a few short sessions count is the key. Girls are often able to concentrate for longer at an earlier age, but each child is different. Adjust your pace and length to what works for your child and your home.
How to measure results?
There are many resources that describe milestones and skills for preschoolers. We have presented below one suggested milestone chart from the Child Development Institute.
From going to the bathroom, carrying a plate, knowing his/her address and recognising rhyming sounds, you could refer to these 100 things a child should be able to do before entering kindergarten.
In this list of 71 things, you can review elements related to your child’s approach to learning, self-control, interaction, conflict resolution, listening, speaking, writing, geometry, spatial relations, motor skills and movement.
How to link homeschooling to first grade?
If you have a potential primary school in mind, ask the school for a list of admission requirements. Over time, you should review this list and how your child’s skills match with expectations.
Basic tips
Do:
- Make a list of life skills that you want your child to master (create a curriculum of skills)
- Consider character traits and manners you want to advance (i.e. being helpful, kind, patient, inquisitive etc.)
- Get the academic requirements from a primary school where a 6-year-old could transfer ie. handwriting, fine motor skills, maths, reading etc
- Be patient
- Give yourself time
- Schedule rest time for yourself and nap times for your child
- Get a basic routine in place. You can always chop and change it with time
- Create opportunities for unstructured, imaginative play and dress-up. This is essential for ‘executive brain function’
- Integrate everyday routines and chores into learning opportunities. Such as cleaning the house, preparing meals, going to the market and doing laundry
- Walk and observe the world around you
- Talk often and share experiences
- Listen often and invite a child to ask questions — then look for answers together
- Limit screen time. It can be more arduous when you school at a home with easy access to tablets and TVs. But when it comes to preschoolers, the less screen time the better
Don’t:
- Get discouraged — every day is a learning curve
- Feel guilty if you decide to eventually forego homeschooling in favour of a school. Every day you spent together and bonded, are memories that you will have forever
- Compare your child too early to other kids at the play area or park. Learning is a long process and children learn in different ways
- Think it’s easier than it is. There will be times that you will feel overwhelmed
10 helpful Facebook pages and groups on homeschooling ideas
- Mumma Diaries: https://www.facebook.com/mummadiaries/
- Frugal Homeschooling Mom: https://www.facebook.com/frugalhomeschoolingmom/
- Practical Homeschooling: https://www.facebook.com/PracticalHomeschooling/
- Free Homeschooling: https://www.facebook.com/FreeHomeschooling101/
- Homeschooling Unschooling: https://www.facebook.com/homeschoolingunschooling/
- Easy Peasy: https://www.facebook.com/EasyPeasyAllInOneHomeschool/
- Homeschooling Ideas: https://www.facebook.com/Homeschoolingideas/
- Hip Homeschooling: https://www.facebook.com/hiphomeschoolingblog/
- Waldorf Homeschool Network: https://www.facebook.com/WaldorfHomeschoolNetwork/
- Montesorri Homeschooling: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MontessoriHomeschooling/
Concluding thoughts
When it comes down to taking the plunge, there are 3 key questions that you need to ask yourself:
- Is homeschooling what my child needs?
- Am I willing to take responsibility for my child’s education?
- Will my close friends and family be supportive?
None of these answers will be easy or apparent. Be open-minded, discuss with those you trust, and don’t underestimate yourself.
Parents, academics and entrepreneurs have struggled with one important question: how to personalise education? Maybe they have been looking in the wrong places. It is more likely that the answer does not lie in some new-age, untested technology. But in good-old fashioned family bonding.
At the end of the day, isn’t homeschooling the most personalised form of education?
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