Getting Input From Your Children

Posted by Jimmie | 0 comments

When evaluating your homeschool, don’t overlook a valuable source of information — your children. It may seem obvious, but some moms neglect to ask their children for feedback.

The end of the school year is an appropriate time to dialogue with your children, but they will probably be glad to offer feedback at any time of the year.

Keep the lines of communication open with questions like these:

• What is your favorite part of homeschool?
• What is your least favorite part of homeschool?
• How can I make learning easier for you?
• Do you think your school work is too much, not enough, or just right?
• Do you think your school work is too hard, too easy, or just right?
• What would you like to do more of in homeschool?
• What are your favorite ways to learn?
• What do you think we should spend more time studying? Less time studying?
• What extra things would you like to add to our homeschool day?
• What academic subjects are you best at?
• What academic subjects are you not confident about?
• What life skills do you want to learn?
• What field trips would be interesting to you?

If you conduct oral interviews with your children, I suggest taking notes of their responses. It may be helpful to interview each child individually so that everyone has an equal chance to be heard and is not influenced by sibling responses. Another option is to copy some of the questions in the list above to make a written questionnaire.

Once you have your responses, look at them closely. What trends do you see? Are there any cries for help or constructive criticism? How can you work to improve your homeschool based on what your children are saying? Make some notes about things to change or things to research. Store your findings in your mom notebook so that you can look over them in the months to come.

Obviously, you are not going to totally omit math lessons just because little Steven reports that he dislikes arithmetic. But possibly there are modifications you can make to help him enjoy math more. Maybe contrary to all the best advice you have heard and read, little Ellen finds complicated hands-on projects distracting. Remember, your child is the expert about his own learning. Trust what he tells you.

I remember when I was struggling with shifting my daughter’s attention from one subject to another. I was following the advice to use short lessons with elementary students, but my daughter had a long attention span and didn’t like jumping around so often. When a topic was interesting, she wanted to continue exploring it until it was finished rather than save it for later in the week. Once I finally listened to her frustration rather than the “professional” advice, our homeschool settled into a comfortable pattern.

When I recently asked my almost twelve-year-old some of these questions, I was shocked to find that she would like to get motivational stickers on her returned assignments. I had no idea and certainly would never have known if I had not directly asked for her input.

So talk about homeschooling with your children as you evaluate and plan for the future. They might surprise you with the helpful suggestions they offer.

Jimmie is a former public school teacher turned homeschooling stay-at-home-mom. A sense of humor, faith, and creativity keep her “pressing on” in her unique situation — living and traveling abroad with an only child in a bilingual environment. Visit her blog at Jimmie’s Collage.