It’s easy to sit down with a box of crayons and teach your eager little toddler his colors. His letters—piece of cake. As he grows older, it becomes more challenging, but hey, how hard can adding and subtraction really be?
Thus we skate along merrily until one day we realize—it’s time for algebra. It’s time for frog dissection. It’s time for those higher subjects that filled us with fear when we were students—now it’s time for us to be filled with fear, as the teachers! Can those things really be taught at home?
My answer, in a nutshell? Yes, they can.
Every subject our children need to know can be taught at home. Now, I have to qualify that by saying that there are some topics that require a little tweaking in practical application—my yard isn’t big enough for a marching band, for instance, so if my son wants to learn to play the tuba and my daughter wants to be a drum majorette, we’d probably have to change venues. But they can learn the music, and the beat, and everything else they’d need to know, in our home.
Are you feeling insufficient in your ability to teach those subjects? Get books that explain them well, and then learn alongside your child. There’s no rule that says you have to be completely proficient in a topic in order to teach it—it’s fun to sit down with your child and discover together. You’ll feed off each other’s curiosity as you study.
Perhaps your spouse has experience in the topics that make you nervous, and can take over the instruction during that segment of the day. A good friend or a neighbor can be called upon to help, and a homeschool co-op situation might be just the ticket.
No matter what the topic, you can find a way to teach it to your child in a homeschool setting. You just might have to get a little creative, but it can be done. I do, however, draw the line at frog dissection taking place on my kitchen table. No way, no how.
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