One of my favorite things about homeschooling is the ability to personalize everything for Jonathan. I can personalize his curriculum to his learning style. I can personalize my teaching style and methods. I can personalize his schedule. I can personalize everything.
As I said before, Jonathan is a very kinesthetic and tactile learner. He needs to have movement involved in his school activities. He needs a lot of hands on activities. Instead of being packed in a room feeling like a sardine 7 hours a day, he spends his entire day doing science experiments, playing with manipulatives, cooking dishes or playing games from whatever area we are currently covering in our geography lessons, making a diorama from the books we have read and so much more. He is actively learning all the time. It is his way of life.
I have been told all my life that I am a born teacher. I have been told this by everyone including teachers, supervisors, students, student’s parents, people that I’ve tutored, etc. I’ve been told my best quality as a teacher is the ability to give information in a variety of forms and when something doesn’t work, switching to a different way of providing the information. If something isn’t working when I am working with Jonathan, then it’s not working. It’s not going to work no matter how many times I try to do the same thing. Instead of getting frustrated and getting angry or giving up, I switch to a new conduit.
Jonathan has never been much of a morning person. If he had to get up at six o’clock every morning to go to school by the time he got home he would be so tired and miserable I wouldn’t enjoy the time that we did have together. Jonathan has different times during the day he likes to do things, and different times of the day he is better at doing things. He doesn’t like doing anything that’s specific to school before ten A.M., but he’ll work on a lapbook anytime, because he doesn’t see that as “school work.” He loves working on experiments and science in the afternoon. While he likes reading in the late morning. Any philosophical discussions that we have though happen at bedtime. I’ve got a couple days off in the middle of the week and want to drive down and visit family, okay let’s go. We want to take a week off and focus on family or having fun, so be it. We don’t have to follow the school year. We don’t have to worry about unexcused absences or “making up homework.” It’s our own personal schedule based on our life.