National Home Education Research Institute President Offers Teaching Tips for Parents

Many millions of parents now find themselves as school-teachers-at-home during this serious health concern. Many of them are finding out that they, as parents, are teachers, by definition. Parents should relax and enjoy their children and realize that relationship and learning are more valuable than “following the institutional school curriculum.”

Parents, read aloud to your child for 15 minutes per day and have him read aloud to you something he chooses for 15 minutes per day. Discuss what you read with her. Have him write a letter per day to grandma, the zookeeper, or the store-owner. Help her do her math lesson, at whatever level she is, then move on to the next.

There are many “free” online learning resources that are not dependent on public and private school systems that homeschoolers have been effectively using for decades. Go on long walks with your child. Remember to relax and enjoy learning with your children and not try to duplicate institutional school in your home.

If your child cannot yet read, go online (or to a store) and find a simple and enjoyable phonics program, and do it with him. You can do, in home-based education, generally in two hours with a child what it takes about six hours for him or her to accomplish in six hours.

Parents are spending time teaching and learning and going on walks with their children during the day. Although many families are not able at this time to go to libraries, museums, and family co-ops (co-operatives) as homeschoolers usually do, the barriers to homeschooling are coming down across the United States and around the world as parents find out that they are competent to teach and do not necessarily need government-provided curriculum, state-licensed teachers, and $12,000 of tax dollars for their children to learn and enjoy learning.

Parents who have been forced to teach at home are learning many of the things that the last 35 years of homeschooling have brought to the table.

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. is president of National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) and the Editor‑in‑Chief of Home School Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal.