How to Deschool When Starting Your Homeschool Journey
Homeschooling is a great education option for your child. It allows you to personalize your child’s education to be just right for them. It can also allow you to get the extra help they may need outside what your child’s school can offer. Taking some time to deschool helps make the transition to homeschooling easier and less stressful for your child.
What exactly is deschooling?
Deschooling is when families transition from traditional schooling to homeschooling by stepping away from the traditional teaching methods. During this period, there is usually a focus on fostering a love of learning and adjusting to the freedom of learning on your own timeline.
The purpose of this time is to decompress and explore new options for learning with your child. Deschooling is an excellent way to help new homeschooling families adjust and gain confidence.
Remember not only does this help your child recover from the stress of traditional schooling, it helps you look at learning from a different angle, so you can better teach your child.
How long should you deschool when you begin homeschooling?
It’s up to you how long you deschool. Many people have different opinions about how long you should deschool your child when you start homeschooling. It is generally recommended that you deschool long enough to recover from traditional schooling and find a new groove before adding back in boring paper and bookwork.
For some families, this is just a couple of weeks. For others, this can mean taking an entire year to step away from formal education and just have fun learning.
As you and your child adjust you can add formal learning back in to help make the most of your child’s learning experience. You may also find that you and your child prefer more non-traditional learning methods, like delight-directed learning, and continue on those paths.
What should you do while deschooling?
Homeschooling is becoming increasingly popular as the stress of traditional schooling becomes too much for children. You can use the deschooling period to help your child relocate beyond the stresses of traditional school and discover a love of learning again when you first move into homeschooling.
Spend some time away from formal education and throw out the lesson plans. Yes, it can be so exciting to get started homeschooling and I’m sure you’ll want to stack all the books and make all the plans, but it’s important to allow your child to have a deschooling break.
Go On Field Trips
Go on field trips. Homeschooling has the benefit of allowing you to do hands-on learning that you would not have access to in a classroom setting. Use your time deschooling to really make up for the lack of field trips your child has had in traditional schools.
You can learn a lot about your community by searching for fun educational opportunities. Field trips can range from factory tours to zoo trips, so there is a myriad of options when planning a fun break from formal education. This is a great way to explore what your community has to offer that you may have missed in the past.
Provide The Option of Reading
The ultimate gift you can give your child in life is the gift of reading. The benefits of reading are endless. You can learn anything you want. It gives you the ability to explore new worlds and find your passions in life.
Reading opens doors that no other skill, social status, or economic status can, and best of all, learning to read is available to everyone who is willing to put in the effort. Deschooling is the ideal time to visit the library, set up a reading nook, and discover a passion for reading.
Provide lots of free read options. We like to use open-faced bookshelves so the kids always see the covers of new books when added.
Introduce Delight-Directed Learning
Encourage your child to try new activities and discover new passions. Another great advantage of homeschooling is that your child can freely pursue his or her own interests. Your child may not have discovered what they truly love and what can drive them forward while they have spent so much time with school and homework.
Utilizing the deschooling period to introduce delight-directed learning can help your child explore in ways they could not in a classroom. This often leads to seeing homeschool as an opportunity they are grateful for rather than just another thing they have to do.
Encourage Creativity
Focus on things your child loves and learn through fun and games. Put the word lists, math quizzes, and book reports away for now. Encourage lots of hands-on play, provide supplies to spark creativity, and give your child a chance to express their curiosity.
Give your child plenty of opportunities to express themselves creatively. Supplies such as art supplies, instruments, and other materials will encourage your child to develop, learn, and explore. The best way for your child to learn, explore, and create is to provide your child with everything they need to make their own inventions.
Look for items on sale to fill a tote they can use as they wish. If your child needs a bit of help getting started you can use Pinterest or even order a STEM learning subscription box to get them exploring and trying new things.
Take time to deschool and allow your child to explore, create and be curious. It will help develop your homeschool mission statement and give your homeschool direction.
Will deschooling make my child fall behind?
There’s a concern among parents that taking time off school will result in their children falling behind. This fear is valid, it is deeply rooted in the traditional schooling culture and is hard to overlook when you think about stepping away from a traditional curriculum for some time.
Most often we imagine children learning by sitting in rows of desks while a teacher gives instructions. When children do the same thing every day, this is a great way for some of them to learn, but it is sadly failing many otherwise brilliant children.
Deschooling doesn’t mean to stop learning but to shift gears allowing you to see how your child best learns.
Deschooling helps parents step away from the idea of school at home and find a passion for homeschooling their children in the way they learn best. Getting up close and personal with the subjects they are learning will help children learn much better through real-life experiences like reading, doing new things, and getting involved in sports.
Deschooling allows your child to discover their passion for learning. It can help grow a child who enjoys learning, learns new things faster, and are more engaged in learning. This makes the time your child spends learning more valuable in the long term.
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