Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Smith:
Kym, it sounds like unit studies are a great way for both parents to join in on the learning process. Can you share some of your thoughts about that with our listeners today?

Kym Wright:
Mike, I love the idea of the whole family being involved in life—like Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons. But, for most families, that’s not a reality. One parent usually works, and doesn’t have the luxury of being involved in the day-to-day process of the homeschool.

However, it’s so important to our children to have time with both parents, to see they’re both supportive of the homeschool, and to have them learning from both of them, if possible. So we need to come up with creative ways for the working parents to be included.

The working parent can read school and library books to the children teaching or spot-hit hard subjects—such as math, or science, or history. They can also help with science labs, library trips, show ‘n’ tell night, writing, researching, building models for the units they’re studying. Another way a working spouse can help is to take responsibility for the children on some Saturdays or days off so the teaching parent can have that time to plan the unit studies. Working spouses can help in many ways when you use unit studies.

The most important point is for mom and dad to communicate with each other what things the other can do to help the most—and then to do them.

Mike:
Well thank you so much, Kym, for being with us this week, this has been tremendously enlightening. And until next time, I’m Mike Smith.