April Fool's - My Most Foolish and Challenging Times

Home Education Week at Principled Discovery

And we have likely all felt the fool in one way or another. Share your greatest challenge. Or one of those terrible, horrible no good, very bad days where the only thing there is to do seems to involve moving to Australia.


One of the foolish things I have done, during our homeschooling, is when I forced a daughter to learn from textbooks. Even though she was reading the words out loud to me, it was evident that she wasn't comprehending any of it. The textbooks bored her to death. I continued using them, because I had paid for them. Since then, I've tried to find learning materials that really interest my children. I'm trying to make education enjoyable for them.

My greatest challenge was in teaching reading. Some of my kids learned easily and for others it was a struggle. I pushed one of my daughters to read, when I shouldn't have. Another daughter was really frustrated with reading, so we took it slower. What works well with her is - she reads one sentence and I read another. I've had to tell myself that the children don't have to read by a certain age. My 5 children have read between the ages of 4 and 9. It matters more to me that they don't hate reading due to frustration.