Tailoring education for home-schooled learners: a guide for parents
Home schooling offers parents the unique opportunity to shape their children’s education in a way that suits their individual needs, interests, and strengths. While this flexibility is one of the greatest advantages of homeschooling, it can also pose a challenge: how do you create a structured, personalised learning environment that keeps your child engaged and progressing? Wired for Learning provides a powerful solution, offering personalised strategies and reports that help parents tailor their home education to each child’s unique learning style.
In this guide, we will explore how Wired for Learning can transform your approach to homeschooling, helping you build a structured, effective learning environment that supports your child’s potential.
The importance of personalisation in homeschooling
Every child learns differently. While some children thrive on visual input, others learn best through auditory or hands-on activities. Understanding your child’s learning style is key to creating an engaging and effective home learning experience. Unlike traditional classrooms, where a one-size-fits-all approach is often the norm, home schooling offers the opportunity to tailor education specifically to your child’s strengths and preferences.
Wired for Learning is grounded in the belief that personalised learning is the most effective way to help children thrive. By identifying your child’s dominance profile—whether they are visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic learners—you can create a home education plan that suits their natural learning preferences. This personalised approach not only keeps learners engaged but also ensures that they retain information and develop skills more effectively.
Step 1: Identifying your child’s learning style
The foundation of Wired for Learning’s approach is its dominance assessment, which helps identify how your child processes and responds to information. There are 32 distinct profiles based on five combined dominances, each offering a unique insight into your child’s learning preferences.
Visual learners: Children who are visual learners benefit from charts, diagrams, and reading materials. When homeschooling visual learners, parents can focus on creating rich visual environments that include colour-coded materials, mind maps, and interactive charts. Wired for Learning provides specific strategies to engage visual learners through visual aids and imagery-based exercises.
Auditory learners: These learners absorb information best through listening. Incorporating audiobooks, discussions, and verbal instructions will help auditory learners excel. Wired for Learning recommends techniques such as repeating instructions aloud, using music or rhythmic sounds during study, and engaging in verbal reflection or storytelling.
Kinesthetic learners: Children who learn by doing will benefit from hands-on activities like building models, conducting experiments, or acting out concepts. Wired for Learning offers a range of strategies for kinesthetic learners, including incorporating movement into lessons and providing opportunities for active learning.
By understanding your child’s dominant learning style, you can create a home-school curriculum that feels natural and engaging for them, leading to greater motivation and long-term retention of information.
Step 2: Creating a structured home learning plan
Home schooling offers flexibility, but a well-structured environment is crucial to ensuring consistency and progress. Wired for Learning’s reports provide personalised recommendations for creating a learning plan that matches your child’s specific needs, while also promoting structure and routine.
Daily routines: Establishing a consistent daily routine helps children know what to expect and creates a sense of stability. Wired for Learning suggests incorporating both structured learning time and moments for creative exploration or hands-on activities. For example, visual learners might start the day with reading or writing activities, while kinesthetic learners can engage in an afternoon of physical learning through interactive experiments or projects.
Personal learning goals: Setting achievable learning goals helps keep your child motivated and focused. Wired for Learning’s detailed reports offer insights into which areas your child excels in and which areas might need additional support. By setting personalised goals, you can track progress and celebrate achievements, fostering a growth mindset in your child.
Stress management and wellbeing: Wired for Learning emphasises the importance of stress management in the learning process. High levels of stress can inhibit a child’s ability to absorb and process information, leading to frustration or burnout. Wired for Learning’s dominance reports help you recognise when your child is becoming overwhelmed and provides strategies to reset their focus through relaxation techniques or movement exercises. By reducing stress, you create an optimal learning environment where your child can thrive.
Step 3: Incorporating whole brain training activities
Wired for Learning advocates for a whole brain approach to education, recognising that engaging both hemispheres of the brain leads to deeper learning and cognitive development. For home-schooled learners, incorporating activities that stimulate different parts of the brain can enhance critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity.
Cross-disciplinary projects: Whole brain learning often involves cross-disciplinary projects that encourage your child to make connections between different subjects. For example, a project on the environment can combine science, art, and writing, allowing your child to explore the topic from multiple angles. Wired for Learning’s recommendations provide guidance on how to create these projects in ways that align with your child’s strengths.
Creative and physical exercises: For kinesthetic learners, combining physical movement with cognitive tasks can be especially effective. Wired for Learning offers specific movement exercises designed to engage the brain and body, helping your child focus while also building physical coordination and problem-solving skills.
Step 4: Adapting to your child’s progress
As your child grows and develops, their learning needs will change. Wired for Learning’s approach is designed to be flexible, adapting to your child’s progress and adjusting strategies to fit their evolving strengths and challenges.
Ongoing assessments: Wired for Learning provides parents with the tools to regularly assess their child’s learning profile. This ongoing assessment ensures that you can continuously refine your home schooling approach, making sure that your child remains challenged, engaged, and motivated.
Tailored reports: The detailed and snapshot reports from Wired for Learning offer actionable insights and easy-to-apply strategies for parents. Whether your child is excelling or struggling in a particular area, these reports allow you to quickly adjust your home schooling methods to keep them on track.
Wired for Learning empowers parents to craft an educational experience that celebrates their child’s unique way of learning, helping them excel not just academically, but in life as a whole.
