Homeschooling the Early Years: Your Complete Guide to Successfully Homeschooling the 3- to 8-Year-Old Child
By Linda Dobson
After reading Linda Dobson's The Homeschooling Book of Answers, I was looking forward to cracking open this volume, despite the fact that my youngest child is already 8 years old. Unfortunately, I was ultimately disappointed with this book, and I'm glad I didn't invest in this one earlier on in our homeschooling journey.
After a basic introduction, Mrs. Dobson moves into a fairly unnecessary chapter about the "homeschool continuum", which is devoted to an overview of the statistics of a set of homeschool families that she polled. The statistical analysis provided may make sense to a professional statistician, but for the most part it doesn't make a lot of sense to the average person, and I really saw no reason for this chapter. The next few chapters are encouragement for the homeschool parent, reminding you how much children love to learn and how easy it is to open up a world of exciting learning for them, and also how homeschooling is a natural extension of early parenting.
The largest part of the book is devoted to chapters about reading, writing, math and "the rest" of the subjects. Unfortunately, I felt completely let down by this section. Only the very basic elements of the school subjects were covered, along with some fairly simple ideas for implementing learning into everyday life. Ideas such as using cooking for math, writing to pen pals for tweaking writing skills and making sure to model a love of reading are the foundation of these chapters. The chapter titled Beyond the Three R's: Covering the Rest is nothing more than an overview of science and history, with a few basic ideas — such as the use of unit studies — for you to consider.
Even though my youngest is really beyond the scope of this book, I saw nothing new and interesting in the school subject chapters that would really necessitate the purchase of this book. Good, basic ideas are presented, but really nothing more than what you could find in any other book, magazine or online at homeschool websites.
The biggest failing that I saw in this book was the fact that it perpetuates the idea that all kids will learn on approximately the same time frame, and here is all you need to do to cover all the subjects. The idea that some children learn on different time schedules is not really addressed, nor is the idea that perhaps a child may not even need to start formal learning at such early ages. If you were struggling with a child having problems with any of their subjects, this book would offer you no words of wisdom or encouragement in dealing with that situation.
The final few chapters are fairly decent, but again, nothing that you can't find elsewhere for free: resources, using the internet, making use of public places for learning, dealing with younger child, keeping house, part-time homeschooling, and some final words of encouragement round out the book. Overall, it's a good read, and has plenty of good ideas. Mrs. Dobson clearly has a great understanding of homeschooling and how to show people how to homeschool. This would be a good book to read when you are first considering homeschooling, and want some ideas for getting started. However, this would be nothing more than a decent beginner's guide, and shouldn't be the only thing on your bookshelf. If you can find it at the library or a book sale, all the better. You really can't have too many ideas and encouragement as a homeschooler, especially a new one, but save your money for other, more necessary resources.
