How to Homeschool in 2024: Go-Grow-Glow Modern Approach

Many families are asking one question, “How to Homeschool in 2024?”.

The Go-Grow-Glow modern approach is one of the homeschool approaches that families are learning to adopt into their homeschool. With the internet of things currently saturating our world, the world becomes a village. Families are looking for ways to adopt to this modern world for survival and success. For some families, the traditional school no longer fit the mold of their children. Multiple intelligences have comes across and the traditional schooling is not able to adjust to these intelligences. Well, it probably did at some point but with the exploding number of students in the schools, teachers do not have the funds needed to cater for each students needs. 

The best way to approach this is to homeschool your kids and adjust your learning according to each child’s needs, gifts and intelligence.

With homeschool, we can start looking at experiences and practical applications instead of just being limited to the books, learning blocks, and the academe. 

---

Go: Embrace Life Skills

---

With the whole world waiting, life skills become the most important skills that your child needs to learn. It allows them to GO into the world with lifetime tools to achieve success. These life skills can include setting goals, creating and managing tasks around those goals, time management, planning, creating roadmaps towards their goals, physical and mental health, personal finance, spiritual growth, growing in relationships, character development, grit and emotional quotient, and having a champion mind. 

These are skills that are not found in academic curriculum. These are to be sought after using written books and applying the same in real life through projects. There is no right or wrong. Your child will not be punished for making mistakes. Instead, they learn from their mistakes and failures. Allowing your child to fail and make mistakes at an early age gives them the edge from all other students in traditional school. In traditional school, students were trained that when they make mistakes, they get a lower grade. In our approach, when they make mistake, it is an opportunity to learn. The grade does not matter.

In this new homeschool mindset, we embrace the mistakes and failures as necessary step to learn. Trust the process of making mistakes, learning from them and developing grit in the process. As the famous line in a poem says, “Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.”  Most successful scientist, entrepreneurs, athletes, artists became successful not because they are skilled or talented but because they have failed several times. Their failures became their learning ground to be successful.

If we apply this same mindset into our homeschool, we produce learners and achievers.

---

Grow: Discover Your Child’s Gifts and Talents

---

Understanding and harnessing your child’s unique gifts and talents is essential for your child’s personal growth and fulfillment. Our gifts and talents are what make us special and enable us to make a positive impact on the world around us. In this fast-paced and competitive world, it is more important than ever to recognize and cultivate our strengths.

Remember, everyone possesses unique gifts and talents, and no two journeys are the same. Embrace your child’s individuality and celebrate the strengths that make you who they are. By recognizing and nurturing your child’s gifts, and provide opportunities for them to GROW and thrive. They can create a life filled with purpose, success, and happiness.

In Howard Gardner’s theory has identified nine intelligences. Other authors have identified more than that. While three out of these nine intelligences fits the realm of traditional school, there are six other intelligences that can thrive outside of the classroom.

Of course, there are children who are naturally born to be academically exceptional. If your child is born with this gift, then selectively choose the subject that they will thrive the most. Perhaps, one child has natural ability to win an argument. Then logic is their growing gift. Another child is compassionate and intelligent enough to find cure for diseases, then science is their growing gift. Another child loves to build, then math is their growing gift. The list goes on.

I was watching the Wimbledon 2023 Gentlemen’s Championship with Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz playing for the championship. Off course, everyone knows that Carlos Alcaraz won the championship and sealed his place as World Number 1 in ATP tennis tour. He is only twenty years old. Not to mention that he became world number 1 at nineteen years old. Intrigued with this achievement, I look up his school history and found out that at fourteen years old, he started his journey as a professional tennis player by enrolling in tennis academy full time. 

I was thinking, what if his parents decided to play safe and said, “Go to school, then pursue your dreams later.” If he did that, he would sitting in one of the classrooms in a university today, and dreaming about being about world number 1. Instead, he went for his gift and talent and achieved his dreams without a college degree.  

It is important for us to know our child’s skills, talents and purpose at an early age by allowing them to experience new skills. While some dreams definitely needs a college degree – like doctors, engineers, lawyers – realize that some dreams do not require college degree. Some big dreams happen in the field, in the real world, outside of the walls of an office or classroom.  

---

Glow: Shine Brighter

---

Would it be nice if a sports player can play an instrument? What about an famous artist who bakes? How about doctor, who can fly a plane or has superb navigational skills? Impressive, right? 

Today, it is encourage that kids are exposed to different possible hobbies. Even companies encourage their employees to acquire a hobby. It is a great way to maintain mental health, and extract creative juices. For those who are creative enough, they can create a fusion of two different skills and turn it into one. That is a how vlog came about. It is a fusion of being able to write, talk and produce videos at the same time. It separates the normal ones to the extraordinary ones. 

When there is a tight competition for attention, this is where your child sets himself or herself and GLOW in the crowd. Creating something unique in the process that only your child posses.

An artist can make a fusion with baking and turn simple cakes to elegant cakes with their designs. A lawyer or doctor can turn its profession into a business – like owning a firm, writing books, starting a blog – just by acquiring additional skills like entrepreneurship, or writing. 

---

ACTION ITEM: Experience the Freedom

---

Being used to traditional school, most homeschoolers would start looking for a curriculum immediately without knowing their child. Most homeschools still have tendencies to replicate traditional school in their home. Only to realize later on that it doesn’t work for them. It is because we are trying to fit an old learning system into our new learning possibilities.

Look for new experiences. Step out of your family’s comfort zone and explore different activities and hobbies. Trying new experiences can help you discover hidden talents and passions you never knew existed. Travel if you must. Forget the concept of school that you were originally taught, if you must. Embrace lifetime learning instead. 

Allow you and your child to dream big. The world awaits and let it be your classroom. Open your world to the endless possibilities of learning.