Most of the homeschooling families I’ve met over the past year have established Mom as the primary care giver/educator and Dad as the supporting bread winner. Whatever the arrangement, in our busy world it is certainly easy to accidentally leave the working parent out of the home schooling loop.

In fact, my husband has recently expressed that he feels a bit excluded from the home school education of our daughter, so we’ve done some brainstorming to determine how to better communicate with him where we are in our studies and to more often incorporate his ideas into our lesson plans.

We are a family that is fortunate to have quite a bit of time together, so we realized that we simply needed to make a concerted effort to direct a portion of the dinner table conversation around our homeschooling efforts in order for Dad to have an opportunity for input. In addition, we’ve begun holding a weekly family meeting to discuss the direction of upcoming lessons.

Remarkably, allowing him to more often contribute to the home school experience and to have a say in the curriculum has made for a more well-rounded approach. For example, my husband thought it would be a great idea to see if our daughter may be interested in intricate building sets, something I had not previously considered.

To our amazement, she has a real talent for reading and following the visual instructions provided in the building sets!  What’s more, these activities retain her attention for up to an hour. (Mind you, this is a child that supposedly has attention problems.) What’s more, she takes great pride in the items she has created, so her sense of achievement has become a huge boost to her self esteem!

While it was never my intention to keep my husband out of the home school loop, I am so pleased that we addressed the issue. We have definitely seen that a small effort toward better communications has opened up a whole new element in our educational offerings to our daughter, and I am eager for even more of Dad’s suggestions!

Be sure to visit the Toy-Lending Library at the Parent Center in Salinas—last year they received a grant to purchase toys that dads are more likely to choose for their children. The selection of toys were based on a study which showed that dads play differently with their children than moms do.

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