In the article, Dr. Laura Brodie talks about “a test-prep overdose that cries out for a parent-driven intervention” and adds that “kids spend enormous time memorizing facts for multiple choice tests, and less time writing, reading, forming ideas and enjoying hands-on learning.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve spent years in traditional schooling, as a student and as a teacher, and there’s nothing that irritates me more than to watch bright, energetic students enter the school system full of life and ideas and eager to create, but fast forward 12 years or so and they are bored, stressed and have not just lost their ability to think and create, but worse – they have lost their will to do so.

I can’t say I was surprised to read that more and more parents are choosing homeschooling to “escape a curriculum geared toward multiple choice tests” that is killing children’s enthusiasm for learning. I’ve seen the enrollment in WiloStar3D explode over the past few years, and many of our parents are telling me that they are choosing homeschooling becuase they disapprove of the current state of traditional education and feel that it does not prepare their children to become thought leaders, but rather it teaches them to be followers.

Just one word of caution – I would encourage anyone who considers homeschooling to make sure that the homeschooling system they are choosing allows and encourages students to create and explore. Not all homeschooling programs are created equal, and some are closer to traditional schooling than you might think.

We are especially sad for children who are creative, visual learners. You know the type – kids who like to think for themselves, who always have lots of questions that the teacher can’t answer. These are our future leaders, free thinkers with strong personalities, but the traditional schooling system typically cannot handle them. These students are often labeled as “problematic students,” as troublemakers who don’t follow the rules, or worse – they are diagnosed as suffering from ADD and are given medication.

We love these creative students. We love their imagination and we know how excruciatingly boring traditional text-based learning is for them. We also know that these students, who are labeled as “difficult” in a traditional school, usually flourish and thrive when they are allowed to create, explore and express themselves using our 3D online homeschooling program.

For these bright, creative students, the ability to learn in a 3D virtual reality environment, to create their own unique avatar and other 3D items, and to work on independent learning projects, is absolutely priceless. Suddenly, they are not “difficult” anymore, but instead they become accomplished students with a very bright future.

While some schools supply gifted children with special programs, mostly in the form of after-school activities, many parents of gifted kids feel that for their child, sitting there for six hours each day learning in a pace that is excruciatingly slow for her just won’t cut it. For the gifted child too, having to sit in a traditional classroom is often torture. They often become so bored, that they begin to act out, which causes them to be labeled as “difficult children.”

One option is to see if there are any special schools for gifted children in your area. Another option is to homeschool your gifted child. Homeschooling is wonderful for gifted children because it allows them to work at their own pace – usually much faster than average kids – and to focus on the areas that are of the most interest to them.

For example, if your child is gifted in math, homeschooling will enable him to spend more time on math and to advance as fast as he is willing and able to advance. He will never be held back becuase other children have yet to grasp a concept that he has understood ages ago.

A 3D online homeschooling program with a strong technology focus is especially exciting for most gifted students, since many of them are very interested in technology.

It’s true – kids need social interaction, and in fact they benefit from interacting not just with classmates but also with teachers. While homeschooled kids typically enjoy being independent, especially in middle school and high school, they still crave interaction.

Which brings me to one of the best things about 3D online homeschooling. Unlike traditional online homeschooling, which does pose serious challenges in terms of interaction, the beauty of a 3D online homeschool is that the students do get to interact. They actually go to school every day – yes, it’s a virtual school, but if you ask any of our students they will tell you that it feels very real to them.

Students get up in the morning and go to school, roaming the virtual corridors using their avatar and their own 3D objects including books and school supplies. They participate in virtual classes led by certified teachers and in regular conferences. Students also collaborate with other students to create different projects. These students are not lonely or isolated. On the contrary: they get plenty of daily interaction and socialization.

We do encourage our homeschooling families to make sure that their child has plenty of real-life opportunities to socialize in addition to the interaction our school provides. But it’s important to realize that kids who go to a 3D online homeschool are in no way isolated. They get plenty of daily interaction, with teachers and with peers.

Serious medical issues such as cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, cancer, or seizure disorders make it nearly impossible for the child to learn in a regular classroom. Part of it is the child’s own safety, part of it is social issues, and the underlying issue is that a traditional school generally cannot accommodate seriously ill children.

But the children who are facing these issues are often extremely bright and talented. As their parent, you want them to live life to the fullest despite medical setbacks, and this includes learning and developing and growing academically.

For these children, special needs homeschooling is an ideal solution. It gives the children and their parents the flexibility they need to learn at their own pace, when they are able to. The children are safe, and they can socialize in a supervised, appropriate setting rather than in a harsh classroom environment.

But a 3D virtual homeschooling system, such as the system offered by Wilostar3D, does even more than that. It frees the child from their physical limitations, not just in the sense that they don’t have to deal with going to a physical school, but also in the sense that they can immerse themselves in a wonderful, educational 3D world where they can create an avatar for themselves that is free of illness. Most disabled children find the ability to represent themselves as healthy incredibly liberating and inspiring.

When it comes to special needs students, homeschooling is often not just the best solution, but the only solution. Traditional schools simply lack the resources and the knowledge needed to make sure that special needs students get the attention they need to do well academically.

Special needs homeschooling works, becuase it can be easily adapted to each student’s special needs. Regardless of what the special need is – Aspergers, ADD, OCD or chronic illnesses, the one thing common to all special needs students is that they require a lot of flexibility, understanding and learning at their own pace while being removed from social pressures and stigma. A traditional school simply cannot give them that, and so we see students that are very bright and capable suffering academically and not reaching their full potential.

Special needs homeschooling in a fully accredited homeschooling program enables these bright, talented children to receive the best education, specifically tailored to their special needs and learning preferences. For many special needs students, a visual, creative, technology-based homeschooling program is perfect. We’ll discuss this in a future post.

To do well in a traditional school, you need to be able to sit quietly for several hours each day. While this is challenging for almost all children, some children have an easier time being quiet and passive than others. Those kids do best at school. Their teachers adore them because they listen quietly, absorb the facts being taught and rarely interrupt. They also don’t move and bounce and fidget the way that more active students do.

Other types of students may manage the traditional system and may even learn to do fairly well, but they most likely will not flourish, and they will definitely not enjoy their learning.

The type of student who has the most difficulty in a traditional school is the creative student. You know these kids – they are bright, full of spirit and imagination, and very active. They love to create and build and invent, and they really dislike sitting quietly and listening to lectures, or memorizing facts. These students are often visual learners – they learn best when they can view visuals of the subject material. They are also often very active, so when forced to sit quietly for many hours, they develop habits, which the teachers find annoying such as bouncing around in their chair or fidgeting.

Active, creative, and visual learners can learn to tolerate the traditional school system, but if you want them to thrive and to flourish and to avoid the inevitable label of a “problem” or a “difficult” student, you should look into an alternative schooling system such as 3D homeschooling.

3D online homeschooling is a unique, interactive homeschooling program that fosters creativity, keeps students engaged and utilizes active learning rather than discouraging it. It makes learning fun for any type of student, and is especially suited for creative, active students who find it difficult to accept the rigid limitations of a traditional school setting.

Photo by Rob Shenk

One of the problems with traditional schooling is that it shows preference towards reflective, sensing and verbal learners. Homeschooling is much more flexible and so can be better adjusted to all kind of learning styles, and is especially helpful to students who tend to have a hard time with the constraints that traditional schooling places on their behavior and on how they process new information.

Active and Reflective Learners

Active learners retain and understand information best by doing something active with it. Reflective learners prefer to think about it quietly first.

Sitting through lectures without getting to do anything physical but take notes is very difficult for anyone, but is particularly challenging for active learners. Active learners are often labeled as hyperactive by traditional schools, simply because they have a hard tome sitting quietly for hours.

Active learners love 3D online homeschooling because it enables them to do and to create as part of the leanring process, and so they rarely feel bored.

Sensing and Intuitive Learners

Sensing learners like learning facts. They like details and prefer a slower pace of learning. Intuitive learners prefer discovering possibilities and relationships. They like innovation and really dislike repetition. Courses that involve a lot of memorization and routine calculations are very hard on intuitive learners. Just like active learners, intuitive learners are often labeled by traditional educators as “difficult” students.

Honmeschooling in general, and 3D online homeschooling in particular, is perfect for intuitive learners because it focuses on discovery and avoids repetition.

Visual and Verbal Learners

Visual learners remember best what they can see, such as pictures, videos, and diagrams. Verbal learners like words, including written and spoken explanations. In traditional schooling there is a strong emphasis on words and very little visual information, which makes learning tough for visual learners. 3D education is perfect for visual learners because it provides them with the visual stimuli that they need in order to truly understand what they are learning.

The beauty of 3D online homeschooling is that it’s very flexible and can adapt to any learning style. When homeschooling, the pace can be slower or faster, visuals or text can be emphasized, and emphasis can be placed on active creation of material or on learning and memorizing facts – whatever works for the student.

Because it’s a fun, game-like way to learn, 3D education also keeps all students engaged, regardless of their learning style.

However, if your child is an active, visual or intuitive learner (or all three – they often go together), chances are he suffers in a traditional school setting. 3D online homeschooling can be a lifesaver for such a student and transform him from “mediocre” to “bright.”

Photo by nikon_d90man

We didn’t really need research to know this, although it is certainly good to have scientific backup to what we knew all along: there are many different ways to socialize children. Certainly children in past generations were socialized via going to church or to other social gatherings and simply spending time with family members. The best socializing happens when the child is naturally exposed to many different people from many different age groups – spending the majority of their day in a classroom with 40 other kids their age is not necessarily the best way to socialize and can be very hard on some kids!

Here are 3 great ways to socialize your homeschooler:

1. Spend time with family! Whether it’s the nuclear family or the extended family, the very fact that kids spend the majority of their time with family members means that they are getting plenty of opportunities to socialize. Of course, meeting the extended family is helpful because it expands the number of people your child is exposed to and also enables her to play with children of different ages.

2. Schedule play-dates and outings with other homeschooling families. You can start your search for other homeschooling families online, or you can ask friends and relatives, and befriend other families when you go to the library or to the park during a normal school day.

3. Go to church, or join a local community. Church is a wonderful place to build a community of like-minded people. Or you could join any other type of local community in your area. You could also sign up your child for enrichment activities or for a local sports group. If you do, make sure socialization there will be gentle.

The myth of the isolated homeschooler who spends her days next to the kitchen table with books is just that – a myth. Homeschoolers enjoy a very active social life. In fact, by not spending 6-8 hours each day locked up at school, they get to experience much more than a typical student who attends a traditional school.

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

These wonderful tweets truly capture what homeschooling is all about: leading your child’s education in a way that suits their personality, abilities and interests; and enjoying the process!

Many homeschooling parents report that homeschooling is very enjoyable to them and that they simply don’t see their family ever going back to the crazy mornings, the rigid curriculum and the lack of flexibility and imagination so typical of traditional education.

The three top reasons parents love homeschooling their children:

homeschooling is Flexible

Traditional schooling is tough and rigid. It throws children and their families into a schedule that is far from natural for most of us. The early mornings, the long hours, the endless homework, the late nights finishing up work – this is tough on kids and on parents alike, and is absolutely unnecessary. Kids can learn twice as much while enduring half the pressure they have to endure in a traditional school setting – by learning individually.

Another aspect of homeschooling’s flexibility is that it can be tailored to the specific child’s needs, interests and capabilities. Instead of forcing the child to fit into the curriculum, the curriculum is adjusted to the child.

Homeschooling encourages creativity

Homeschooling, and especially highly creative approaches to learning such as WiloStar3D’s 3D immersive education program, are the complete opposite of dry, boring traditional education because they encourage kids to use their imagination and creativity as part of the learning process. Learning thus becomes active and fun instead of boring and dry. We’ve seen countless tweets by homeschooling parents who say how much they love going outside with their child and immersing them in fun, engaging, educational activities. Homeschooling, when done right, is fun for parents too!

Gentle socialization

Research has proven time after time that socialization is NOT a problem when it comes to homeschooling.  In fact, the notion that the only way to socialize kids is to throw them into a large group of peers with whom they have nothing in common except for their age is ridiculous. People have been socialized for many generations through their families and through organized social activities. For many sensitive, creative types, the gentle socializing that comes with homeschooling is far better than the harsh socialization in a traditional classroom. Parents love seeing their children flourish socially and they love helping them to avoid being hurt and pressured by peers.

Of course, there are many more reasons why parents love homeschooling. These are just the three that we consider as the top ones. We would love to hear from you – what do YOU love about homeschooling?