As a homeschool parent, you make big decisions about the subjects you’ll study and the books you’ll use. And you make hundreds of small decisions about your schedule, extra learning activities, and even what color ink pen you’ll use. While the big items are important, so are the little things – like green ink and other small homeschool innovations.
It’s the small things that make your homeschool yours. You may use the same curriculum and books as thousands of other homeschoolers. And yet you customize things – in small but important ways – to make your homeschool doable, enjoyable, and ultimately successful.
Green Ink
Green ink gets a special mention because my family came up with the groundbreaking idea of using it. (Okay, maybe we weren’t the first, but we thought we were.)
When I started homeschooling, I used a pencil for comments and suggestions, feeling that a red pen was rather negative. The problem was that penciled remarks were easy to miss. (At least, that’s what my children claimed when they didn’t complete all the corrections and edits – ha!)
Ultimately, I switched to a red pen – not a big hit with my kids, but it did have the advantage of easy visibility.
And then I read a little blurb on a research study that linked green with positivity and relaxation, and associated red with danger and error. I shared this with my kids, inspiring one of them to give me green pens for Mother’s Day.
So, now I make edits with a green pen. They’re visible and my kids seem to like them more. Well, as much as any student can enjoy making corrections.
Interestingly, the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University found that instructors who grade with a red pen tend to grade more harshly.
It turns out, we weren’t the first to go green. There are quite a few school systems using green instead of red. Doesn’t matter. The point is that my kids didn’t like red ink and we switched to green. They’re happier and we claim it as our invention (even if a lot of other people were already doing it).
Other Small Homeschool Innovations
Do I think you should go buy green pens? Not necessarily.
I do want to remind you that there’s a lot of room for innovation in homeschooling. Creative thinking from you and your children helps you customize your homeschooling in so many important ways:
- Scheduling. Assess your needs. Get input from your children. You don’t need to follow a traditional school day schedule. Just get things done in a manner that works best for all of you.
- Field Trips. Homeschoolers have the flexibility to go beyond the traditional venues of museums and zoos. Explore your community to its full extent and discover all the intersections between schoolwork and real life.
- Interests. Follow your children’s interests. Nearly every fascination, from airplanes to unicorns, can be incorporated into some part of your school, from math and science to history, writing, art, and more.
And, follow what interests you. Explore topics that you enjoy. Yes, you want your kids to enjoy homeschooling. But you should too.
There’s really no secret about our approach. We keep moving forward—opening up new doors and doing new things—because we’re curious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
Walt Disney
Always be curious. Continue to try new things. Sure, some of your ideas may fail. But some won’t. Hold on to them (and whatever color pen you choose) and celebrate your unique homeschool life.
Other posts you might enjoy: