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You Can Teach Your Child Successfully was written by a public school teacher turned home school advocate. Her advice seems almost grandmotherly. And that's a good thing! Her years of teaching have given her a patient practicality that is given to us as we read the book. Ruth Beechick doesn't talk down to the reader at all; she encourages like a friend does. This book helped to allay some of my fears when I was first starting to home school.
Content-wise this book is great. It tells you what to teach, how to teach it, and why it's important to teach it--on all sorts of subjects. The book is split up into four sections: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Beyond the Three R's.
The section on Reading covers topics such as: test scores, vocabulary, comprehension, stories, poetry, and functional reading.
The section on Writing: helpful books, activities, writing lessons (a representative sample to help you see that you could write some of your own), scale of writing quality, grammar, usage, origins of grammar, penmanship, and spelling (lists, too!).
The section on Arithmetic: teaching for meaning, major goals for Mathematics, exploring numbers, and grade-level guidelines.
And the last section--Beyond the Three R's: social studies, timelines, learning beyond the textbooks, science, health and safety, appreciating art, doing art, and making music.
Of course, I didn't give complete lists, just a representation of the topics covered in each of the sections. The book has 383 pages plus an index--I couldn't begin to do it justice in a short little review. There is no book like this for the high school years which is too bad, but there is a short little series called The Three R's for preschool and grades 1-3. They're written by Ruth Beechick also. And I recommend them, just as I do this book.
So, if you're wondering about home schooling--if you're not really sure it's something you can do, this book is for you. It really lives up to its title: You Can Teach Your Child Successfully!
