Dry Erase Surfaces Can Bring Homeschooling Success
Create a safe and engaging learning environment for your homeschooled learner by encouraging natural curiosity and welcoming mistakes with dry erase surfaces.
Homeschooling is on the Rise in the US
More and more families in the United States are choosing to homeschool their young learners. "The homeschool population had been growing at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past several years." More recently, this rate has spiked drastically. The number of homeschooled students grew by over 1 million from 2019-2020 to 2020-2021." (1)
Of course it's not without its challenges. Homeschooling can be harder on parents whose children require extra time, attention and routine. Whether your young learner prefers a fluid or structured schedule, it's important to create an engaging environment. After all, the ability to engage children through natural curiosity is among the many reasons why parents opt for homeschooling.
Getting your Young Learner Engaged
In some situations, parents already have the odds in their favor. The variables that have proven academic success, according to Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., are "one-on-one tutoring, increased teacher feedback to the student, direct instruction by the teacher, increased academic engaged time..., increased contextualization of teaching in experiences in the home and community, and increased involvement of parents..." which are already a natural part of homeschooling. (p. 91-92)(2). How can you implement and/or augment these variables to get your learner more engaged?
Revealing Ideas and Understanding
Middle school teachers at the award winning Design 39 Campus argue for the use of vertical, non permanent, surfaces like a whiteboard because ideas become common or public. Lisa Collins, 6th grade English teacher says when you use a whiteboard, "you share your understanding(3)." When your homeschooler can express their ideas visually and linguistically, they are revealing their understanding, which sparks one-on-one time between you and your learner, which can, according to Dr. Ray, bring academic success.
Inviting Creativity and Welcoming Mistakes
Julie Bogart, homeschooling parent and author of The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in homeschool, learning, and life, recommends whiteboards several times throughout the entire book because they are part of an "invitation to possibilities and projects in process at all times..." They help create a safe environment to "take risks," and make "mistakes and flops (4)." When students are not worrying about being criticized, they can finally immerse themselves in academic exploration. Non-permanent whiteboards with great erase-ability offer a clean slate to invite creativity and the assurance that mistakes are forgiven, and even welcomed.
Here are our favorite whiteboard surfaces that work well in engaging and creative learning environments, for a homeschooling education. These whiteboard surfaces can also be used in school classrooms that encourage learning through natural curiosity.
Opti-Rite® MSA Peel 'n Stick Dry Erase Surface
Opti-Rite® MSA Peel 'n Stick Dry Erase Surface can go on tables, walls and chairs. Virtually any surface can become an invitation to create and learn. This material is also recommended to resurface a stained/damaged whiteboard.
Custom Opti-Print Lapboards
Custom handheld lapboards are an engaging tool that can support the learning of almost any skill level and academic topic. Younger children can learn their colors, numbers and letters. Homeschoolers in grade school can practice sentence structure, geometry and more. They come in 2 sizes, 11x17" and 9x12'.
Trek Magnetic Mobile Whiteboard Stand
Trek Magnetic Mobile Whiteboard Stand is a favorite. It's great for homeschoolers of any height and the magnetic dry erase surface can get your learner on their feet, sending more oxygen to the lungs and brains. This mobile stand is also used frequently as a room divider to help create zooms for each learning objective. Splitting of sections of the room like this can help with focus, engagement and memory chunking.
Opti-Print™ Custom Dry Erase Magnet
Opti-Print™ Custom Dry Erase Magnet can be added atop any magnetic or horizontal surface, for extra working space or to serve an additional function. The custom magnets come on a kiss cut sheet of thin but strong dry erase material.
Successful learning at home has so many key ingredients, like increased parent involvement and natural curiosity. Dry Erase surfaces have endless functions to help use these ingredients to you and your learner's advantage. If you need help choosing the right dry erase surface, you can call us at 866-366-1500 and we can walk you through our Opti-Rite® and MyWhiteboards collections.
- https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/1493090
- https://www.edutopia.org/video/learning-their-feet
- Bogart), B. J. (J. (2019). The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in homeschool, learning, and life. J.P. Tarcher, U.S./Perigee Bks., U.S.
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Dry Erase Surfaces Can Bring Homeschooling Success
Posted by Katie Gauthier on
Create a safe and engaging learning environment for your homeschooled learner by encouraging natural curiosity and welcoming mistakes with dry erase surfaces.
Homeschooling is on the Rise in the US
More and more families in the United States are choosing to homeschool their young learners. "The homeschool population had been growing at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past several years." More recently, this rate has spiked drastically. The number of homeschooled students grew by over 1 million from 2019-2020 to 2020-2021." (1)
Of course it's not without its challenges. Homeschooling can be harder on parents whose children require extra time, attention and routine. Whether your young learner prefers a fluid or structured schedule, it's important to create an engaging environment. After all, the ability to engage children through natural curiosity is among the many reasons why parents opt for homeschooling.
Getting your Young Learner Engaged
In some situations, parents already have the odds in their favor. The variables that have proven academic success, according to Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., are "one-on-one tutoring, increased teacher feedback to the student, direct instruction by the teacher, increased academic engaged time..., increased contextualization of teaching in experiences in the home and community, and increased involvement of parents..." which are already a natural part of homeschooling. (p. 91-92)(2). How can you implement and/or augment these variables to get your learner more engaged?
Revealing Ideas and Understanding
Middle school teachers at the award winning Design 39 Campus argue for the use of vertical, non permanent, surfaces like a whiteboard because ideas become common or public. Lisa Collins, 6th grade English teacher says when you use a whiteboard, "you share your understanding(3)." When your homeschooler can express their ideas visually and linguistically, they are revealing their understanding, which sparks one-on-one time between you and your learner, which can, according to Dr. Ray, bring academic success.
Inviting Creativity and Welcoming Mistakes
Julie Bogart, homeschooling parent and author of The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in homeschool, learning, and life, recommends whiteboards several times throughout the entire book because they are part of an "invitation to possibilities and projects in process at all times..." They help create a safe environment to "take risks," and make "mistakes and flops (4)." When students are not worrying about being criticized, they can finally immerse themselves in academic exploration. Non-permanent whiteboards with great erase-ability offer a clean slate to invite creativity and the assurance that mistakes are forgiven, and even welcomed.
Here are our favorite whiteboard surfaces that work well in engaging and creative learning environments, for a homeschooling education. These whiteboard surfaces can also be used in school classrooms that encourage learning through natural curiosity.
Opti-Rite® MSA Peel 'n Stick Dry Erase Surface
Opti-Rite® MSA Peel 'n Stick Dry Erase Surface can go on tables, walls and chairs. Virtually any surface can become an invitation to create and learn. This material is also recommended to resurface a stained/damaged whiteboard.
Custom Opti-Print Lapboards
Custom handheld lapboards are an engaging tool that can support the learning of almost any skill level and academic topic. Younger children can learn their colors, numbers and letters. Homeschoolers in grade school can practice sentence structure, geometry and more. They come in 2 sizes, 11x17" and 9x12'.
Trek Magnetic Mobile Whiteboard Stand
Trek Magnetic Mobile Whiteboard Stand is a favorite. It's great for homeschoolers of any height and the magnetic dry erase surface can get your learner on their feet, sending more oxygen to the lungs and brains. This mobile stand is also used frequently as a room divider to help create zooms for each learning objective. Splitting of sections of the room like this can help with focus, engagement and memory chunking.
Opti-Print™ Custom Dry Erase Magnet
Opti-Print™ Custom Dry Erase Magnet can be added atop any magnetic or horizontal surface, for extra working space or to serve an additional function. The custom magnets come on a kiss cut sheet of thin but strong dry erase material.
Successful learning at home has so many key ingredients, like increased parent involvement and natural curiosity. Dry Erase surfaces have endless functions to help use these ingredients to you and your learner's advantage. If you need help choosing the right dry erase surface, you can call us at 866-366-1500 and we can walk you through our Opti-Rite® and MyWhiteboards collections.
- https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/1493090
- https://www.edutopia.org/video/learning-their-feet
- Bogart), B. J. (J. (2019). The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in homeschool, learning, and life. J.P. Tarcher, U.S./Perigee Bks., U.S.
