Home*School*Home: Our First Homeschool Summer.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Our First Homeschool Summer.

This is our first summer as homeschoolers. Last year, I spent the entire summer trying to decide if it was the right thing to do, to homeschool our oldest instead of sending him to middle school. Now that the year has passed, I am convinced it was a good choice. With the other two kids the decision making process was much quicker. We had a month of homeschooling the oldest under our belts and the public school was beginning to drive us crazy, by giving my daughter 3 hours of homework a night that she didn't know how to do, among other things. She said that the teacher's aide couldn't explain how to do it because she wasn't the teacher and the teacher didn't have time, so the kids lost out.

I can't believe how much I have changed in this year. I am now such a pro-homeschool person, its funny. Right now we're sneaking in a little bit of school by reading Swiss Family Robinson at night before bed. The kids beg for 1 more chapter.

1 comment:

Lone Ranger said...: I have nothing but admiration for home-schoolers. When a housewife can educate her kids around the kitchen table to the 96th percentile, you know our public schools are broken.; 7:49 AM

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Homeschooling Advice.

1. Try it. You might enjoy it. It might change your life. It might not be your thing, but you won't know if you don't ever try.

2. Find out what your state (or country) requires, the bare minimum. Do this and then with the rest of it, have fun with it. It doesn't have to be all serious and it doesn't have to look like the inside of a classroom. You're at home. Relax. Play. Read. Learn together. Enjoy your kids. They grow up way too fast.

3. Don't let a written curriculum boss you around. If it works, great. If it's not working for you, throw it out. If only parts of it work, use those and throw the rest out. It's not the boss of you. When shopping for curriculum, read reviews. Try to go somewhere where you can actually hold the book in your hands and look through it. Print out a sample day or week and try and implement it or borrow it before buying. It's kind of hit and miss buying books without being able to see them.

4. Find a homeschool support group. Or two. If you can't find one in real life, find one online. Get support where ever you can.

5. Make a mess now and then. Go outside and put some mentos in coke. Make alka-seltzer rockets. Make some great art. Make a timeline and a map. Grow some borax crystals. Use levers to lift things. Make a trebuchet out of whatever you can find around the house.

6. Go on as many field trips as you can.

The point of this blog.

"there is a theme, if you read, you'll get a growing conviction that homeschooling is a lifestyle that is worthwhile, that it is extremely good for kids and families, that it promotes bonding, is a personalized education that is superior to what you can get anywhere else for your kids, is fun and can be done even if you have a 400 track mind, no math skills (thankfully my husband does though), through working, job changes, bad hair days, home remodeling, deaths, illness, surgery, broken bones and various other things and it actually makes dealing with these things easier, not harder, than it was when we were in the public schools, because homeschooling is so incredibly flexible. That's the point I've been trying to make for the last 5 years or so."

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Our First Homeschool Summer.

1 comment:

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The point of this blog.

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