Homeschooling.

The fact that we are homeschoolers and not unschoolers means that at some point today, I'm going to have to make my youngest son put down his book that he is reading and do his math and other school work.  It seems kind of counter-intuitive to stop a kid from reading, but balance is key, I guess.  He does need to do other things.  That's one thing I seem to be lacking in my life right now, balance, as I adjust to working more hours.  It's like a mobile and sometimes I can get it balanced for a couple of seconds, but that's all.  Throwing all these extra work hours onto the mobile of my life has caused it to become quite unbalanced and me to become quite cranky.  While I was supposed to be working this morning, I was doing some reading about education and found this article  from Time Magazine with this quote in it.

"the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll, showed that while only 17% of those asked would grade the nation’s public schools overall as an A or B, 79% would give one of those grades to their oldest child’s school" 

Interesting.  I think I was probably one of those people when we were public schooling.  I thought my local school was okay but I didn't want to send my oldest to the middle school that was further away and that's one of the reasons we started homeschooling. 

Can anyone believe how quickly this month has gone?  Tomorrow is December the first!!!

Great Article

There's a great article over at the Parent at The Helm blog about the health benefits of homeschooling, including more sleep, healthier food, more exercise, less stress, etc.  Here's the link.

The future of schooling.

According to this article homeschooling in my state is growing at a rate of 24% per year, but still is only 1% of the population.   It seems like I never used to hear about it at all and now I hear about it a lot.   I hope that the trend continues because I think that homeschooling is just so good for kids.  This is backed up by research.  Here's a really good article.   In the future, I think/hope more people, kids and adults, will be taking their classes at home.  With the technology that we currently have, it's possible and there could be so many benefits from this.  Kids would benefit from spending more time with their parents and vice versa.  The big old school buses that use so much gasoline could be parked so it would be good for the environment.  Wouldn't it be funny to be sitting with our great grandchildren and telling them that kids used to go to big old buildings away from their families every day and have the great grandchildren think this was so strange.  :-)

Deciding to Homeschool.

This time of year, the homeschool list I'm on seems to get a lot of requests for help from people who are thinking about giving homeschooling a try but being afraid to try it, afraid their kids will miss something important or that they won't be able to do it. Some homeschoolers advise them to go ahead and pull the kids out in the spring, because they won't miss a lot of content if pulled out now, just mainly testing, in the public schools. I don't know if that's true or not, I'm just saying it's common wisdom in homeschool circles. Some also advise beginning homeschooling in July and then in August they can decide if it is working or not and decide whether to send them back to public school at that point and others say to definitely give it one full year before deciding.

I'm not sure what anyone else should do. Homeschooling is not for everyone but it can be a wonderful option for some families who are dealing with weird work schedules, problems with the public schools or who just want to travel during the off season ;-). Just kidding! You don't necessarily have to spend a lot of money to do it. Single parents can homeschool, I know of some who are. Parents who are both working can homeschool, I know several who are. If you are thinking about trying it, my advice would be not to spend a lot of money at first. Here are some free resources available on the internet to get you started. Most of these are for elementary school.

Free Online Curriculum - Ambleside Online.
Free ocean unit study - Oceanography This is the one we used and enjoyed.
Free Math Worksheets - Superkids
Notebooking- Free printable pages to go along with science studies.
More notebooking - Pages/forms.
High School Free Online High School Classes
Free books if you need them. Book Samaritan
Children's Literature List. DAWCL
Tons of stuff here - Learning Pages This is where I get the Tommy Tales books my son is reading, plus grammar worksheets to go along with them. Lots of stuff here. You have to become a member but it's free.
Art- Elementary Art Lessons
Coloring Pages - Worldwide
National Geographic - Lots of good maps and other things here.
Build your own castle - Fun
Geography Games - Sheppard Software
There's even free public school for some states. Some people argue that this is not "real" homeschooling but it might be a good option for some people, so I'm including it in my list.
I know I am barely scratching the surface here but these might be some fun things to do while you are trying to decide if homeschooling is for you and what curriculum to use. There are also some organizational things on line for homeschoolers at this site.

So anyway, if you decide to spend a little time homeschooling, here are some resources. Be warned, homeschooling can turn into a whole new way of life. ;-0