Awfully sorry it took so long to ping this! Bad connection tonight, and I have a job, and...just life. :-)
Posted on 07/03/2005 11:53:40 AM PDT by dfwddr
Help !!!! My wife and I are taking my 15 year old daughter out of the public school system, and home school her. Our school system $ucks, and I'm sick of fearing for her safety every day. I know there are a lot of home schoolers here on FR, and I would love any info, advice, insight, or comments from those in the know. We are in Tennessee (Nashville).
Can you help ? Thanks !!!
Dave's got the ping list. What sort of help are you looking for?
I was homeschooled. It was the best thing my parents could have done for me.
You'll want to check out homeschool law in your state and find what requirements there are.
Thank you all !!
I have been checking the laws in TN, but the state site seems to be a little out of date.
THANKS for your help!
You know your daughter. What works best for her? Does she work well on her own, or need structure? What are her strengths? Play to those.
At her age, whatever you choose to do, I'd recommend having textbooks on hand. She'll be used to that and once she gets to college that's the norm. Find a good library nearby. Where does she need the most improvement?
If she really loves writing, let her write essays and papers to prove she's learned history. If she needs to get her math skills up, have her concentrate on that. Homeschooling is customized to the kid. That's our advantage!
Thus far we have in our group: A Math PhD
An Attorney
A Biology Professor from UT
A Commodities Trader
A Chem. Engineer
A Professor of History
A Theologian
A Writer with a MA in English
My wife and I cove two of the above and are looking for a Political Scientist and a Physicist. For next school year it will just be an after school program but we hope to take it full time in 2006.
For the most part, community college students are there because they choose to be there. Makes a big difference in the atmosphere.
I homeschooled my kids. They are married now, so it's been awhile, but we used the ACE (Accelerated Christain Education) program. I highly reccommend it. It was designed strictly for homeschooling.
Rose has just started using it this past month.
Becky
You're not in Houston, by any chance, are you? (I doubled in political science and English.)
How's your son doing with the Japanese?
I have a theory that children are little knowledge sponges. Especially up to seven or eight, they absorb just about everything dropped into their minds. I think it'd be as easy for a child to learn three or four languages from birth as it is to learn one.
My three-year-old niece knows quite a bit of Spanish. When you ask her what color something is, she gives the Spanish name for the color, and she prefers to count in Spanish. It amazes me . . . I'm trying to convince my sister to start her on a non-Roman-alphabet language, like Russian or Japanese or Chinese or Greek.
The tuition is very reasonable, and the school is accredited.
Here's the one we're using: Ablaze
Here are some others:
http://brilliantschools.com/virtual_school.htm
http://learningbygrace.org/
http://www.k12.com/dg/dg_K12_2.html
http://www.flva.org/
http://www.laurelsprings.com/default.asp
http://www.northstar-academy.org/pages/ushome.htm?11,14
Also, check homeschool.com for advice.
FReepers are the best !!!!
You are very welcome! Good Luck! : )
You're welcome.
Wish you all the best. Homeschooling is definitely the way to go.
My younger brother married a Chinese woman, and they have a beautiful 4-year-old daughter who is totally bilingual. She's disappointed that her father can't speak Chinese.
More generally, I think part of the problem with the education system is that serious learning is delayed until high school and college. As you say, kids are knowledge sponges, and they're just as comfortable learning the languages of math, physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science at an early age as they are learning different spoken languages.
Homeschooling is something that usually has to be tailored to each student. That's what it's all about, actually! Instead of mass-indoctrination, you can indoctrinate your children one-by-one. ;-) Assign them to Freep for one half-hour a day, and they'll soon be Senators.
Online classes I would not recommend, but that's just based on my experience that the computer isn't conducive to good "work" concentration. (I don't like reading huge things on the computer, and for me, the computer is for recreation...I get distracted with all sorts of stuff...it takes a lot of concentration to use a computer ONLY for work)
Make sure to check your laws, but HSLDA (HSLDA.org) should have some good resources to help you. If you follow through, become a member. No choice. ;-)
Definitely get connected with other groups, but I'd advise against a lot of schooling in groups with them, because this tends to create the public school atmosphere that many parents wish to avoid. My siblings and I did a co-op type thing, and while it helped me prepare for the classroom atmosphere of college, it merely creates the hyper, peer-influenced atmosphere of public schools, with pecking orders, cliques, kids running around and misbehaving with other kids, etc.
Mind you, all this is my experience as a young fellow who was homeschooled K-12, but I learn a lot of lessons through personal experience, and through observing the situations my own wonderful Mom goes through, as well as some discussions with her.
We have HSd from day one with our daughter, but I know that many homeschoolers who pull their children from public schools find that they need several weeks or even a few months to just do nothing except for maybe some family travel, field trips to sights that interest their child, and time to regain a love of learning. It seems kids need a period of time to become deprogrammed. When you consider how much classroom time is wasted in public schools, it won't take long before she "catches up", although once you begin homeschooling, that term is relative.
Actually, I kind of saw a bit of deprogramming with our 5 yo daughter. She had gone to preschool two days a week for three years and knew that her little friends were moving on to kindergarten and riding a SCHOOL BUS. (That's a big thing when you're 5.) Anyway, I think it took about 3 or 4 months before she began understanding this wonderful opportunity our family had in homeschooling. Now she asks me, "Why does Emma have to go to public school?"
Here are some for starters:
http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/
And lastly (perhaps most importantly), the Sonlight Curriculum link:
http://www.sonlight.com/index.html?
While all the links I've listed are for organizations that stress Christian homeschooling, they provide classical education materials that can be used by anyone. I especially recommend the Sonlight catalog, as they feature just about every good homeschooling book that ever was.
While it is Christian based, my parents have a newsletter/magazine relating to this. You can see some of their homeschooling articles on http://www.saltmagazine.com/
Good luck!
Dave, please add me to the ping list.
I had already planned on making FReeping a part of her curriculum !! LOL
Thanks for your help !!!
...and beware of people who tell you to beware of "public school taught at home"
everyone has different reasons for homeschooling and those reasons will affect what type of homeschooling you do. "public school at home" is a fine option for some who need structure, are new at it, don't mind the testing, want to get your property tax investment back, etc.
It seems like I've read that Tennessee is a state that is a little more difficult as far as regulations on home schoolers. HSLDA is a good resource, if you are a member they have things on their website, forms to print out for your state, etc. I highly recommend joining and reading all the material you can find on their site that applies to your state and your situation.
If you can, attend a home schooling convention where there is a book fair or something like that, once you know what you want as far as books and/or curriculum. Don't buy stuff just because it's cute or pretty or you like how it looks. Don't buy on impulse.
Some good places I've found for buying stuff is Rainbow Resources and Sonlight. Sonlight had the placement tests for the math we were looking at. In general, the internet is a wealth of information. So is FR!
Take any advice you get with a grain of salt. We avoid any contact with the public school system as if it were the Black Death. Others use special services if they need them. You are opening the door for trouble if you let the government have any control over your children, but that's just my opinion. What works for one family is bad for another. You know your kid, trust your instincts. Parents are in the best position to know what their child needs.
Great reading.
While you are all doing this, start talking about the future - is she interested in college, what field of study, what are her strengths and weaknesses in the academic arena, and most importantly, what gets her charged up about learning ? What excites her mind that motivates her to get out of bed in the morning ?
All of this will point you in the direction you should head, at least to start. The best thing about homeschooling, besides the fun, is that you can drop what doesn't work and do something else.
I don't know anything about where you live but you need to get her something to do that entails responsibility. Get a part-time job, volunteer at a local museum, animal shelter, library, whatever is handy that she'd be interested in. It's an excellent tool to use to make her accountable to some entity outside the house that has nothing to do with schooling. My daughter volunteers at the local Museum of Natural Sciences once a month and at the local library two hours a week. These are places where they can shine without you being around - it helps a lot with self-confidence.
There's been a lot said about specific curriculums. I for one am an eclectic type - we use a textbook for math and somewhat for science, but not for anything else. Textbooks have no relationship to real life in any job, and IMO hinder understanding of how things fit together. Books are great, labs and hands-on are great, but textbooks - IMO a waste of time. We read real, classical books, use a bunch of different resources for math and science, read mathematicians and scientists in their own words, find ways to use math and science, and write research papers and other papers when a book is particularly interesting and we feel we have something to say on the topic or theme. History and literature just come naturally if you read a lot.
You will have so much fun. We're 4 years into the homeschooling adventure (wish I'd done it from the start!) and I'll be sorry when it's over.
You have freepmail. :o)
God bless your decision. Link up with a local home schooling organization.
My daughter is very excited about this, she realized that by going back to her school, her life was in danger, (her school is now run by gangs)and she really wasn't getting anything out of it. She also learned the hard way, *true* friends are hard to come by.
Thanks again to you, and everybody else that has replied !!!
You're on the list now.
Are you a Christian? Most homeschooling comes from Christian resources, or so I hear. If so, I can absolutely recommend Jay Wile's biology. (www.highschoolscience.com) When I was doing high school at home, his science courses were very enjoyable. He made science make sense and (horrors!) he also made an excellent case for creation while at it. His science was fun, funny, educational, and lasting. Highly recommended from this student. (He's been known to e-mail and answer questions)
God bless in whatever course you take! Stick to it...don't let anyone tell you what you're doing is wrong. Or, if they do, don't listen to them. They also told conservatives they were wrong for fifty years. Look where we are now. 8-)
There is more information on homeschooling on the 'net than you can shake a stick at. The choices are endless. My wife and I are homeschooling our 3 year old son using the "classical" method. He is already at a kindergarten grade level.
HSLDA Senior Counsel and Director of State and International Relations Chris Klicka spoke at my nephew's High School graduation at the Home Educators Association of Virginia http://heav.org/ convention last month.
That man is absolutely incredible. Here he goes up to the podium in a wheelchair (he has MS), pulls himself to his feet and stands there for 45 minutes encouraging us. It was an extremely humbling experience.
How right you are.
My wife and I intersperse our English with some Spanish once in a while (she was raised as a missionary kid in South and Central America), and I grew up a WASP kid in Los Angeles. Our 3 year-old has picked up several phrases in Spanish, and can answer a few questions in Spanish as well. Since we are using a classical approach to homeschooling he will be learning Greek and Latin in a few years. We will be too.
Chris Klicka is an absolutely amazing man! He puts his full faith in God. My daily pet peeves seem pretty small when I look at what he does just to get his day started.
Don't know if you are still looking, but our family is excited about Hawaii Virtual School this year. They do everything for you, so it would be pretty good for a first timer, I think. You basically only have to watch your kids and make sure they are working. They are open to anyone (HI or not). http://hawaiivirtualschool.com/
Thanks for the info !!!! I'll check it out.
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