Posted on 05/14/2011 9:04:03 AM PDT by sc2_ct
My wife and I had initially been planning on sending our two boys aged 1 and 2-1/2 to private school. We decided to examine all of our options and that is when we first decided to give homeschooling a fair consideration and started researching it. In the two weeks since we have become sold on the merits of homeschooling.
First some background on our family:
Me: Socially and political conservative with vigerous libertarian leanings 31 year old. I work full time and then some as a paramedic and volunteer locally as a firefighter/EMT. Believe firmly in the concept of independence, liberty and self-sufficiency (borderline survivalist as some of my friends say lol). I had horrible experiences with both public and private education, got poor grades and in retrospect I suspect that I was just bored and with the exception of two memorable teachers, none ever managed to hook my interest. I am agnostic in the truest sense of the word.
Wife: Socially and politically liberal but fiscally conservative 25 years old (becoming more conservative as the days go by), also a believer in indepence and self-sufficiency. She has flexible hours working with her family at their deli and farm market, and we have playroom set aside upstairs so that she can bring the kids to work with her. She also had a miserable experience with school, however for her she was always a high achiever and felt that the schools held her back from her real potential. She recieved full scholarships to private boarding schools which she declined in order to stay with an vocational agriculture program she was in focusing on veterinary science. She is spiritual in what I call a new-age neo-hippy kind of way (don't tell her I said that lol)
We live together in a single family home in a nice neighborhood leading an average lower-middle class lifestyle while we work on becoming debt free. As you can probably imagine, we have a somewhat maleable schedule and are one of those families that only knows what a weekend is by reading about them lol. We have examined the options for education packages and have pretty much decided on the Sonolight program because of how it is structured and how we can selected additional modules as we go.
We have a room in the finished basement that is currently a playroom but that we are intending to split in half in order to build half of it as a home classroom, however we have heard that a lot of homeschool families end up never using the playroom and instead gravitate toward the diningroom table.
We have a pretty good grasp of what is involved in the process, but I figured I would come here and ask people if they have any tricks to share based on their experience? We are interested in reading even simple things like how ways you have found to simplify curriculum planning, network with other homeschool families, etc.
Any input would be appreciated :)
Matt and Melissa
The point is, we were depending on our Lord for guidance and provision throughout. Are you?
I spoke to a woman on the phone who was experienced with homeschooling and strongly encouraged it for others.
What she said, and others here on FR have said...
~ Don’t feel like you are obligated to `duplicate’ / ‘copy-cat’ what they do in the govt. schools. ~
There are plenty of people and resources available for advice and help. Your life, your family, your children, your future, - YOUR decisions. Your schedule, etc.
Many homeschooling parents want to get their kids away from the ‘govt. sckool’ mess.
And or - You want to have the time with your kids, and the responsibility and experience of being with them and teaching them yourself.
This ping list is for articles of interest to homeschoolers. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping List. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added or removed from either list, or both.
The keyword for the FREE REPUBLIC HOMESCHOOLERS’ FORUM is frhf.
You CAN Homeschool!
If anyone wants to homeschool and thinks it’s too hard-
Don’t fret - there are plenty of resources and help is easy to get.
You think you don’t have the time?
Do you have the time it will take to unravel all the complications that public school will bring?
YOU CAN HOMESCHOOL!
It could be the most significant thing you do in your life: You will leave a legacy that could last for multiple generations to come.
(I hope I used proper grammer here...)
1. tell ‘em what you/re gonna tell ‘em.
2. tell ‘em.
3. tell ‘e what you told ‘em.
check.
check.
check.
I hs’d k-12, drop a private note if you want to chat. First, remember — you know more than any 1st grader — or 8th — or 12th. There, you are qualified. We did not buy curriculum packages because we were doing it to chart our own path. Plus, a kid can be really ahead in math but not a strong reader. OR he can want to read what he wants to read and not what the curriculum selects for him. Or he can be a strong reader and pass up the grade level almost immediately.
You can buy DK paperbacks, workbooks and etc., and never have to buy a textbook ever. Spectrum has good workbooks. Read, do math, do science experiments. You don’t need a whole lot more til Jr Hi. We did most of our History traveling in off-months. It is $200 RT to Paris in February!! You can do hs on a shoestring. Lots of great info out there. Do not fret — your kids will thrive.
I hs’d k-12, drop a private note if you want to chat. First, remember — you know more than any 1st grader — or 8th — or 12th. There, you are qualified. We did not buy curriculum packages because we were doing it to chart our own path. Plus, a kid can be really ahead in math but not a strong reader. OR he can want to read what he wants to read and not what the curriculum selects for him. Or he can be a strong reader and pass up the grade level almost immediately.
You can buy DK paperbacks, workbooks and etc., and never have to buy a textbook ever. Spectrum has good workbooks. Read, do math, do science experiments. You don’t need a whole lot more til Jr Hi. We did most of our History traveling in off-months. It is $200 RT to Paris in February!! You can do hs on a shoestring. Lots of great info out there. Do not fret — your kids will thrive.
Start here: http://www.amazon.com/Power-Positive-Parenting-Wonderful-Children/dp/1567131751
Your wife will love this positive approach to child rearing. No matter what you decide to do you’ll want your children close. That gets harder and harder as your children age and even in a private school the government school values, curriculum and mandates rule and become the paradigm. Having a close-knit family is what keeps children away from the nuttiness.
Children’s learning at this age is play, but it doesn’t have to be purposeless. Reading is the number one goal and this book is the best: http://www.amazon.com/Phonics-Pathways-Reading-Perfect-Spelling/dp/1118022432/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305426333&sr=1-1
You simply read it in order and don’t be in a hurry. It works. There’s no evidence that pre-school makes any difference in the long run, but reading does. It will open your child’s world and don’t get junk books. Get the McGuffey Readers once your kids can read.
Fundamentally, a loving husband and wife who love their children can overcome a lot of the natural evil in this world.
Best of luck (though it really isn’t luck) and ping me for any other advice you’d like. Get those two books asap!
Outstanding advice and well done.
I just remembered another thing. We got a lot of books on CDs - Treasure Island, Star Wars (radio play), Susan Wise-Bauers entire history of the world, etc.
If you travel in the car with kids, why not let them listen to the best, most interesting stories instead of pop music or chatter? FYI, my spouse and I learned a ton of stuff we’d never learned in nearly two decades of “education”.
Our kids had listened to Kipling, Swift, Conrad, London, etc. before they read them and in reading them several years later loved them even more.
Learning is fun and once they love learning you cannot lose.
Thank you!
PING
See also his libertarian-themed article Home Schooling for Liberty.
You can teach a ready child to read in 30 hours, using Samuel Blumenfeld's book Alphaphonics. Or, you can teach English as though it were cuneiform hierglyphics, and turn kids into dyslexic or alexic serfs in six years.
Do you mean History of the World by Susan Bauer? We used that as well - it is excellent!
I don’t have much to add since we are also new to homeschooling. We have 4 y.o. twins and so are only doing a little “schooling” and a lot of hanging out with Mama & Daddy and reading and doing and playing. :)
We are doing one thing I’ll share as useful. We have joined our local h/s network, which has an email list. Through that we found an Argentinian woman (native Spanish speaker) who wanted someone to teach her daughter writing. We are now doing a swap where we get together at our house twice a week. She plays with our boys and teaches them as much Spanish as they can absorb at their age, and I tutor her 8 y.o. daughter in English and writing. It’s working out quite well so far.
As most, but not all, of home school materials are Christian/Catholic, you'll have to spend some time doing research for books that will support your worldview. An aside, you do know that agnostic comes from the Greek and means no knowledge, right? At this point I would recommend as soon as your kids can read, you get English From the Roots Up. It is a great vocabulary builder because it teaches the roots of most of our English words. A vast vocabulary is an important resource for both written and oral communication.
You and your wife should sit down and discuss/decide what exactly your worldview is and which parts of it you want to instill in your children. Your kids will 'catch' things you do and don't intend to teach them; an organized front (you and your wife) will go a long way to making sure they understand what your family unit believes and why.
I love homeschooling. We’ve always homeschooled and are now finishing our seventh year.
The best years we’ve had were when I made homeschooling my Number One priority. I ran a home-based business and on days when that interfered, we struggled.
We used Switched On Schoolhouse this year and hated every minute of it. It’s nothing more than textbooks on a computer screen and poorly written software. My son ended up hating math after just a couple of months because SOS required him to place the cursor in every individual box in a math problem. That slowed his progress down so much, and with 30+ computation problems per lesson, well, you can imagine how long it took him to complete just one lesson. Also, if there was a space before the numeral he typed in, he received an F. My kids never even knew what an F was until we started using this miserable curriculum. There were many times when *I* couldn’t even get the right answer.
We stuck with SOS for a couple of reasons. One, I figured that sooner or later my kids will have to learn using the public school model of reading text material, answering questions, and then taking quizzes and tests. Second, I was writing a book and SOS was something the kids could do on their own, until they got frustrated, which was often. They suffered through it and are pretty much finished with the assigned units.
We enjoyed using KONOS when my kids were younger, although the prep work can be burdensome. I’m also not convinced that it adequately addresses every curricular area as it claims, but it’s very hands-on and fun.
Check out Ambleside Online, a free curriculum that uses very high quality literature and texts. It’s based on educational theory and practices developed by Charlotte Mason, a British teacher whose schools were based on what she believed were best practices. As a teacher myself, I’m in complete agreement with most or all of her methods.
We used My Father’s World curriculum for two years. We might still be using it except that we got bogged down one year in a horrifically boring study of world geography. What could have been taught in less than a month was dragged out over nine. I probably should have just quit and purchased the next year’s curriculum but didn’t. Also, it was very workbook heavy.
I don’t believe there are any disadvantages to homeschooling. However, it’s all too easy to just quit something your kids aren’t crazy about. I’ve seen families take drama for a couple of months, then enroll their kids in guitar lessons for two or three months, then join an archery team but miss a lot of practices. It’s almost like having a box of candy (fun learning opportunities) and trying out one after the other, never finishing anything. I think kids need to learn how to stick it out even when they aren’t thrilled with something. That’s one reason I made my kids finish the year with Switched on Schoolhouse.
If you liked the idea of SOS math but not the program you may want to take a look at Teaching Textbooks. My kids enjoy it.
First off keep in mind that for a family like yours, the flexibleness of homeschooling is going to be awesome!
Anything and everything is negotiable with homeschooling. Hours spent per day? Which days you teach? What subjects in what order? Go with what works for you.
For kindergarten/first grade, an hour or so of work a day will cover all the stuff a kid needs to know. Until middle school, three hours is probably enough depending on how hard the kid works. That 7 hours a kid spends at school? Figure out how much is wasted with class changes, stupid overhead, and busywork.
If a curriculumn or piece of curriculumn isn’t working, throw it out. If a boxed set is good but you don’t like the science, throw out the science and find something else. If Kid A is a math whiz and wants to do two math lessons a day, let him. If Kid B loves to read about dinosaurs, find a way to incorporate that.
I was homeschooled and plan to homeschool my own daughter who is two. It’s the best thing you can do for a kid. Just - whatever you do, don’t try to recreate “school” at home. The institutional school model is no good. I’m not saying throw out the idea of textbooks and set lessons; I’m no unschooler. But do throw out the traditional calendar - schooling year round and taking breaks when it fits your needs is best.
Oh, and HSLDA membership is a wonderful safety net once your kids are school age. Check out state laws, follow them, and have HSLDA programmed into your phones just in case.
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