Why did you chose to homeschool your kids? (colleges, bullying, textbooks)
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I understand anxiety, or bullying etc, at older ages, but what makes you homeschool a child from the time they should be starting pre-k
No hate here though just curiosity.
We are what's knows as accidental home schoolers, meaning that we didn't start our kids education with HS in mind, it happened as a result of several issues. To sum it up, by the time my son reached 4th grade, he had "retired" three teachers and it was a daily battle just to get him to complete his work. When I asked the 20 year teaching veteran who was a highly regarded teacher what my son was doing all day, because he clearly wasn't doing his work, she said she didn't know.
That was the final straw. Here I was spending hours in the evenings and on the weekends, helping him and guiding him. He was very negative about school and learning and I felt like he needed a complete break from the cycle. I wanted him to become confident that he was smart, learn to enjoy learning, and break the negative cycle that only seemed to be getting worse.
So for 5th grade I home schooled him. I had no idea what I was doing, but we muddled through it together, and all in all, it turned out to be a great decision for him.
The following year we decided as a family, to homeschool my daughter as well, who was entering 5th grade. So I combined 5th and 6th grade last year and taught them both.
The pros: The scheduling. We aren't tied to the school calendar, we can take vacations when it suits us, and since we make our living off of repairing air conditioners, we can never travel during summer vacation.
The flexibility: We can use text books, regular books, novels, kitchen items, trips to the grocery store, online resources, television programs, DVD's, and hands-on field trips. Last year we ended up visiting part of my family who lives out west, so we did an entire unit focusing on Lewis & Clark, the Oregon Trail & the Santa Fe Trail. For science we studied the desert biome, and the kids took photos, we went on nature walks, bird trails, museums etc.
The Cons: the battle to get my son to do his work still exists, only now I am the enforcer (a job I dislike). The only plus is that now I find out immediately if he isn't doing it and he has immediate consequences instead of finding out weeks later, after he's already failed the test in that subject. LOL
Another con is that I am now personally CRAZY BUSY and always concerned that I am not doing enough. (especially for my daughter who is very very motivated & bright)
Also, the kids do get tired of spending all day around each other. Luckily once a week they go to classes from 9am to 4pm at a local home school co-op. They spend that entire day separated and with their buddies, learning really neat subjects like cooking, famous wars, robotic legos, US history etc.....taught by other teachers.
They also attend their normal after school activities weekly and get to see friends then. The socialization has never been a problem as far as I am concerned.
As for doing HS right from pre-school, I would have NEVER had the patience to teach the alphabet, phonics, numbers, etc. The time that we started doing it turned out to work well for us.
Most of the homeschoolers I know-- including my own kids-- have developed friendships with people in all sorts of situations. There's no law that says "public school kids must only hang with public schoolers, Catholic kids with friends from parochial school, preppies with preppies, homeschoolers with homeschoolers"...or even that friendships have to be chronologically homogeneous.
We see that too, my kids started out in the public schools, but now we home school. My daughter's two best friends are a girl from her public school and a girl from a private school who took piano with her a few years ago. She is fast to make friends.
My son still has a good friend from the public school, he's got several new friends from the co-op we attend, and his best friend is actually his cousin, who he met just "cuz" we are family. LOL
My bestfriend is lucky enough to be in a financial position where she doesn't have to work and her husband suggested they homeschool their bright child instead of sending her to public school. Despite having been a professional educator (at a nonprofit science education organization) she absolutely refused to homeschool.
She feels that despite being trained far more than a lay person in education that education itself is a collaborative effort in. It's finest form. She did not want to deny her daughter access to the best parts of traditional education just to avoid the worst parts of it.
Granted her daughter has access to a great public school system.
Home Schooling is not for everyone, or even every child in a family. I see it as another choice and I am glad that it is available.
Do you guys worry about the social aspect of it? Like if a kid is homeschooled isn't it easier for them to not see the real world as in bein introduced to different people and different forms of working together and collaborating as well as negotiating when working in undesirable conditions?
I took my son out of public school a year and a half ago to home school. He actually came out of his shell, became more proactive in his approach to life, and has great ease in dealing with adults and kids of all ages. He has accomplished a great deal more in this year and a half than he would have if he'd stayed in public school. We found him a great non traditional private school program that he wills start next week, but he is way ahead of his peers at the public school he left in terms of academics and social confidence.
Of course it isn't necessarily true. Some people are in tune to extras that have to be done. I'd claim that most are not. From my own experiences, most homeschooled children that I have met are not well adjusted. Kudos to you if you are giving your kid a well-rounded education.
Of course it isn't necessarily true. Some people are in tune to extras that have to be done. I'd claim that most are not. From my own experiences, most homeschooled children that I have met are not well adjusted. Kudos to you if you are giving your kid a well-rounded education.
You are probably in the minority.
I teach at a public high school for the gifted so it is obviously not a typical sample but I would disagree with the above statement, at least in part.
I have had nearly a dozen kids who were home schooled for their elementary years before entering our school. Socially the majority of them fit in well enough, though our school is probably the most accepting school on the planet socially. I will say on an a purely anecdotal level that four of them spring to mind because they had a hard time socially at college and left. I have no idea if that is higher than the average for non home schooled kids.
Academically they have all done fine. Again, this maybe a function of our school since they have to test in. There is only one major difference I have found. All of them to some degree or another have "gaps" in their content knowledge. Two boys from one family had never had any physical science at all despite our state standards requiring it. One girl last year had learned no chemistry at all and had never even discussed atoms even slightly. This put those children behind all the other kids to some degree and obviously effected their grades.
I have seen nothing one way or the other to warrant the degree of the social stigma associated with home schooling. At the same rate I have also not seen the "shooting star" effect that homeschooling is supposed to have either. All the home schooled children I have had as students fell somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Of course it isn't necessarily true. Some people are in tune to extras that have to be done. I'd claim that most are not. From my own experiences, most homeschooled children that I have met are not well adjusted. Kudos to you if you are giving your kid a well-rounded education.
You are probably in the minority.
How many maladjusted homeschoolers do you know? I'm guessing that, to be able to judge a couple of million homeschoolers by them, you must know thousands.
My kids are in their 20's and 30's now, so maybe things are different in schools today. We made sure to live in places where the schools were good, and the other children came from homes in which we had shared values, so I would not have ever homeschooled them.
However, if I had a child in a system that was dangerous or unwholesome or not teaching to a high enough standard, then I would see no other choice but to teach at home. I love the idea of the world being his classroom and being able to gear our learning day to the child, not force him to sit in a classroom all day.
This being said....I really liked to see the kids get on that bus, so I could have peace and time to myself during the day. Don't you homeschool mothers get a bit too much togetherness???
One more thing I just thought of. When I was a Docent at a museum, we would all hide when homeschooled groups came. They were always much worse behaved than classroom children.
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