Yes, now you can rest peacefully at night knowing the children are educated by you and not pimped out to a government school learning all kinds of things you don't want them to know and yet not enough of what they should know.
I read dozens of books when I began teaching my children. I learned that I should teach everything from reading, writing, and arithmetic to quantum physics and latin to round out their education. With a little theater and various musical instruments (the more the better) and Olympic gymnastics thrown in I could produce 5 world-class adults.
Only one or two problems. I don't know quantum physics or latin. I can't keep a beat longer than about 30 seconds and I have asthma so bad that doing anything physical for more than 20 seconds requires a five minute time-out to get all my breathing regulated. On top of that I have to teach nutrition???!! What's that about?
I went to every homeschool convention and signed up for all the homeschool groups and browsed through hundreds of pages of curriculum. I listened to cassette tapes and other home educators and even taught a couple classes. And got very, very good...at feeling guilty!
I would stay up half the night trying to figure out how I was going to cope with all five children and run 5 different classes for them throughout the months ahead. And seeing as how I have gotten very, very good at math, that's 25 different classes a week! Even public school teachers didn't have it this hard. At the end of the day those little darlings leave the classroom and get on the bus. As a homeschooling mother they are still there staring you in the face at dinner time.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Homeschool Simplified
So you want to homeschool those kids? Yeah, getting the little ones out of bed in the morning and teaching them from 9-3 everyday and experience their intellects growing into Harvard material (not that you could afford Harvard since you had to quit your job to stay home). Idyllic scenes of fresh-washed faces eagerly awaiting your every word as profound verbage drips like honey from your mouth into their sponge-like brains. They will sit at their desks and diagram sentences and memorize multiplication tables and they will respect you and all their elders for eternity, or at least while you are near giving them the "eye".
They will rise at 7 am and make their beds and learn to make a nourishing breakfast, brush their teeth, comb their hair and then sit down to study all that you stayed up late the night before preparing for the great adventure that education will bring them today. You will take the lunch break and teach them to make ants on a log and then send them to the back yard to play games with rules and they will learn not to fight, argue, hit, or scream. Then it's back to the books and reports and educational games until 3 pm and then they have homework to do and you get to go make some dinner with a couple eager little hands that want to help. Dad comes home and you all sit at the table and discuss your day. After dinner and the clean up the children sit down with Dad and he reads to them from a classic and discusses the chapter and then it is time to get ready for bed. Pajamas, brush teeth, lay our tomorrow's clothes have some bedtime stories and get sweetly tucked in by both Mom and Dad.
Aaawwww! So sweet and peaceful. (insert big evil laugh here)
They will rise at 7 am and make their beds and learn to make a nourishing breakfast, brush their teeth, comb their hair and then sit down to study all that you stayed up late the night before preparing for the great adventure that education will bring them today. You will take the lunch break and teach them to make ants on a log and then send them to the back yard to play games with rules and they will learn not to fight, argue, hit, or scream. Then it's back to the books and reports and educational games until 3 pm and then they have homework to do and you get to go make some dinner with a couple eager little hands that want to help. Dad comes home and you all sit at the table and discuss your day. After dinner and the clean up the children sit down with Dad and he reads to them from a classic and discusses the chapter and then it is time to get ready for bed. Pajamas, brush teeth, lay our tomorrow's clothes have some bedtime stories and get sweetly tucked in by both Mom and Dad.
Aaawwww! So sweet and peaceful. (insert big evil laugh here)
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Almost 3 yrs retired and now I feel ready to start writing about the home school "experience". I home educated 5 children through high school on a half shoestring and my own physical disabilities. My motto is "If I can do it, you can do it. Only you can do it better".
I am the cheerleader. I am the motivator. I am the one who pushes from behind and pulls from the front. I am the one who is in constant mental motion. I am the one who stresses over "is it enough?" and "is it the right thing?"
I taught for 32 yrs. Beginning with hand-clapping and speaking to walking, running and juggling. Truthfully, the academics were the easiest part. After all, they have a book. They read the book. They study the book. They take the test. How hard is it?
What was hard for me was the mess left behind. We were messy learners. If all we had done was book work it would have been so much cleaner!
But I am a firm believer that if all you learn is book, then you only have half your education. And ALL of the boredom. My goal was to not let them get bored.
a little history
I grew up with an absent father and a mother with MS. There were 4 of us (till my half-sister was born in my 9th grade year). I am the middle child. Two older brothers and the younger sister.
I didn't like school because it meant I had to talk to people. I was terrified from the moment I woke up in the morning till the time I fell asleep at night. I don't know why, I just was. People terrified me. Life terrified me. I read books to keep the demons at bay. I was bored in school. I had all these questions but too afraid to ask them. So I would find my answers in the library. I read all kinds of books and magazines. Learned so many different things. As a teen I watched the news religiously because I needed to be informed. School was an incidental in my life that interfered with my learning. Only a couple classes in high school were interesting. And those were lectures, and not textbooks. Best history classes I ever sat in.
Then I discovered art. I began to take every art class I could to fill up my schedule as I was way ahead in credits to graduate, but had to endure all four years before that was accomplished. I ended up actually quitting my last semester because they wouldn't let me take an English test to get my diploma. I only needed the last 1/2 credit to graduate. And we were doing grammar again. When I signed up to take college classes a few years and 2 children later, I passed the test so I got out of taking 1st year college English. Funny, I don't miss that diploma.
why the right side of the brain
I have talked to so many people who homeschool or want to homeschool and I hear the same complaint. They don't think they are smart enough. High intelligence has little to do with homeschooling your children. When you work through all the levels of education with your children, you are learning right along with them. So staying ahead of them is fairly easy. When they hit high school and want to take on more complicated learning avenues, there are a whole lot of other people out there to help. Besides, if you have trained them to love to learn and how to find information, by the time high school hits, you can slow down with them and tackle the 4th grader and his multiplication table memorization (you should have those memorized after the first 2 kids).
Teaching children is intuitive. You teach them from the time when they are born to blow bubbles, talk, walk, tie their shoes (this may be telling my age, since shoes now come pre-laced), and how to be kind and polite. Why would it be such a mystery about teaching them their numbers, the alphabet, and learning to write? To have them write Grandma and Grandpa a thank you note for the birthday present?
Our culture has turned teaching children into a curious place of professionalism that was meant to be a natural outpouring of love into a little person's life.
I am the cheerleader. I am the motivator. I am the one who pushes from behind and pulls from the front. I am the one who is in constant mental motion. I am the one who stresses over "is it enough?" and "is it the right thing?"
I taught for 32 yrs. Beginning with hand-clapping and speaking to walking, running and juggling. Truthfully, the academics were the easiest part. After all, they have a book. They read the book. They study the book. They take the test. How hard is it?
What was hard for me was the mess left behind. We were messy learners. If all we had done was book work it would have been so much cleaner!
But I am a firm believer that if all you learn is book, then you only have half your education. And ALL of the boredom. My goal was to not let them get bored.
a little history
I grew up with an absent father and a mother with MS. There were 4 of us (till my half-sister was born in my 9th grade year). I am the middle child. Two older brothers and the younger sister.
I didn't like school because it meant I had to talk to people. I was terrified from the moment I woke up in the morning till the time I fell asleep at night. I don't know why, I just was. People terrified me. Life terrified me. I read books to keep the demons at bay. I was bored in school. I had all these questions but too afraid to ask them. So I would find my answers in the library. I read all kinds of books and magazines. Learned so many different things. As a teen I watched the news religiously because I needed to be informed. School was an incidental in my life that interfered with my learning. Only a couple classes in high school were interesting. And those were lectures, and not textbooks. Best history classes I ever sat in.
Then I discovered art. I began to take every art class I could to fill up my schedule as I was way ahead in credits to graduate, but had to endure all four years before that was accomplished. I ended up actually quitting my last semester because they wouldn't let me take an English test to get my diploma. I only needed the last 1/2 credit to graduate. And we were doing grammar again. When I signed up to take college classes a few years and 2 children later, I passed the test so I got out of taking 1st year college English. Funny, I don't miss that diploma.
why the right side of the brain
I have talked to so many people who homeschool or want to homeschool and I hear the same complaint. They don't think they are smart enough. High intelligence has little to do with homeschooling your children. When you work through all the levels of education with your children, you are learning right along with them. So staying ahead of them is fairly easy. When they hit high school and want to take on more complicated learning avenues, there are a whole lot of other people out there to help. Besides, if you have trained them to love to learn and how to find information, by the time high school hits, you can slow down with them and tackle the 4th grader and his multiplication table memorization (you should have those memorized after the first 2 kids).
Teaching children is intuitive. You teach them from the time when they are born to blow bubbles, talk, walk, tie their shoes (this may be telling my age, since shoes now come pre-laced), and how to be kind and polite. Why would it be such a mystery about teaching them their numbers, the alphabet, and learning to write? To have them write Grandma and Grandpa a thank you note for the birthday present?
Our culture has turned teaching children into a curious place of professionalism that was meant to be a natural outpouring of love into a little person's life.
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