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Emergency Homeschooling: Benefits

August 7, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Mental health improves as students learn to think for themselves and trust their own instincts, instead of relying on other students to give the right answers.

Physical health improves with less exposure to the germ-factory classrooms. My children suddenly stopped having continuous colds and conjunctivitis (pink-eye), when we switched from public school to homeschooling.

Emotional health will be calmer with a routine at home, instead of the unpredictable chaos and fear in the public classroom.

You will know exactly what your children are doing and learning each day. You can focus in immediately on whatever they may struggle with and resolve it, rather than waiting to be surprised with the news at a parent/teacher conference, weeks or months later.

Your family will be much stronger as one cohesive unit, because closer relationships naturally develop when parents and children work together. Your children will learn valuable life skills and independent learning skills that they will use for years to come.

Your child will be able to concentrate on topics of his own interest, because 1) he’s not surrounded by 20-some other students, all clamoring for attention, and 2) the freedom provided by homeschooling’s more efficient use of time gives him the opportunities (both in time and energy) to look into new interests.

It is personally rewarding to see what has been learned, whether evaluated on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly level. Children (as well as parents) grow in confidence, when they recognize their own accomplishments.

Other titles in this series:

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Emergency Homeschooling, Encouragement for Parents, Family Unity, Leaving Public School

Emergency Homeschooling: What Supplies Do We Need, and Where Do We Get Them?

August 6, 2020 by Leave a Comment

You may already have many basic supplies leftover from last year—notebooks, pencils, crayons, colored pencils, and so on. If your current stash is limited, you can certainly purchase more, but what you will need at home is not nearly as extensive as the list schools send out each year. Include a backpack (again, the one from last year may be adequate) if your student will be carrying his supplies to a sitter or Grandma’s while you go to work.

Our favorite curriculum items are ones we have recommended time and time again—without any compensation from the publishers, so you can trust that we really liked these. We did use many other products, but these have remained outstanding favorites.

 

Alpha-Phonics teaches reading just as well as the super-pricey programs, but for 1/10th of the cost. The book is not loaded with childish drawings, as some others are. If you find you need flashcards or other manipulatives, you can easily make some yourself with index cards. Let your student help! We supplemented this with beginning reading books that used words similar to those in the lessons, and had no need of other materials offered.

At Last! A Reading Method for Every Child! It’s a hard-to-find book, but it does contain a 2-week crash course in remedial phonics, which was ideal for my formerly public-schooled child with reading deficiencies. (This book has been updated since I first bought it; the chapter for the crash course is now called “Uniform Approach.”)

Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series was my favorite for very simple but elegant handwriting that, incidentally, converts to cursive with few changes and little difficulty for students. I used these workbooks with my children and did the program myself to improve my own poor handwriting, so I can recommend it highly. Book E covers both a printed manuscript and cursive handwriting—the suggested place to begin if you already know basic handwriting. I used a plain spiral notebook for copying my exercises, leaving the workbook for my student and giving myself plenty of room to practice.

Miquon Math is an excellent program, designed to be used in grades 1-3, but is so thorough that students can step directly from it into Saxon 6/5 (6th grade) without difficulty. The set of 6 workbooks, normally done 2 per year, step quickly into complex math, but in a way that even 6-year-olds can understand. Miquon teaches adding and subtracting, then moves into multiplication as a logical extension of addition. Before the series is finished, the student is graphing rectangular coordinates with complete confidence! Grade 1 uses the Orange Book and Red Book; grade 2 uses the Blue Book and Green Book; grade 3 uses the Yellow Book and Purple Book. The Lab Sheet Annotations book is the teacher’s guide and answer key, and is a must for teaching this material, along with a basic set of Cuisenaire Rods (wooden or plastic sticks in 1-10 unit sizes; the wooden ones sound better when falling off the table). The student workbooks are printed on newsprint in colored ink, but are relatively free of kiddie pictures, other than cartoon-style illustrations necessary to the lessons. Miquon is my favorite program of everything we used!

Key to Fractions (also Decimals, Percents, and Measurements) series of 3-4 workbooks are excellent for any students who may be struggling with the concepts of fractions, decimals, percents, or measurements (we used each of those sets with wonderful results). Their Key to Algebra and Key to Geometry full-year series also break down scary math concepts into do-able steps and make the subjects simple to understand. All workbooks are thin, comic-book-style, and completely non-threatening and un-intimidating for math-phobic students. Answer keys are available and great time-savers. Key to… workbooks are definitely my second-most favorite program.

Easy Grammar is no-nonsense, straight-forward, and easy. We used this program in its early stages, when there was only one level, simply called Easy Grammar. Its treatment of grammatical rules is simplified by learning prepositions first, then eliminating all prepositional phrases from a sentence, to easily identify the other parts of speech. Easy Grammar was a godsend to my public-school-refugee student, whose previous classroom experiences were built on presenting incorrect examples every day, without teaching correct examples first. Easy Grammar taught the correct rules very plainly and simply. We loved it!

Saxon Math uses continuous review to keep concepts fresh in students’ minds, rather than working on a single concept per chapter, as is done by most math textbooks. The “homeschool kit” includes a test booklet, with instructions to give a test after every 5th lesson, but even those testing questions are reviewing material covered 5-10 lessons ago. (Test #1 covers Lessons 1-5, but is given after Lesson 10, and so on.) As I recall, the tests were 20 questions each, a few less than daily problem sets. We used the tests as our method of review at the beginning of the year. The student did test after test, as many as they desired each day, as long as they could get each problem correct. A perfect score allowed them to proceed to the next test. If any mistakes were made, they were analyzed for cause: hasty errors or misunderstanding. If the student could rework a hasty error and get the correct answer, he moved on as with a perfect score. If the cause of mistakes was misunderstanding, that indicated a lesson that needed more work, and we tracked back to the group of 5 lessons covered by that test, as the place for that student to begin math lessons for that school year. My students came up with this plan as a challenging way for them to refresh their “math brains” and to skip over the tedious review lessons at the beginning of the books. Since we often had kept working at math over part of the summer (to finish up the past year’s book), their ability to do math rarely waned, and intense review wasn’t needed. My students also presented a logical argument against taking regular math tests, since Saxon already “tests” on a daily basis through their continual reviewing of previous concepts. Not testing became a great time-saver, which allowed us to keep moving forward with daily lessons. An answer key is included with the homeschool kit, but it lists only the final answer to problems. The Solutions Manual is valuable for showing the step-by-step solutions to more advanced problems. We bought the Solutions Manual for Algebra 2 and Advanced Math—there wasn’t one available yet for Algebra 1, when we used that book. Other Saxon Math textbooks we used were Saxon 6/5, Saxon 7/6, and Algebra ½. (For levels 5/4, 6/5, 7/6, and 8/7, the 1st number is the typical grade level; the second number is for exceptional students in that grade—so 5/4 is for most 5th graders, or exceptional 4th graders.)

Biographies, including historical figures, scientists, inventors, and artists, gave my students a look at the more personal side of history, science, and other subjects. We could find interesting biographies at the public library (in both the children’s and adults’ sections); biographical movies were another good source for seeing the human side of topics that can sometimes be harder to delve into. Exploring one person’s life story gave my students a desire to know more about others, drawing them into the topics more deeply than ordinary textbooks would have done. (My test for finding an interesting book is to read the first paragraph. If I have to restart several times and force myself to get through it, I put that book down and try another one. If I find myself in the middle of the second paragraph or suddenly turning the page, engrossed in the story, I know that I will enjoy reading the whole book.)

“Uncle Eric” Books by Richard Maybury are an often-overlooked series of 11 books that deal with everything from history to economics to government to politics. These books offer a unique perspective that Americans usually don’t see and deal with root causes of worldwide conflicts, rather than just the surface view. The tricky concepts of economics and world governments are clearly explained for middle school to high school level. We used the following titles, but there are several more that have been added to the series:

  • Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?
  • Whatever Happened to Justice?
  • Are You Liberal, Conservative, or Confused?
  • Evaluating Books: What Would Thomas Jefferson Think About This
  • Ancient Rome: How It Affects You Today
  • The Clipper Ship Strategy
  • The Thousand Year War in the Mideast

The Elements of Clear Thinking by William F. McCart is a high school level program for teaching Accurate Communication, Critical Reading, and Sound Reasoning. Simply put, how to say what you mean and how to analyze what an author meant and whether or not he succeeded. This set is 3 thin workbooks, but don’t be fooled into thinking students will zip through them. The 3rd book contains some especially weighty passages to read and analyze. (I had to buy the answer keys.) When my second student struggled with some of the more difficult reading selections, we opted for finding our own reading materials at the library, and I wrote questions for those, similar to what was used in the workbook. However, the section on “Fallacies of Reasoning” is excellent and redeemed any issues we had with other parts. This series was excellent preparation for my students’ future college classes, for in-class discussions, reading assignments, and writing papers.

 

Materials in your students’ grade levels may be ordered online from: Amazon, Rainbow Resource Center, Christian Book Distributors, and many other reputable suppliers.

Public libraries are an excellent source for reading material for all topics, but some may have limited access during your year of Emergency Homeschooling.

Wonderful supplemental activities can be found at Timberdoodle and Miller Pads and Paper, as well as the hands-on learning supplies available at Target’s Dollar Spot, Dollar Tree’s educational supplies, and other dollar-stores, bookstores, and office supply stores.

Supplemental learning aids can be as common as the play money from a Monopoly game, the letter tiles from a Scrabble game, and a deck of playing cards (using Ace-10 becomes a math deck for all sorts of practice). For more advanced learning tools, hit up the grocery aisles for sugar cubes and alphabet macaroni (use it dry and uncooked), but keep these on a cookie sheet to minimize any mess.

Start with the “3 R’s” of reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic for teaching your students the most basic skills. For history and science materials, look at whatever seems to fit your student’s interests and grade level. Some students may enjoy the all-in-one-workbooks, like What Your Second Grader Needs to Know, and other students will prefer separate workbooks for each subject. Be aware that online learning programs and some pre-packaged learning programs will require the student to answer every question on every page of every book. If your student would be overly burdened by that, choose a less aggressive approach.

You know your children best, so trust your instincts or discuss with them what is available and give them an opportunity to provide some input on what seems more appealing to them. For this emergency year, anything-at-all will be far better than nothing-whatsoever, so don’t judge your efforts too harshly.

Other titles in this series:

Filed Under: Curriculum Choices, Deciding to Homeschool, Emergency Homeschooling, Encouragement for Parents, Homeschool How-To's, Leaving Public School

Emergency Homeschooling: FAQ’s

August 5, 2020 by Leave a Comment

How can we homeschool when both parents work? Homeschooling is flexible—even emergency homeschooling. Some options are to do the homeschooling in the evenings, or go over work the student has done during the day and set up tomorrow’s assignments. Schoolwork can be supervised by Grandma or a nanny, who can answer questions to keep the student on track, while he works independently. (“Do these instructions mean I should draw the picture first, and then solve the problem?” Yes!) Some students may work better in the evenings, or whenever a parent is available. Depending on the parents’ work schedules, the schooling could even switch to a 4-day week or go through the weekend with the “weekend” break falling somewhere during the week.

A recent innovation being used by some emergency homeschoolers is “pod-schooling,” a sort of mini-co-op arrangement, where a few families swap child-care and schooling supervision duties. Each family, in turn, hosts all of the children at their home for two days, while the parents from the other families work. They all share child-care, and all of the students are supervised. Win-win.

What if other families are doing something different from what we’re doing? Focus on your own family—your spouse and children—not on your friends, your neighbors, your siblings, or your parents. Do what is best for your family. This year, everyone will be doing something different from everyone else! Different is okay.

How do I plan lessons? Many textbooks are already set up for a sufficient number of lessons, but you can also divide those differently to suit the needs of your students. Do half-lessons on some days, do two lessons on some days, or do whatever combination works best with your family’s schedule.

My preferred method was to divide the number of pages in a textbook by the number of school days we scheduled, then round up to the next whole number for the approximate number of pages to do each day. Example: suppose a textbook has 484 pages, divided by 180 days, equals 2.69—and round up to 3 pages per day. That will balance out with some sections obviously stopping in the middle of a page, some pages may be full-page illustrations, and the table of contents and index take up a few pages. This is a basic plan that will keep you from stressing out over trying to write detailed lesson plans in advance and then striving to make them happen. This is simply a target, and a student who does a little less or a little more once in a while won’t hurt anything.

How do we fill 8 hours per day with schoolwork? You don’t. Your students won’t be wasting time standing in line or waiting for “that one kid” to stop talking and pay attention so class can proceed. Homeschooled students can typically finish all their work for one school day in less than half the time required to do the same amount of work in a classroom. (Sometimes in much less than half the time.) After schoolwork is done, your student can expand the day with electives: art, music, home ec, games, and any personal interests. These extra-curricular, bonus activities also work well as therapy, to help students relax and feel normal again, during this very not-normal season of life. Activities will vary for each student, but they still count as learning.

Do I have to lecture? No. There is no need for lectures or extensive explanations. Most textbooks do an adequate job with the instructions for each lesson. If the student is capable of reading and comprehending instructions himself, you will rarely need to stand over him to supervise, explain, or answer questions.

What if my student gets stuck? Students who are capable of doing their own internet research can use Google, Siri, or Alexa for assistance, when you are not available. That comes with the bonus of keeping their research skills sharp. For other students, it can help to ask them exactly which part has them stumped. Then ask what they think it means, to get them thinking and to teach them to trust their instincts.

Do I give them homework? No. Students can read the lesson and follow the instructions themselves, doing the work immediately, while it’s fresh in their minds—not hours later in a study period or as homework. Again, no waiting, just getting it done. If the student does have a question about the lesson, the parent, grandparent, or nanny who is supervising can answer it right away, not waiting while several other students ask their questions first. Supplemental lesson activities can often continue after the basic lesson, as “stealth learning” that reinforces concepts with a “playtime” feel.

How do we decide which classes to do when? It is perfectly acceptable for the student to choose the order in which he prefers to do various subjects. It is also acceptable if he chooses to do them in a different order each day. Most students will settle into a routine that feels best to them, but an occasional shake-up to that routine can also be refreshing.

How do I know what materials to pick for my child? Students who enjoy reading will learn well from workbooks and textbooks. Students who prefer watching will learn well from videos on platforms such as You Tube. Students who are hands-on learners will learn well with manipulatives, doing experiments, or even duplicating experiments they have watched on You Tube. Students who are action-loving doers will learn well from standing up to do lessons, lying on the floor to do lessons, going outside to do lessons, making lessons bigger—write out the lesson with chalk on the driveway, sweep it clean to erase, and do another lesson. Doers also learn well from watching videos that are first-person perspective, so they feel like they are the ones doing it, rather than the more passive third-person perspective of watching someone else do it.

Do we need to stay home all day, every day? No. Schools take field trips, and so can you. Learning happens wherever you go, so don’t feel like you are skipping school, even if you are running a few errands. The more efficient routine of homeschooling added extra hours to our day, and we used those hours as we desired, with learning-on-the-go as an added benefit: shopping easily converted into consumer math, driving across town used geography and navigational skills, and every interaction with people was experience in public speaking. Don’t do public situations, if you’re not up to it. Do go to events that will be uplifting and enjoyable, but only if you can avoid the Negative Nellies.

Other titles in this series:

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Emergency Homeschooling, Encouragement for Parents, Homeschool How-To's, Leaving Public School

Emergency Homeschooling: You CAN Do This!

August 4, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Normal? There is no normal right now—not for anyone at any school! Even veteran homeschoolers are finding their routines disrupted by closures and “distancing” requirements.

Different? Everyone is doing something different from what they’re used to doing, so you’re not alone. And every family is doing something slightly different from what every other family is doing, so again, you’re not alone.

Survive? Yes, you will survive this, just as you survived that one vacation where everything went wrong, just as you survived when everyone in your family had the stomach flu at the same time, just as you survived all the times when the school events and the sports events and the work events all conflicted on the calendar. You found a way to survive, and even though those times may not have been pretty or popular, they created hilarious family memories and stories that are still told and retold at special moments. And this will become another one of those legendary family stories of perseverance and survival.

Once you have made the decision to homeschool (whether to get your students through this crisis or as a more permanent situation), the hardest part is already behind you! No one else could help you determine if this is the best solution for your family, but there are unlimited sources (both online and in real life) to help you with what comes next, every day.

No matter why you have chosen Emergency Homeschooling, those reasons can help you make it the best option for your family. Your priorities during this crisis will follow much the same pattern as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: your family’s mental health comes first, take care of basic life skills next, and then you can worry about the schoolwork.

Mental Health
In any emergency, your family’s needs must come first. You know the analogy about putting the oxygen mask on yourself first, before you put the masks on your children. See that your own family’s immediate needs are met, before you think about lending a helping hand to others. What is most important to you right now is that your family members can stay safe and well, and that your children can have some means to continue learning.

Restore the mental well-being of your family members by making them feel secure. Stop watching the news on TV. You may allow yourself to read selected news stories online, if the information is vital to your family, but reading also allows you to stop the flow as soon as you have acquired the important details—the bad-news reporters on TV will just keep blathering on and never stop.

Limit social media to only the people, pages, and platforms that leave you feeling encouraged, uplifted, and positive. “Unfollowing” is a handy feature for keeping them available for when you are ready to see them again—but that allows it to be your choice.

Listen to music that makes you happy. Avoid the slow, melancholy stuff that can add to depression. Trying an out-of-the-ordinary genre can help change the negative soundtrack that won’t stop playing in your head.

Nourish your souls by encouraging each family member to pursue an activity that is enjoyable and relaxing. They may only spend a few minutes on it each day, but those minutes add up over time to lower the stress level. If you have multiple enjoyable activities, alternate or rotate through them, giving each of them a chance to bless you. Drop any activities that prove less helpful than others, so you can focus on the most beneficial activities.

Life Skills
As soon as you are all breathing a little more calmly again, you can expand your focus to Life Skills (Home Ec.) by working together on meals, dishes, and laundry, teaching the skills to your children as needed, but also using those opportunities for bonding through casual conversation and Q&A related to the children’s concerns over current events. (Use age-appropriate answers and try to focus on positive elements.)

Nourish your bodies with good food, hydration, fresh air, sunshine, mild exercise (walking outdoors, if possible), and good sleep. With everyone being at home for a while, each person needs to do his part to help out, so that the chores don’t all fall to one person. Keeping up with basic home-chores can help every family member feel better about how nice their environment looks: doing the dishes, making the beds, and generally tidying up.

Schoolwork
Ultimately, parents want their children to 1) be safe, 2) maintain the skills they already have, and 3) improve those skills, if possible. This year’s learning situation will not be identical to previous years, but nothing will be, for anyone. This will definitely be different from “normal” schooling—you may be using different materials, a different manner of instruction, a different location for learning, and a different schedule.

Your school-at-home days will very likely not be what you’re used to. Some days will be smoother than others, and some days may take longer than others. Remind yourselves as often as necessary that this is a temporary situation and that you can handle it.

Nourish your minds by reading a book you’ve loved before—it will feel like a comfortable visit with old friends. Your situation may have changed, but the characters in the book haven’t—there will be no unexpected plot twists, but you might find a fresh application to your own life. It’s a small sample of “normal” that can make all the “different” feel easier to take. Encourage your children to play board games and card games as valuable practice in the basic skills of reading, math, and logic. You may even want to join in the fun!

This totally different, anti-normal situation will be okay. You are doing the best you can, the best you know how to do, and that is what really matters. So what if you can’t write as eloquently as Longfellow? No one is expecting you to do that. So what if you can’t do advanced math as well as Einstein? No one is expecting you to do that. So what if you have never traveled the globe or made an important scientific discovery? Neither had any teacher I ever had—and no one is expecting you to do that either.

The mission before you is to help your child learn. That can mean showing him how to draw letters and numbers in such a way that his Z’s won’t be mistaken for 2’s. That can mean showing him how to use graph-paper for math lessons, so his numbers stay lined up where they belong, instead of wandering all over the page in rivers of chaos. That can mean replying, “I don’t know, but let’s see if we can find out,” when his questions stump you, but were important enough to spur his curiosity in the first place.

Don’t stress yourselves by pushing too much, too far, too hard, too soon. Do what you can, when you can, because every little bit counts. Don’t underestimate the learning situations in daily life; see yourselves as learning from everything that happens. Learning is a normal activity, regardless of where or how it occurs.

Arthur Ashe said, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” Even if everything about this school year seems to be different, strange, and unnatural, a pencil is still a pencil, and learning is still the acquiring of information or skills that we didn’t have before. Yes, this year will be very different from what you are used to doing, but different isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, different can be very good, and since everyone is doing something different from everyone else this year, who’s to say that your version of different isn’t the best version? You can make it the best for your family.

Other titles in this series:

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Emergency Homeschooling, Encouragement for Parents, Family Unity, Homeschool How-To's, Leaving Public School

Top 20 Snappy Comebacks for the Socialization Question

October 8, 2013 by 9 Comments

NOTE: Extreme sarcasm is present in these comments that have been gleaned from other homeschoolers, actually used ourselves, and/or are being held in reserve, awaiting the right moment. Our sincere thanks and admiration goes out to those intrepid souls whose remarks we have shamelessly borrowed.

So what do you do for socialization???

20. “Nothing. We just sit on the couch all day, staring at the wall.”

19. “I don’t believe in socialization.”

18. “With our large family, I usually say, ‘If you come down to breakfast in this house, you’re socializing!’”

17. “I’ve seen the village, and I don’t want it socializing my children!”

16. “Socialization? That is why I homeschool.”

15. “Socialization is the easy part. I just corner the kids in the bathroom every few days and steal their lunch money.”

14. “Oh, right, because (obviously) spending years with no one but her own family really hurt Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

13. “New studies show that, contrary to popular mythology… the average home-schooled child has no problem ‘socializing’ with other children… as long as he remembers to use smaller words and shorter sentences.” (From the Mallard Fillmore comic strip, 6/14/2005)

12. “The last thing I need is what you call socialization.”

11. “What you consider to be socialization is what Karl Marx endorsed as Communism.”

10. “We want our kids civilized, not socialized.”

9. “I’m not relying on the state to socialize my kids.”

8. “I prefer to have my kids learn to deal mostly with adults. The bullying you learn in middle school is only beneficial for bullying other middle schoolers.”

7. “What swear word do you think my kids don’t already know?”

6. “Are you worried about the quality of the education my children will get at home? Perhaps you should be more concerned about the type of education your children are getting in public school.”

5. “Well, I guess I can teach my kids how to swear, and my wife can make them wait in line for the bathroom.”

4. “You don’t go to school—how do you socialize?”

3. “You mean because we live in a cave, never go to a store, a restaurant, or a doctor’s office, never go to church, never visit friends or family, and basically avoid all contact with other human beings? How is it then that I’m talking to you?”

2. “Do you mean good socialization or bad socialization? Because it works both ways.”

1. “Do you mean, ‘Do I think my children are missing out on something by not being in public school?’ Yes, they are definitely missing out on some very important things. They are missing the explicit, X-rated vocabulary from the playground, bathrooms, school bus, and every other unsupervised moment; the sexual harassment in the lunchroom on hotdog day; and the physical, mental, and emotional abuse from the little extortionist in the next desk who used to beat my child for the correct answers whenever the teacher’s back was turned. My children do miss out on those things by not being in public school, and that is exactly why we are homeschooling!”

These responses can all be summed up by a conversation my son had with his driver’s education teacher, a high school track coach who had worked with both public-schooled and homeschooled students. The coach was concerned that homeschooled students were ahead in some areas and behind in others. Curious, my homeschooled son asked in which areas the homeschoolers were behind. “Socialization,” came the confident reply. Pressing still further, my son prompted the coach to explain exactly what the homeschoolers lacked. “My other students have been here for a long time, and they all know each other. When a homeschool student comes in for the first time, they don’t know anyone here.” My son’s emphatic response was, “When have you ever gone somewhere for the very first time and known anyone there? And how is that a lack of socialization?” He’s going to be a great homeschool Dad some day.

For more insight on the issue of Socialization, see these articles:
Socialization and Why You Don’t Need It (a.k.a. The Socialization Myth, Part 1)
The Socialization Myth, Part 2
The Myth of Age-Mates
The Socialization Code
Bullying

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Family Unity, Homeschool v. Public School, Homeschooling as a Lifestyle, Leaving Public School, Socialization, Top 10 (and other) Lists

Top 10 Questions on Leaving Public School

May 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

These questions appear over and over in emails from parents who are considering homeschooling, regardless of the reasons. Here are the most frequent questions and our honest answers, in no specific order.

1.  How soon can I pull my child(ren) out? Now—if that’s what your gut is telling you to do. Tell the office you have a “family emergency” and take your child(ren) home. Then check Home School Legal Defense Association’s website (hslda.org) for your state’s legal requirements and get that in order. If you prefer to wait a few days, weeks, or months before removing your student(s), that’s your decision—but please understand that you can remove them immediately. After all, if you have a reason that prompts you to consider homeschooling as an option, then you do have enough reason to remove them immediately, and they will benefit more from being at home than they would benefit from a few more days to finish out a week, a month, or a semester.

2.  What curricula do I need? Start with nothing.
a) Begin by bonding with your child through shopping, movie-day, hanging out at the library, baking cookies, anything.
b) Explore an interest of your child’s through doing online research together, building a model, whatever. Follow every interesting bunny trail that comes along, because those paths are filled with great learning opportunities! (Someone decides which topics go into every textbook and how much each topic should cover—who says that your child’s bunny-trail interests are any less important or any less interconnected than the topics in a textbook? Bonus: your student will learn more and retain more from his bunny trails than from a textbook.)
c) Start slowly by using Google, Pinterest, or the library for one or two subjects and build your class load from there.
d) Allow each of these steps to progress as slowly or as quickly as needed. Your instincts will tell you when your student is ready to move on.

3.  Can I remove just one of my children from public school? You could, but what’s the point?
a) Teaching more than one child is actually less work than shuttling several students back and forth all day to various activities in multiple locations.
b) Sibling bonding is just as valuable as parent-child bonding (see #2a-b above).
c) Do your other children deserve the same learning opportunities and freedoms as the one you want to bring home?

4.  How do I teach several children at the same time? Any who can already read—can read.
a) Let older kids start the day with their favorite subjects that require the least help from you, allowing you to get a younger one started.
b) Kids don’t all have to be doing schoolwork at the same time. One can play with the toddler while another does math, then switch. For a time, my daughter got up early and did all her schoolwork from 6-10 in the morning, then worked on other projects throughout the day.
c) Let them assist each other when necessary, because Mom is not the only one capable of answering questions.
d) Problem-solving skills are developed through solving problems! I told my kids that if they got stuck they should try to figure it out themselves first, then ask their sibling for help or come find me at whatever chore I was doing. They were always proud to tell me what they had figured out on their own, and I was happy to praise them for it! Other options include phoning Grandma or asking Google—there are many ways to solve a problem.

5. How do I get the house cleaned and the laundry done?
a) Whose standards are you following? Sparkling clean houses with nothing out of place are owned by families who are never home.
b) Home Economics is a class we teach here. We used breaks between subjects as a way to get the wiggles out and get a few chores done. My kids were happy to carry their clean laundry upstairs and put it away because it meant a break from schoolwork. Unloading the dishwasher meant they could listen to the kitchen radio for the duration of that task. Taking out the trash could be followed by a few minutes on a swing. Breaks can be shortened or extended to fit the chore desired. Chores teach kids skills, responsibility, and independence—plus they break up the rest of the day while bringing real-world benefits.

6. Is it too soon/too late to pull my kids out? No.
a) Homeschooling has many more benefits than could possibly be gained from leaving them in longer. We began homeschooling when the school couldn’t cope with our child’s medical condition, but once she was home we found some serious academic deficiencies and other problems that we hadn’t realized existed. Don’t assume everything is fine at school, just because your child hasn’t complained.
b) A student at home can learn much more than a student in school, being free to move on at will instead of waiting for the entire class. A child who is motivated to learn can make incredible progress at home, making up for lost time and surging ahead in his chosen field of interest.

7. I’m thinking of homeschooling because [fill in the reason of your choice]. Is that a good enough reason? Yes, but you’ll also come up with several more good reasons as soon as you get started (see #6a above). My list of reasons for wanting to homeschool grew longer with every year that we homeschooled.

8. Can I teach my ADD/ADHD/ODD/ETC student without special training? Professional credentials don’t outweigh parental instincts. Moms and dads know their child and their child’s needs better than any professional ever will. A more accurate acronym-label for your child may actually be MIISE (More Interested In Something Else). Treat* your child for MIISE until that proves ineffective. Another syndrome common in the institutional classroom is TETL (Too Eager To Learn)—a phenomenon that classroom teachers find surprisingly difficult to manage while keeping to a schedule. Help your child follow his interests and coach him in learning to research the various aspects. Don’t be afraid to follow bunny trails and let topics run together in rapid succession. Genius flows easily across multiple ideas, and it’s the simpler mind that must limit itself to only one thought at a time. Forty-five minutes to an hour of following bunny trails will produce more significant learning than an entire day of planned lessons.

9. But what about friends? If they are a true friend, you won’t lose them. Homeschooling can be a great opportunity to ditch the troublesome relationships that needed to disappear anyway. In general, friends and acquaintances come from a variety of aspects in life: siblings, neighbors, cousins, church, clubs, sports, music lessons, friends of friends, etc. Today’s social media phenomenon provides an avenue for maintaining close contact with friends regardless of distance or schedules.

10. We can’t do sports, music, or other extra-curricular activities at home. Are those just out of the picture for homeschooling? No. There are numerous possibilities for private lessons and group participation that don’t involve public school:

  • You Tube, Netflix, Google, online instruction and/or tutorials
  • Homeschool curriculum for the desired skill
  • Private tutor or coach, who could range from an advanced student to a professional teacher for the desired skill
  • Homeschool co-op group offering team sports, band, etc.
  • Church-based or community-sponsored sports & recreational activities
  • Dual-enrollment with public or private school for specific activities

HSLDA has discouraged families from trying to “keep one foot in both worlds” through dual-enrolling for specific classes or activities. And I agree. When we left the government school system, we were ready to break all ties and not look back. Then a community-wide sports activity became available that was run through the schools but didn’t require dual-enrollment, and my kids were interested in participating. I inquired about whether this was strictly a school-sponsored group (no, it was funded by participants) and if homeschooled members of the community could be involved (they supposed so), and we went to their first session of the year and signed up. It seemed to be going well for the first few practices and even through the first public performance, but things quickly went downhill after that. We weren’t notified of subsequent exhibitions, and the group’s leader made it increasingly difficult for my kids to participate, to the point where we eventually felt it was in our best interests to withdraw from that group and focus our efforts in more homeschool-friendly areas.

Throughout our homeschooling career, we knew other homeschooling families whose students participated with private schools, public schools, community groups, church groups, or homeschool co-op groups for a variety of extra-curricular experiences. The opportunities can be found or created to suit the needs, but the bigger questions is why is it necessary? Discuss this as a family to determine your motivation, whether for music, sports, drama, foreign languages, artistic endeavors, or whatever. Are your students just looking for a place to hang out with friends, or are they genuinely interested in learning the skill? Are Mom and Dad trying to live their own lives over again through their children, or is this something the student truly desires for himself?

Yes, Harvard has been known to award scholarships to distinguished harpists, but is winning a 1-year scholarship to an Ivy League college the only reason for dedicating a minimum of ten years of one’s childhood to an instrument (especially if the child lacks the passion to maintain this as a life-long activity)? The price of the instrument(s), the cost of years of weekly lessons, and the time investment for enough daily practice to become such an accomplished player as to merit a prestigious scholarship could all have been applied toward another area that the student enjoyed and appreciated more than being able to say “But it got me into Harvard.” Were all those years of music lessons merely the foot-in-the-door for a college education leading to a non-music-related career goal? Was the motivation just to give Mom and Dad the bragging rights of “Our kid’s going to Harvard”? Could the time, energy, and resources have been better directed toward the student’s desired career path? Could the same amount of money have been invested in such a way as to return an amount equal to or greater than the scholarship itself?

The freedom and flexibility provided by homeschooling can be used to the student’s advantage in numerous, subtle ways, resulting in a focused interest, rather than a schedule filled with diverse activities that yield more social involvement than academic advancement. I would rather see a student pursue his interests as vocational preparation than devote his time to activities that merely serve to fill his calendar with a variety of time-consuming distractions.

For more info, check out these links:

Leaving Public School
*How to Adapt Lessons to Fit Your Student’s Interests and Make Learning Come Alive
Teach Your Students to Teach Themselves
Knowing How to Find the Answer Is the Same as Knowing the Answer
People LIVE in This House
Using Your Household Staff
Family Is Spelled T-E-A-M

Consider this one as the answer for the unofficial Question #11:
Homeschooling an Only Child

Filed Under: Curriculum Choices, Deciding to Homeschool, Encouragement for Parents, Home Chores, Leaving Public School, Socialization, Top 10 (and other) Lists

Top 10 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Began Homeschooling

November 4, 2011 by 7 Comments

Whether you are beginning homeschooling after removing your children from an institutional school or are starting by simply not sending your little ones to preschool or Kindergarten, I can offer you some valuable been-there-done-that advice. File this under “If we’d only known…”

10.       The “classroom model” is counter-productive to learning.
Seating students in tidy rows of individual desks is only beneficial if the teacher needs to maintain control over a crowd of students by herself. Ditto for periodic testing. Double ditto for asking permission to speak or to use the bathroom. Let them do science in the backyard; let them draw while lying on the floor; let them read in the treehouse; let them compare prices and quantities as math while grocery shopping. Demanding attention, waiting for silence in the room, waiting for all eyes forward, waiting in line—all are dehumanizing tactics meant for crowd control or to break the spirit of the individuals. These methods are used with new recruits in the military—and in prison. Exploration is the birthplace of genius, but when was the last time anyone turned loose a classroom full of students to randomly discover their hidden genius?

9.         Schedules are made for faculties, not families.
Who in their right mind would put constraints on learning? What parent would tell their child “No, I’m sorry, Sweetie, but I can’t let you learn any more today”? Schools insist that learning must take place between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on Monday through Friday, September through May—and then they are disappointed that the students’ skills diminish over summer break. Homeschooling parents can sneak in “stealth” lessons on trees or flowers or bugs during a family picnic. Homeschoolers can browse an antique store during a weekend outing and turn it into an impromptu history lesson. Homeschooling students can help Dad change the oil or re-grout the bathtub or trim an elderly neighbor’s bushes… and get credit for learning valuable lessons at the same time. Learning opportunities abound every moment and every day. Never stop learning, and never stop looking for the “teachable moments.”

8.         Reading and lecturing alone are insufficient teaching methods.
Textbook directions and diagrams only went so far in helping my kids learn. I soon found myself drawing different diagrams (if only bigger or more colorful), explaining concepts in multiple ways, or using borrowed game pieces as manipulatives to illustrate concepts. We did lessons outdoors; we did lessons on the floor; we used board games as lessons; we used videos as lessons. We acted things out; we made up rhymes; we used sign language to help us remember things. We added bright colors; we built models; we made flashcards; we invented games to help in practicing new skills. I had my kids teach difficult concepts back to me to be sure they understood them correctly. We used every possible method we could think of for illustrating and demonstrating lessons—and it worked. It worked very well.

7.         Every homeschool is different. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.
Each family will need to use the methods and materials that fit their own children’s needs. It’s supposed to work that way; it has to work that way; that is why we are homeschooling in the first place. It is beneficial to share with others what has or has not worked and why, but each family needs to run that input through their own filter. Trying to mimic what others have done is a trap destined for failure. Borrow their idea, if you really like it, but adapt it to your own family’s tastes. If it works well, continue to adapt it and keep changing it as your needs change. If it doesn’t work well, either make enough changes that it will work or toss it back and try something else. You have your own preferences, you have your own values—build your homeschool around those, and ignore the Homeschooling Joneses. Two (or more) families can use identical materials, but still use enough variations in supplemental activities that their lessons will look nothing alike.

6.         Students need academic success to build their self-confidence.
I didn’t realize that my (former public school) kids would need to see that they were capable of learning on their own… without the collective input of two dozen other kids backing them up. They needed to learn that they could move on to the next concept as soon as they had mastered this one. They also needed to learn that I would not push them to move on until they had mastered each concept, whereas classrooms move on with as little as one correct answer and, at most, one-third of the room understanding. Most of our first year of homeschooling was spent in learning how to learn and learning that they could learn. Once they had acquired confidence in their own abilities, things progressed much more quickly and much more smoothly.

5.         The price of the materials has nothing to do with the amount of knowledge your students will gain.
We found used materials at book swaps and garage sales. We used hand-me-down materials from relatives and found great learning games and toys at thrift stores and flea markets. We made our own cheap versions of fancy educational gadgets from cereal boxes and tape and glue. I even made up my own lessons when I couldn’t find suitable materials to purchase. Purchases of popular, highly recommended, expensive materials often turned out not to be a good fit for us. We often learned more from the inexpensive items than we did from the pricey ones. Shiny boxes and high price tags do not automatically equal success.

4.         Fit the materials to your students’ preferences and expectations.
My daughter’s former school did not have enough books, and they treated workbooks like textbooks, requiring every student to copy lessons into personal notebooks. One thing my daughter reallyreallyreally wanted from homeschooling was to have her very own personal workbooks that she could write in and decorate with gold star stickers. Done: I ordered a workbook. One thing my daughter reallyreallyreally didn’t ever want to see again was a red pencil mark on her papers. Done: I used bright orange and lime green and sky blue colored pencils to correct her work. Problems solved. Focus on the learning.

Find out what your kids expect homeschooling to be like. Find out what they do want and what they don’t want. Ditto for yourself and your spouse. Homeschooling should not be about one parent’s dream to play school with desks in a row and maps on the walls (although desks and maps are wonderful learning tools, they should not be the primary focus); homeschooling should be a learning adventure for the whole family. It’s okay to keep some parts of the school model, if what your family really wants and needs is that consistency. It’s okay to scrap all preconceived ideas and start over from scratch, if what your family really wants and needs is an Opposite Day educational experience. It’s also okay to use this method for this student and that method for that student, if that is what they really want and need.

3.         Finding gaps in foundational skills is proof of academic success. (just fix ’em before moving on)
I was under the mistaken assumption that I could just begin teaching where the school had left off. I was also naive enough to think that the public school teachers had made sure my kids had understood everything… correctly. I was wrong on both counts. We had been homeschooling for only a few weeks when we hit our first educational pothole. The math book expected my child to work with fractions, and my child was horribly confused about fractions and what to do with them. I ordered some workbooks that focused solely on fraction math and put the regular math lessons on hold until my child was confident in handling fraction problems. These workbooks made fractions very simple to understand, but my child became incredibly angry and frustrated—but not at learning fractions—she understood those concepts very quickly, once they were explained adequately. Her anger and frustration came from seeing how simple fractions were to understand and remembering how difficult and complicated her teachers had told her fractions were.

We found materials to fill in each gap of missing knowledge, and then we moved on. Regular lessons in any given subject were suspended until that particular pothole was filled (the time varied from minutes to days to weeks), but once we could resume the lessons, the progress always came faster. We found numerous potholes during that first year, but by the end of that year, my children were learning with confidence and gaining ground rapidly. Every pothole proved to us that we were learning—if we hadn’t been making progress, we would never have discovered the potholes.

2.         Play is learning, and learning should be fun.
Children work diligently at playing, whether they are building sand castles, playing dress-up, or roller-blading on the driveway. Kids wear themselves out having fun, and they learn important lessons from their playtime. They learn that moist sand packs best; they learn that long skirts and high heels don’t combine well with stairs; they learn that balance is very important in skating as well as in life.

Do you remember being eager to get your driver’s license? Do you ever hate waiting for a new movie to come out after you’ve seen the trailer for it? Have you ever called a friend to tell them all about your latest accomplishment? That is the excitement of learning!

What you do in your leisure time is your version of fun, whether that means reading a book or watching TV or painting your toenails or fishing for The Big One. If it wasn’t fun, you would do something else with your leisure time. Now look at what your children do during their leisure time—and find a way to incorporate those methods into their lessons for some really motivated learners.

1.         Mom = Teacher = Mom (or Dad)
The first time Mom answers her student’s question, a miraculous transformation takes place: the student realizes that Mom knows stuff. Each answered question builds that reputation, and answering “I don’t know, but let’s try to find out together” increases the thirst for knowledge.

Parents have a unique advantage over traditional classroom teachers, in that parents can admit they don’t know all the answers. Homeschooling parents can use a bunny-trail question as the next teachable moment without disrupting an entire room full of students or getting hopelessly off a pre-set schedule.

Parents have a dynamic relationship with their children that allows snuggling during particularly difficult lessons. Learning to read is a magical milestone that should be celebrated with hugs and kisses and shouting and dancing, not relegated to the far corner of the room and conducted in hushed voices. Parents know instinctively when their child can be encouraged to try one more time and when that same child will benefit most from taking a break. Parents see their children day and night, weekday and weekend, season after season, year after year, on good days and bad days, in sickness and in health. Parents know what their children want and what their children need—and they will move heaven and earth to provide for them

Teachers are motivated by a paycheck and a sense of duty; parents are motivated by love. When a random child acts out in a classroom, the teacher seeks to make the disruption stop, even to the point of removing that child; when a parent’s own child acts out at home, the parent seeks to determine the cause of the problem and remove the problem, not remove the child. No one can know any given child to a greater degree than that child’s parent, no one will love a child more than that child’s parent, and no one can be a better teacher for a child than that child’s parent.

 

As homeschoolers, the most important thing to focus on is learning. If something is getting in the way of the learning, it becomes a stumbling block and is probably not all that important. Do things in a different order, try another method, or set that material aside for a time and see what happens. Homeschooling should be about learning, not about following in someone else’s precisely spaced footsteps. We made the most significant progress when we focused on what we were learning and stopped worrying about how we were learning it. Focus on the learning, and watch it happen!

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Encouragement for Parents, Encouraging Your Student, Homeschool How-To's, Homeschool v. Public School, Leaving Public School, Parenting, Roadblocks to Learning, Top 10 (and other) Lists
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