The Socialization Code

February 1, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Over the years, I have fielded many questions on socialization from people who do not understand the choice to homeschool. The Questioners have ranged from total strangers to close friends to family members, but their questions have all fallen into a few distinct, but implied, meanings. Each time, the basic question of “What about socialization?” — no matter how it had been worded — seemed to have an underlying, coded meaning.

Coded Meaning #1 — “How will your child learn to deal with bullies?” A homeschooled child learns to see bullying for exactly what it is: unacceptable behavior. Homeschooled students do not grow up in the constant shadow of bullies, and do not become accustomed to kowtowing to them. Homeschoolers who have never been forced to surrender their lunch money or their seat on the school bus or their place in line recognize that no one else has a right to take these things away from them. When confronted with one, they instinctively stand up to the bully, call his bluff, and end the cycle right there. My homeschool students had grown up talking comfortably with adults, so they were also not shy about speaking to the adults in authority to report bullying and other unacceptable behaviors.

How to reply to this question:
“If you are asking if I am trying to isolate my child from bullies, I am actually teaching him how to stand up to them, instead of just sacrificing him to them. Believe it or not, being bullied is not an essential part of life. As for a model for dealing with it, the patriots in the Revolutionary War stood up to some serious bullying, but then, they were homeschooled, too. ” (And don’t back down from the bully who is asking this question.)

Coded Meaning #2 — “How will your child learn to operate under proper social order?” This Questioner is probably also a bully, and his question “What about Socialization?” is really asking if your child will “learn to stay in his place” in the social order of this bully’s worldview. However, homeschooled students will learn that they each have unique, individual talents and abilities, and therefore they also learn to accept other people for their varied abilities and contributions to life. Public schools tend to categorize everyone by an impenetrable “caste system” of Jocks, Nerds, Geeks, Rich Kids, Cool Kids, Slow Learners, etc. Public school graduates continue to categorize people into these groups for the rest of their lives. Once a Jock, always a Jock; once a Geek, always a Geek– just ask Bill Gates.

How to reply to this question:
“Our everyday experiences of schoolwork, shopping, and church functions put us in contact with a wide variety of people. Through those experiences, I am teaching my students that I value them for their individual achievements, and they are learning to value others for their individual achievements. The important thing to recognize in life is that everyone excels at something. ”

Coded Meaning #3 — “Will your child be able to go to Prom?” Yet another coded question, which can have two more possible, coded meanings: A) “Won’t your children be heartbroken at missing the biggest social event of their lives?” or B) “Are you telling me that it is possible to avoid the inevitable sacrifice of my children to drunkenness, promiscuity, and excessive spending without turning them into social outcasts and misfits?”

For “Meaning A,” a young homeschooling mom asked my daughter if she had regretted not having a Prom, and my daughter explained how her group of homeschooling friends had organized a nice dinner at the home of one of the families. The group invited all of the high school students, and they wore modest, dressy (but not formal) attire. Boutonnieres and wrist corsages were provided by the parents, the house was appropriately decorated for the festivities, and the three-course meal was prepared and served to the teens by several of the mothers. After the banquet-style meal was over, the teens retired to the family room for ping-pong and table games. Regarding the specific event of a “Prom,” my daughter replied that she would have loved to have had the fancy dress, but did not mind skipping the heartache that is usually attached to frivolous relationships. (This questioning mom sighed and asked if my daughter was available for adoption.)

As for Prom being the “biggest social event” of one’s life, I disagree. While it may be construed as The Most Important Event during high school, that ranking is bestowed by shallow, selfish, immature people who have little idea what Life actually entails. The brief period that was my high school social life has ranked fairly low in importance when compared with the rest of my life.

For “Meaning B,” there are parents who view Prom as a rite of passage, no matter how decadent it has become, and encourage their teens to take part. Many teens also believe that they are entitled to participate in the ritual, often demanding that it include limousines, hotel rooms, and alcoholic beverages, despite the legal-age barrier. (If you still think of Prom as an innocent part of the high school experience, ask the local obstetrics unit how busy they become nine months after each Prom.) Many of the parents who do recognize the debauchery frequently associated with today’s Proms are ultimately afraid of a negative reaction from their teenage children, fearing rebellion and rejection by their children if they, as parents, refuse to allow their teens to attend. However, this Questioner probably spent less for her first car than prom dates can cost today, so she may really be interested in finding an escape from the frivolous financial excess.

How to reply to this question:
This Questioner (most often female) may have no clue to the actual non-importance of Prom in the scope of Real Life. If you attempt to tell her that Prom is no big deal, she will only hear that you are dooming your child to life as a hermit. Therefore, if your students are much too young to be concerned about Prom yet, tell the Questioner that you “will deal with that when the time comes.” If that still does not pacify the Questioner, try telling her that your students “could always be invited to Prom by public school friends.” (Receiving an invitation doesn’t mean they have to go.) Assure this Questioner that there are many wonderful, acceptable alternatives to Prom being hosted by homeschool groups today that provide wholesome, safe activities for the students who choose to participate.

Coded Meaning #4 — “Will your child get to experience ‘all the fun I had’ in high school?” This question is usually from a grandmother or older friend or relative who has no idea what public high schools have become. This Questioner remembers one important dance for all of high school: one sweetly romantic event for which she made herself a special dress and carried a nosegay of flowers from her date’s mother’s garden — an evening which climaxed in a few moments of good-night hand-holding on her front porch swing at 10pm (while her father supervised from behind the window curtains). Most kids did not own cars in high school or in college either, when the Questioner was busy having all that fun. No one could spend hour after hour watching cable television stations devoted solely to the pornography of vulgar music videos, and a Saturday night “date” meant seeing a (G-rated) movie with a group of friends, walking en masse to the ice cream parlor for a sundae, then scattering back home before 10:00 pm so they could all get up for church the next morning.

How to reply to this question:
When this Questioner asks you about socialization, she merely wants to know that your child will not be locked away and forced to do endless lessons without ever glimpsing the light of day. Assure the Questioner that your homeschool “will include plenty of interaction with other students” — that is all she really wants to know.

There are many other superfluous questions that frequently accompany the “What about socialization?” question. We have been asked questions like these in rapid-fire succession without giving us time to form an answer, but then again, many of them did not deserve answers. “How will your children learn to stand in line?” “How will your children learn to raise their hands to ask a question?” “Are you Amish?” “Isn’t it child abuse to keep your children away from other people?” “Will your children even talk? How will they learn to talk with other people when they grow up?” And my all-time, personal favorite: “How will your daughter ever find anyone to date?”

If and when you are faced with questions regarding the socialization of your homeschooled students, take a few seconds to evaluate the person who is asking the question. You may even want to ask him to clarify it and explain exactly what he is concerned about. If the person is truly worried about the well-being of your students, assure them that you are taking all the necessary precautions to provide your students with a well-rounded education, including social interaction with acceptable peers. If, however, the Questioner seems to be rudely accusing that all homeschoolers should be held in suspicion, try answering his question with one of your own: “I notice you don’t go to school either. What do you do for socialization?”

[For more on this topic, see the articles linked below.]
Socialization and Why You Don’t Need It (The Socialization Myth, Part 1)
The Socialization Myth, Part 2
The Myth of Age-Mates

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Homeschool v. Public School, Socialization

Homeschooling Is a Choice

January 23, 2006 by Leave a Comment

Our lives are filled with choices:
— glasses or contacts
— milk chocolate or dark chocolate
— cash or credit
— white or wheat
— automatic or manual
— butter or margarine
— straight leg or boot cut
— soup or salad
— analog or digital
— chocolate or vanilla
— mittens or gloves
— rare, medium, or well done
— public school, private school, or homeschool

When we first began questioning acquaintances about their choice to homeschool, they all were very reluctant to divulge anything. We persisted with a few and finally succeeded in getting some friends to open up and share their perspectives. We were not assuming that our situation would be identical to theirs — in fact, quite the opposite was true: we knew our exact situation was uniquely ours, but we wanted some information for comparison. However, the homeschooling families we spoke with seemed fearful of influencing our decision by explaining the reasons behind their choices. No matter if the question was whether to leave public school or how to select a phonics program, whenever we asked, “Why did you choose this?” they seemed to hear, “What do you think we should do?”

If I ask if your opinion of a certain movie, I will also ask you for your reasons: was it funny, was it violent, was it vulgar, was it cliched, did it “work”? I prefer romantic comedies; if you prefer historical dramas, personal recommendations may be of little value. If you ask me about a specific type of homeschooling material, I will give you my reasons for liking or not liking it. Materials can have excellent qualities, but not meet my students’ needs, or materials can be less than ideal, but still be good enough to suit a short-term purpose or a limited budget. Knowing information about the material itself will be much more helpful to you than simply knowing whether or not I liked it. In selecting homeschooling materials, your family’s needs should be more influential than another’s personal opinion.

Choices are also subject to change, depending on present situations. Once upon a time, I could not drive a manual transmission automobile, evidenced by my brother’s frustration as he tried to teach me. His job would have been easier if I had known how to drive anything at that time, but years later, a friend taught me to drive a stick shift, almost as quickly as my brother had given up. I had changed, and my motivation had changed. When I had a good reason for wanting to drive a manual transmission car (my husband and I had just purchased one as our only vehicle), I was suddenly very motivated to conquer this gap in my education. Once upon another time, I had no personal interest in homeschooling, but my opinion changed as quickly as my children’s needs changed. Our original choice for public school was replaced by a choice to homeschool as the standardized education proved inadequate for my children’s individual needs.

During our first years of homeschooling, I was anxious to “fit in” with other homeschoolers and do things “right.” I wanted to see and hear how other families did things, if for no other purpose than to glean ideas that we could apply. As time went by, I began to free myself from the more manipulative members of our homeschooling community, those who tended to insist that every family should be studying the exact same topics that they were studying and to the same extremes. We participated in once-a-month activity days, but we did not extend our participation much beyond that. Occasionally, an activity that did not appeal to us would conveniently conflict with our schedule, freeing us to stay home, Guilt-Free. Later on, when I had fully developed my own style of homeschooling, I knew I was free to reject the other methods of homeschooling that were pushed at me.

We are an eclectic family. We are spontaneous, rather than scheduled. We have antique furnishings sitting right beside contemporary pieces. We enjoy what we enjoy, because we enjoy it. Other families thrive on structure, live by their tightly scheduled calendars, and absolutely adore having someone else select everything they need for homeschooling and deliver it all in one package. Still others like to spend months on one topic, delving into all possible aspects, before moving on to the next thing. The differences between us are rooted in our families’ preferences and reflected in the choices we make.

My choice is my choice. Your choice is your choice. The choices others make may have little bearing on what choice I ultimately make. I will probably check into several options before making my final selection, and what I do pick will be the best for my family as a unit and as individuals. If I make a choice too quickly, I may regret it and need to try again, or I may be satisfied with my first choice and find no need to change.

I chose to educate my children at home, parting company with the public school system. Some of my friends also chose to homeschool, many more chose public school, and a few chose private school. Of my homeschooling friends, some leaned toward a classical education, some opted for unit studies, and others chose the school-in-a-box, prepackaged curricula. I took a little of this and a little of that for an eclectic approach. Neither a more structured plan nor a total avoidance of textbooks is better or worse than the mixture that I used; it is simply different.

Pressures to conform to others’ choices come from all sorts of outside sources, and maintaining your focus takes diligence. Even now, I am often invited to branch out from this writing to become involved in other facets of writing for homeschooling. When that happens, I remind myself of my purpose and my goals, making it easier for me to discern distractions from opportunities. If you choose to teach your children at home, know why you chose that, and remind yourself of your own purposes and goals as often as necessary to maintain your focus. Do not consider the mere presence of an option to mean that you must accept that offer. Choosing means saying either yes or no.

When acquaintances ask about homeschooling, there is no harm in sharing your choices and the reasons behind them on an informational basis. Encourage those who are going through the choice process to choose what seems best for their situation, because circumstances can change, and our choices may someday be changed also. Remember that the final choice is theirs, and what they choose may be different from your choice or my choice, but it may still be the right choice for them.

Our lives are filled with choices:
— glasses or contacts
— white or wheat
— analog or digital
— chocolate or vanilla
— public school, private school, or homeschool
— textbooks, unit studies, or video lessons
— book reports or narration
— repetition or exploration

What are your choices?

Filed Under: Curriculum Choices, Deciding to Homeschool, Encouragement for Parents, Leaving Public School

Surviving the First Year of Homeschooling after Leaving Public School

January 10, 2006 by 3 Comments

I understand your frustration. We began homeschooling after our older child had spent several years in public school (our younger child spent only Kindergarten in The System). We felt strongly that God was leading us to take responsibility for our children’s education, but we had a difficult time finding adequate support from other homeschoolers. Most of the other homeschooling families we knew at that time had been educating their own children from the beginning and had never experienced the trauma of feeling that public school had failed them. Parents often write to me, seeking encouragement and advice in surviving this transition from public school to homeschool. I know exactly what they mean. It is a completely foreign situation, somewhat like starting over from the beginning, but with students who cannot afford to lose any ground.

Children who undergo this change from public school to homeschool will experience abrupt (but not disastrous) changes in environment, teaching styles, and learning situations. These changes will usually affect behavioral changes in the child — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

The environmental changes may put the child on an emotional roller coaster. If he had difficulties at public school or did not enjoy that experience, he may be relieved to be away from that setting. At the same time, he may miss some of his acquaintances or the reliable routine of scheduled activities. Enjoying school, not enjoying school; missing the other students, not missing the other students; excitement, depression; up, down — most children do not have the maturity to effectively cope with the emotions they will experience through this process without help and hugs from their understanding parents.

If the student is eager to adapt to homeschooling, the teaching parent will not have much difficulty during the transition phase. However, some students are not in agreement with a parental decision to leave the public school and view the change as something to rebel against. In this case, their behavior may become uncooperative and stubborn and include what I call the “Limp Spine Syndrome,” that tendency for a child’s entire body to go completely limp whenever you urge him to pick up a pencil. The simplest assignments may drag on and on, and work that the child could easily have accomplished within a few minutes’ time may stretch out to last an entire day. If the child had formerly been an attentive student in the public classroom, he may just be dawdling at his work in an effort to substitute Mom’s companionship for the classmates he is missing, or he may be seeing this extended class time as a way to monopolize Mom’s time, keeping her from completing other household tasks, and thereby punishing her for taking him away from his former friends and associates. Students who are used to having homework assigned to be done later may not immediately grasp the concept of doing their work during class time. A casual discussion of expectations between teaching-parent and student may clear up many misunderstandings and motivate the child with the promise of free-time activities once the schoolwork has been completed.

Since this new arrangement is homeschooling, not school at home, it will undeniably be different from what the student had been used to. The style of teaching necessary for a roomful of children is not at all suitable for just a few students. At the same time, the learning skills used in the large group setting are not the same skills necessary for the more self-directed format of homeschooling. Another common cause of disinterested learners is lesson presentation in a manner that does not appeal to the child’s learning style: giving oral explanations to a student who learns best through building 3-D models, or assigning a student to read a chapter of history when he would rather participate in a reenactment.

Spend some one-on-one time with your child, endeavoring to learn what things he is interested in and how he would prefer to study them, and then tailor a few lessons specifically towards those areas. Topical Index: Learning Outside the Books contains ideas for lessons that will be more appealing than the average dry textbook. If your reluctant student is interested in guns and soldiers, rent a few factual war movies (look for older movies that do not require the modern cautions against adult scenes or foul language) and watch them together, followed with brief discussions of various scenes or characters. If he is car crazy, challenge him to research comparisons on new models or prototypes. Find his areas of personal interest and focus on those. It can make a tremendous difference in his level of motivation and create a valuable bond between the two of you at the same time. (Mom is letting me study this?) Remember, education was taking place long before the first textbook was ever written. [Also see Topical Index: Learning Styles.]

Teaching and learning are difficult enough with only a few subjects — there is no reason to complicate matters by tackling too many subjects at once. When neither your student nor you as teacher has had any experience at homeschooling, allow yourselves plenty of time to adapt to this new routine before worrying about covering all the bases. A student who cannot read well cannot fully grasp history. A student who has not mastered handwriting will find creative writing to be needlessly tedious. Get the basics covered well first, and then other academic subjects may be added in later. [Depending on the ages of your students, you may be able to adapt some ideas from Start with Reading, Handwriting, & Arithmetic, and Save the Rest for Later.]

A parent recently mentioned to me that her student had previously been given prescription medication to compensate for a learning disability while in public school, but he did not seem to have a need for the medication at home. The child also seemed to be struggling with that inconsistency — why was the medicine needed for learning at school, but it is not needed for learning at home? Let me bluntly say that I feel public schools have become much too liberal in assigning “disability” labels, and children are being over-medicated, sometimes needlessly medicated. I do not discount the possibility of children with legitimate problems in learning, but I also think medication should not be the first choice in conquering those problems.

If you are struggling with homeschooling, be encouraged — the first year is always the toughest. Remind yourself that you have chosen to homeschool your children for very important reasons. There is a definite adjustment period involved in switching from public school to homeschooling, and that period can last at least a year. If you are currently in the critical transition stage between public schools and homeschooling, I suggest you browse through my Indexes for a larger dose of encouragement. I will list a few past articles here for you to start with:
Questions from a First-time Homeschooler
Homeschooling Is Hard Work
Do the Best Job You Can, and Pray for God to Clean Up the Rest
What Didn’t Work for Today Can Be Changed for Tomorrow
Homeschooling an Only Child
Meatball Education: Filling in the Potholes of Public School
Spoken Destinies and Learned Behaviors
Are We Homeschooling or Schooling at Home?

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

Start with Reading, Handwriting, & Arithmetic, and Save the Rest for Later

January 4, 2006 by Leave a Comment

If you are just beginning your homeschool journey with a Kindergarten student, you may be wondering how much to teach him (or her; I use “him” generically). Many Moms who are eager to homeschool are busily planning lessons far in advance for elaborate historical reenactments or highly involved scientific experiments. I have often advocated that families just beginning to homeschool their wee ones should focus on just the “Three R’s” of reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic without worrying about supplemental subjects until the mid-elementary years. Incredulous teacher-moms let a gasp escape from their open mouths and ask me if I am serious. I am.

I am also assuming that you have not allowed the past five or so years to slip by in silent inactivity. I am assuming that you have read books to your child, colored pictures with your child, sung songs, made crafts, played with puzzles, gone shopping and baked cookies together, and had all manner of delightful experiences together. You have most likely already taught your child how to count to 10, print his name, tie his shoes, sing the ABC song, and identify the colors in a box of eight crayons. You taught these skills without even thinking about it being “formal education.”

Now that you are ready to tackle “school,” you may find yourself wondering if history should come in chronological or geographical order. I say wait on the history. Wait on the geography and the science, too. Wait until at least fourth grade before introducing these more complex subjects. Your child needs to have a foundation of learning skills to build his education upon. Those learning skills are what you need to teach first — now.

Reading
Teach the ABC’s, if your child does not already know them. Teach your child the sounds made by each letter, not merely the letter “names.” For example, the letter “H” makes a “hah” sound, which is not really apparent when you simply call it by its name. Once your student knows the basic sounds made by each letter, he can understand how to string those sounds together to form simple words. Phonics lessons (free, downloadable lessons are linked here) can help you start with a simple order and progress in a manner that is not confusing to your child. Small, short-vowel words are the typical starting point, since they have no silent letters or other complicated rules. After your child has begun to read simple, short-vowel words, he will be able to comprehend the complexities of silent letters, consonant blends, and diphthongs (the new sounds made by combining consonants, such as “th” and “sh”).

Do not over-simplify learning to read (from your child’s perspective, it is difficult), and do not become frustrated if your child does not catch on immediately. You have probably been reading for at least fifteen years, so you have likely forgotten what a stressful experience it can be if rushed. Take it slowly, allowing plenty of time for your student to grasp each step, and encourage him for each accomplishment. The confidence you instill at this stage will serve your child well as he tries to read each new word, page, chapter, and book. Readers are made, not born. A child who becomes discouraged while learning to read is not likely to become a bookworm. A few children are eager to learn to read at four years of age, but also a few children (most often boys) may have difficulty grasping the concepts until age seven, eight, or nine. If your child does not respond well, put the lessons aside and wait a couple of days, a couple of weeks, or a couple of months, then try again. When you teach at a pace which allows the student to fully understand each component before moving on, the student who is ready to learn will show quick results. (Remind yourself that one of the reasons why you chose to homeschool was this exact one of working at your student’s pace, not forcing your student to comply with a scheduled academic calendar.)

Once your child begins reading, continue to expand his reading ability through advanced phonics studies and vocabulary-building exercises. This is a good time to introduce the dictionary for any unfamiliar words he finds in his reading material. I preferred to teach this by example, looking up a word with my students at my side, showing them the entry, and briefly explaining it. After a few repeats of that, I switched to asking them to get the dictionary for me, and before long, they were flipping through its pages, racing to be the first to find the word. Handling the large dictionary was a privilege that instilled in my students a fondness and longing for the secrets of knowledge it held. I did not want them to view “look it up” as a punishment, so I made sure they saw me using the dictionary often for personal reference. (I also kept the dictionary on a bookshelf in the kitchen, since that was where we usually were when a question arose, and it helped to remove the stigma that can accompany large, imposing reference books.)

Encourage your young reader to explore a variety of subjects through reading and let trips to the library become adventures in exploration, but hold off on the formal lessons in other areas until he has a firm grasp on the basics of reading, handwriting, and arithmetic, usually around fourth grade. Allowing your student to read as much as he wants on a subject will only whet his appetite for more information, providing you with an eager student who is already learning how to teach himself.

Handwriting
Along with visual recognition of letters comes the child’s natural attempts to reproduce them, but do not expect shaky fingers to produce beautiful calligraphy with the first try. As with any other life-skill, practice is necessary to develop excellence. Once again, discouragement can be a confidence-killer, but the wise parent will praise every legitimate attempt to train those fine-motor muscles to accomplish this new task.

When my children were in public Kindergarten, it was a common practice of their educational establishment to have “mentors” visit from the older classrooms. Students from the third or fourth grades were paired with the youngest learners for the purpose of being scribes: the younger student dictated a story while the older student wrote it down. While that works well in theory, I felt it did not work well in practice; most adults cannot write (or even type) as quickly as someone can dictate. The activity was intended to link reading skills with handwriting skills, but often limited the imagination of the younger child’s mind to the note-taking ability of the older student and resulted in a story that the Kindergartner could not read for himself. I heard many youngsters proudly proclaim to their parents, “I wrote this story!” When the enthused parents asked, “What does it say?” the confused authors had to admit, “I don’t know,” because they could not read the words that had been written for them.

In my opinion, beginning students should have opportunities to practice handwriting that do not involve creating stories… yet. We allow children to learn to read each letter/sound before we teach them to string those letters/sounds together to be read as words. We teach them to put those words together into short, easy-to-read sentences before we assign entire books for reading. We provide them with many beginner books before we offer them their first chapter book to read. I think the same system should be applied to handwriting — copying many letters, and then words, and finally simple sentences to gain mastery of the physical skill of handwriting — before the brain-exercise of creative writing is added into the mix.

I remember taking one of my favorite storybooks as a child and copying word after word, sentence after sentence, page after page into my Big Chief tablet. It was not assigned homework; it was my own idea, in order to practice this new skill called handwriting. Thinking up an original story requires an entirely different set of skills than the ones needed to put that story onto paper. Attempting too many new skills at once can leave the student muddled in confusion.

Arithmetic
Children need to have a solid understanding of number concepts before adding and subtracting will make sense to them. Most adults can quickly recognize the amount of money represented by an assortment of coins, but few five-year-olds have achieved that ability. Your Kindergartner will benefit from much practice in counting and sorting, learning to associate digits with their values. Once the basic concepts of 1-10 are mastered, the average child is ready to understand eleven, twelve, and so on, and the foundation is laid for understanding our numbering system based on units of ten. Carrying, borrowing, and even decimals are merely extensions of the basic unit of ten. Addition and subtraction are easily mastered by the child who fully understands number values.

Continuing practice and expanding the skill levels in each of these areas will fill the majority of your homeschool day. Obviously, the child working on these skills does not need to spend hours and hours at them each day. Most public school kindergartens operate for 2 1/2 to 3 hours each day, and large portions of that time are spent in recess, bathroom breaks, learning to stand in line, being reprimanded for talking out of turn, and the other necessities of large-group crowd control. It is common for a five-year-old child to complete a full day of homeschool classes in under an hour, and that time can be divided up into smaller blocks throughout the day, depending on the child’s attention span and the other needs of the household (for example, if Mom’s attention must be shared with an infant sibling).

No one would consider building a house by starting with the roof: the foundation must come first. So it is with education: learning to read is the foundation for education. That base must be securely in place before other things are attached to it. Reading is the visual recognition of language; handwriting is the physical application of that language. Understanding the values represented by numbers and using them to count are the equivalents of understanding the sounds represented by letters and using those letters to form words. Patiently wait until your child is reading fluently to add other formal academic studies, such as history, geography, and science. Help your child develop a love of reading first, and then let the pleasure of reading lead him into other areas. And, by all means, please continue to read books to your child, color pictures with your child, sing songs, make crafts, play with puzzles, go shopping and bake cookies together, and have all manner of delightful experiences together.

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Encouragement for Parents, Homeschool How-To's, Math, Phonics, Reading, Scheduling, Writing

Questions from a First-time Homeschooler

December 1, 2005 by 1 Comment

I recently received an email from a new-to-homeschooling mom, asking several questions and expressing her anxiety over the first year of educating her children at home. Due to a glitch in the email system, her letter arrived with an incomplete email address, preventing me from answering her personally. Since her questions and comments (listed below in bold type) are of such general interest, allow me to answer them here in a more public forum and thereby share my advice, encouragement, and links to related articles with others who may need them also.

Dear Jane Doe,
What you referred to as the anxiety-producing elements of homeschooling are exactly the same as what I refer to as the guilt-producing aspects. My initial reaction to any homeschooling dilemma I encountered was certainly anxiety, followed quickly by guilt if and when I neglected to address the problem. I am convinced that each and every homeschooling parent deals with these feelings from time to time (which is why this website exists!). Please do not feel that you are alone; we have all been there.

You asked how to avoid the thoughts that intrude on your daily routine. I wish I knew. However, while I do not know how to prevent the thoughts from entering one’s head, I can recommend some ways I dealt with the thoughts once they occurred:
— I ignored them.
— I reminded myself of why we chose to do what we were doing.
— I made a list of our reasons for homeschooling and referred to it often.
— I talked to other homeschooling parents, and we encouraged each other.

What if I miss something?
Many new homeschooling families wonder if they are covering enough material, if they are doing enough activities, or if they are missing some important areas altogether. My advice is to take on this project of homeschooling in the same way you would take on any other project: make a plan, and then follow it. Begin by planning how to cover the academic basics: language & grammar, mathematics, science, history. Include the areas that are important to your family’s values: Bible, manners, sex education (from your family’s point of view). Add a few independent living skills as the opportunities arise: cooking, laundry, money management, home repair, auto maintenance. Balance it all out with your students’ areas of personal interests: music, sports, art, drama, animal care. Once you have taught your student how to teach himself through reading and research, you can turn him loose to learn any other supplemental things his little heart desires.

Obviously, a Kindergarten student does not need the same aggressive academic program that a high school student needs. Beginners and early elementary students need to master reading, handwriting, counting, adding, and subtracting before they can fully understand the concepts of history, geography, and science (subjects which can wait to be introduced until 4th grade). [See Where Do I Begin? and Too Much, Too Fast = Burnout]

What if the public school students are ahead in something?
Focus on what your student is doing and what your student needs help in. Your student may be ahead in some areas and behind in others, but it also may not matter very much in the grand scheme of things. (By the time they began high school, my students were ahead of their peers in mathematics and public speaking skills, but far behind their public-schooled peers in foul language and sexual promiscuity.) Back when we were all first-time parents, we were told not to worry about whose child rolled over first, whose child crawled first, or whose child got the first tooth. We were told that by the time they all were fifteen years old, no one would be able to tell which child did what first. The same applies to homeschooling: once our children reach their forties, no one will know (or care) at what age they first learned to use punctuation.

When my child misbehaves, is it because we are homeschooling?
It might be; but it might not be. If your child is objecting to pursuing education at home, behavior issues may occur. It may also be attributed to lesson plans that are not suited to your child’s style of learning. For example, if you are presenting a lesson on volume by merely asking your child to read the explanation in the math book, but your child would learn better by stacking and counting sugar cubes, the child just may not be “getting it” and is acting out his frustration. Another time the child may be bored because the material is too simple and would benefit from moving on to more advanced lessons. [See Learning Styles and Kids Will Be Kids]

What if they grow up to resent my homeschooling them?
Resentment can come from many sources. Immature people (regardless of age) resent anyone’s attempts to influence them. An immature child may temporarily resent being pulled away from what he or she considers to be social contacts of major importance. With maturity will come the realization that Mom and Dad knew best and did what they felt they had to do.

Some may point out that not every family claiming to “homeschool” is doing an adequate job. In the worst cases, I have to say that students can be truant from homeschooling as well as truant from public schooling, but both cases are more likely to be the result of parental neglect than educational neglect. In such situations, the lack of parental involvement will be resented more than the lack of schooling. [See “Parent” Is a Verb]

I know I should relax… I don’t want constant worry to ruin the experience.
Are you doing the best job that you can do at this time? Are you trying to learn what you can do to improve upon your weaknesses? That is all anyone can ask of you. Take one step at a time, handle one task at a time, and tackle one day at a time. You and your children are in this experience together — work together as a team and discover new things together. No one is ever too old to learn something new: education is a life-long process. As you focus on the experiences themselves, you will begin to realize how much your children (and you) are learning, instead of worrying about what your students are possibly missing. [See Do the Best Job You Can…]

I feel that God has called me to do this and that He wouldn’t ask me to do it and then not help me.
Very true. What God asks us to do, He also equips us to do. Now trust Him that He still knows what He is doing.

Every homeschooler I have ever spoken with has gone through the same thoughts of guilt or anxiety at some point in time. Some of us are able to overcome our feelings of inadequacy quickly, and others of us take a little longer and need more encouragement. Reach out to other homeschoolers you know and share your experiences with them. Chances are good that you will find that they have gone through the exact same emotions. However, a positive byproduct of sharing is that you will learn from each other, and you both may come away with some new techniques to try or some new ideas for activities and lessons. You may even decide to get your students together for group activities or field trips.

When I reached my second September as a homeschooling parent, I began to feel better about what I was doing. I had gone through this process at least once before, and I began to feel like a “veteran.” The longer I homeschooled my children, the more experience I had to fall back on, and the more I knew about my students and the ways in which they learned. I have said before that the first year of homeschooling is often the most difficult because it is entirely uncharted territory, both for the teacher and for the students. Do not give up too quickly. Be encouraged — your worst days may already be behind you.

[For further information on this topic, see Surviving the First Year of Homeschooling after Leaving Public School.]

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Encouragement for Parents, Homeschool How-To's

The Beauty of Logic (and Sudoku Puzzles)

November 11, 2005 by Leave a Comment

There are currently two distinct groups reading these words. The first group is those who are nodding their heads in agreement with the “beauty of logic” sentiment in the title and saying, “Yes, logic does have a certain beauty and precision.” The other group are non-math people who are wondering what in the world I could be referring to, while shaking their heads and thinking, “She has really gone off the deep end this time — logic is just painful and confusing!”

By “the beauty of logic,” I mean that there is always a right answer and a wrong answer in logical situations. You know where you stand with logic. Numbers, for example, are logical concepts with finite definitions: two always means exactly two; two never means three; two never means purple. Word meanings can become fuzzy and illogical, especially in the English language, where a word such as love can mean things as diverse as: 1) a deep emotional attachment [love my husband]; 2) nothing, such as a score of zero in a tennis game [two-love]; or 3) an intense desire for or appreciation of something [love this pizza; love that song].

I had tried to share my appreciation of math and logic with my children, but my young son’s distaste of anything math-related kept him from developing a similar emotion. Until now. The summer of his pre-calculus course revealed to him his true abilities in math, but his current semester of university math is opening the door to fun math and logic. And dragging him in. As a computer science major, he is taking a class with the tongue-twisting name of Combinatorics — an exploration of math as arrangements and patterns of numbers. That professor recently assigned some math puzzles of a sort that I have been doing for a long time just for fun. (Yes, I am a sick, sick person, and I do need to get out more often.) It seems that a large portion of the world is discovering these puzzles (now called “Sudoku”), as newspapers are adding them to their daily fare of crosswords and “Jumble” word puzzles.

My son was home for a weekend recently and inquired about these puzzles. He knew they were included in his upcoming assignments and wanted some inside information on how to solve them. Sudoku puzzles consist of a 9 x 9 grid in which the digits 1-9 are entered into each row, column, and 3×3-grid portion so that the digits do not repeat. Enter the Beauty of Logic concept. Logic dictates that the puzzles can be solved through systematic strategies, not merely through trial-and-error guessing. As I explained a few tips to my son for solving the puzzles, his admittedly-non-math-person girlfriend became interested and asked for a sample puzzle to try. When I headed to the computer to print some, my husband called after me, “Print one for me, too.” Our evenings since then have been consumed with clipboards, pencils, erasers, and puzzles as we compare notes on solving strategies and progress to higher difficulty levels.

Finding the one correct digit for any square of the puzzle should be done through a process of elimination: these could work, but those cannot work, so this one must work. I cannot arbitrarily decide that a three would look nice in this spot or that I have not used any fives lately, so I should give a five the opportunity to participate in this corner. The best digit for completing a row is not a matter for discussion: when the other eight digits have already been used, there can be only one possible choice for the final digit. The rules of the game specify that each of the digits must be used only once in each subsection. Therefore, if a digit appears twice, I must assume it is a mistake to be corrected, not something to be tolerated as an alternative solution. If you and I work at solving identical puzzles, our solutions should also be identical — if they do not match, we cannot both be right.

That is what I see as The Beauty of Logic: there are distinct strategies that can be employed to arrive at the correct answer; we do not have to stumble blindly, depending on guesswork and instincts to succeed. There can be many wrong answers, but there is one correct answer. Logic is not a matter of interpretation, nor is it different things to different people. A wrong answer is not open to debate. Incorrect answers must be changed, not tolerated or lauded as “diversity.” If only the rest of life could be so simple.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Encouragement for Parents, Learning Outside the Books, Math, Visual Learning

The Importance of Play in Education

September 21, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Back in the days when my children were toddlers and our home resembled a Fisher-Price obstacle course, I used to envy a local toy lending library. What if I could follow that method at home and keep all toys, books, and other childhood paraphernalia sorted into locked cabinets, allowing my “patrons” to borrow only three items per week? The restrictions could be expanded to enforce the replacement of all playthings after 5:00 pm and prohibit their removal before 9:00 am the next morning. Nothing would be allowed to remain on the floor in major traffic paths, puzzle pieces would never be lost (or eaten), and life would be peaceful and pleasant. That, however, was only a daydream, and like nearly all daydreams, it is not compatible with reality.

As messy as playtime can become, I have learned to see the tremendous value in it for education. When I enrolled my son in public Kindergarten (yes, that was a mistake, but I remedied it the following year), the teacher spent a brief time with each child and assessed their skills. She praised me for having given my son so many different experiences, from trips to the zoo to reading books to him. She praised his ability to use scissors, crayons, markers, and paintbrushes with relative proficiency. She said he ranked far above some of her previous students in his knowledge and talents. Silly me, all this time I had thought that was what parents were supposed to do with their children. What has filled the past five years, if a child entering Kindergarten has never used crayons or sat on a lap to hear a story?

I have friends who have recently returned from several years as missionaries in Africa. In hearing the mundane details of their daily routines, I began to see deeper into the value of children’s playtime. The toys I used to dread picking up day after day are not available to most African-bush children or to the poorer children of any culture. The education supplied by what we consider to be simple toys was demonstrated in the adult man who was employed as household help for this missionary family. He worked for them for several years and yet never could master the task of stacking the bowls, pans, or containers in the kitchen cupboards. The colorful, nesting cups that my children stacked into towers, knocked over, nested together, dumped out, and stacked again had not played a foundational role in this man’s education. As a result, he was not familiar with a concept that is so incredibly common to most of us. This gap in his education left him confused as to how to successfully arrange the kitchenware with largest on the bottom and smallest on the top. Repeated demonstrations and instructions did not help. His lack of experience in the early years had left a seemingly permanent mark.

Just as adults can become bored with doing the same repetitive tasks over and over, children also appreciate variety in their playtime. If I can belabor the nesting cups topic just a bit longer, any variety within that task will act to further the child’s understanding of the nesting concept, whether various shapes of cups (round, square, hexagonal, etc.) or different types of stackable items (paper cups, Mom’s measuring cups with handles, or an assortment of empty shoe boxes in graduated sizes). Other types of toys expand upon this same nesting principle: stacking colored rings onto a peg in size order, nesting dolls, even shape-sorter toys combine the principle of matching with nesting the object into its coordinating hole. Likewise, variety enriches lessons of all types for older children; hands-on learning goes much farther than simply breaking up the boredom.

Children learn from the moment they take their first breath, from learning how to express discomfort and that their expression results in someone’s attention to those needs, to observing how others around them eat, speak, walk, and draw pictures. Toy tools give early practice to the budding carpenters, just as toy kitchens help to prepare the future cooks. Puzzles teach problem solving, fine-tune motor skills, and improve observation and memory skills. Dolls offer children “parenting” opportunities, from dressing the baby to cuddling and comforting. Art and craft materials broaden a child’s ability to express his ideas, improve motor coordination, and satisfy the grandparents’ need for something to put on the refrigerator door. Stop for a moment to ponder the educational gaps in the child who grows up without any of these “playtime” skills.

It has been said that “play is a child’s work,” and there are many aspects where that is true. Children work hard at their playtime, often becoming physically exhausted through their efforts and needing a rest from playtime. We should also expect that they will experience mental fatigue when they have been engrossed in play tasks that require thinking and problem solving, such as nesting the boxes mentioned above (for the littlest ones) or assembling a jigsaw puzzle (for somewhat older children).

Moms and Dads, although your family’s collection of playthings may never seem to stop growing and rarely seems to be out from underfoot, be assured that those toys are serving a very valuable purpose in your little ones’ lives. The more experiences you can offer your children with widely varied play activities, including problem solving concepts or art and craft materials, the better equipped your children will be when it comes time for them to delve into “real” learning experiences.

[See also Sorting Toys Is Algebra]

Filed Under: Encouragement for Parents, Encouraging Your Student, Family Unity, Learning Outside the Books, Preschoolers, Tactile Learning
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