Little Book of Homeschooling
Either you have had it with arguing with a public or private school about the, "educational needs" of your child(ren), or you always questioned the wisdom of turning over your precious child(ren) to the "system." Now you’re wondering if you "can" homeschool. Homeschooling is legal in all 50 U.S. states, with regulations. But in all states it is doable.
Now, "can" you do it? Yes, studies of homeschoolers and public schoolers show that even if you let the child follow their own inclination in educating themselves, you and the child will do a better job of educating your child than the public schools or private schools. Public school is very good at doing what it was designed to do, create factory workers for the Industrial Revolution. Although, not the best in the world, still adequate in most ways. The question you have to ask yourself is, "Is that what I want for my child?" Do you want your child to be a factory worker? Or, do you want your child to be innovative, creative, self motivated, goal directed, and future oriented? If you answered yes to the second question, you can do this, you need to do this, and you want to do this. You can homeschool!
Feeling like you're doing something that is wrong:
After you have sent in your district's paper work, and school has begun in your local community, or after you have withdrawn your child/children from public school in disgust, you may feel like you are doing something wrong. This will be true especially if the local authorities (teachers and principals) have told you can't homeschool because (insert reason here).
No one really talks about this feeling. You will have people who ask, "Why aren't your kids in school?" This will add to the feeling you are doing something wrong. Your relatives or neighbors may be skeptical of homeschooling and ask questions like, "won't the authorities come after you?" and this will add to the feeling that you are doing something wrong.
List serves you belong to will have many long-time homeschoolers on them, or scared beginners, and the chit chat will focus on practicalities such as how to file forms, when and where meetings are held, and who to know. But the uneasy feeling that you are doing something wrong is not mentioned much.
The feeling has several sources:
- You are doing something that is different from what is socially expected (this is a biggie).
- You are doing something that is probably different than from what you expected.
- You are doing something that is different from what your relatives expected, and this will include neighbors and friends.
- You still have vestigial memories of homeschoolers in the news for violating some law.
- Strangers ask you questions about why your children are not in school.
- You have your own fears about whether or not you can really do this well, and worry that you will ruin your children.
- You have heard of news stories where parents have claimed to be homeschooling as part of a larger abuse case. This is rare but it does happen. Parents are either not homeschooling but claim to be, or homeschooling is irrelevant to the abuse allegations.
The other thing that helps mitigate the feeling that you are doing something wrong is time. As time passes and no one comes to your door and asks you questions about what you are doing, you begin to relax and see that there are no authorities out to get you. For the most part public schools and public school officials find homeschoolers irrelevant. If you are not part of a homeschool assistance program (or dual enrolled) they receive no funding for your child and they would rather pretend you do not exist.
It is a good idea to let neighbors and those close to your home know you are homeschooling just so they don't make assumptions about why your kids are not in school. But don't engage them in theological discussions about the benefits and drawbacks to homeschooling; it just isn't their business. In time they will see your children as an asset to the community.
Chores:
Teach your children good manners. More than anything else this is what people will notice about your children. This is what people mean by socialization, whether or not they know it; this is the difference they are looking for. Manners will cover all kinds of perceived differences between your children and public school children, and people will remember those polite home schooled kids.
Frustrations:
Make a schedule: It is a good exercise to break the day up into hours and half hours, list the times, fill it in with activities and work times; then you have something to vary from, and you will. View it as a suggestion from yourself.
Set goals for your homeschool year: You will meet some and miss some. Some will be important and you will find you meet these, others seemed important when you thought of them, but when you don’t meet them you will see their relative unimportance. If it is truly important you can make it a goal for next year.
Library Books: Set library books aside in a special place, mark on the calendar when they are due. Do the same for videos. You can use up more homeschool money paying library fines…
Responses to non-homeschoolers: Have a set response to use with people who ask about homeschooling and why your kids are not in school; this will save you time later not thinking about what you should have said when they asked.
The School Year: Take an extra week off before starting school in the fall and enjoy relaxing while your friends with children in public school are stressing about back to school. Take your end of the summer vacation that week and enjoy the lack of crowds at local attractions.
Mixing family life with homeschooling: Make family holidays and events times to study culture and traditions; call it social studies or history. Someone getting married? Study marriage ceremonies in different cultures or religions… This is when the kids are open to something relevant in their own lives.
Science: In Grades K-8 science can be nature studies. Go outside and look around, keep a nature journal and have children write down or draw what they see. In Grades 9-12 children need 3 sciences, general, biology, and chemistry for college prep, a good background in nature is a boon.
Math: Remember that learning is not linear. Addition, subtraction and multiplication and division may come slow to some children, and then they zoom through higher math, the trick is to not make them hate math before that.
History: Humans are story-making creatures. We all love stories. History is the story of what happened before. Don’t make history a drudge by making dates more important than the story behind the event. The dates can be looked up or learned later, like in college; the story is what is important.
Language Arts: This is the one subject that is more important than the others. A love of reading will carry a child so far, if I had only one subject I could teach my child, I would choose language arts. Communication is so important, now more than ever with so many forms of communication available. Language skills are used in all careers and courses. Let your children see you read, read to them, let them read to you, and let them see you write. Read their writing, and let them read their writing to you. If your child can read and understand what he reads, he can teach himself almost everything else.
General Learning:
- How did this (insert event) come about, what caused it? (thumb)
- Can I describe this (insert event) to another person, what would I say? (pointer)
- How does this connect to other (insert event) similar events? Did something like this ever happen before? (middleman)
- What have I learned that I didn’t know before? What is new to me? (ringman)
- How can I use what I have learned here in another (similar or different) situation in the future? (pinky)
preschool – 2nd grade
- What can I tell mommy or daddy about it?
- Is this like anything else I know?
- What did I learn?
- Can I use this in the future?
- What happened here?
- How would I explain it to someone who was not here when it happened?
- What things like this have happened before?
- What did I learn about or by what happened here?
- How can I use what I learned in the future?
- What were the events that led up to what happened here?
- How would I describe what happened here to someone who knew nothing about it?
- What has happened in the past that is similar to what has happened here?
- What was learned by me or others by what has happened here?
- How can this knowledge be used in the future in the same or similar events?
Doing what works
Don’t do what doesn’t work. This seems like simple advise, but we sometimes get so invested in what we are doing that even if it doesn’t seem to be working after a reasonable amount of time, we just keep chipping away at it. There really is a difference between giving a strategy some time to click with a child, and beating the child over the head with it. If Sammy is not getting math using blocks, try using frogs, if frogs don’t work, try using memorization for a few weeks. Kids develop different skills at different times, and a few weeks can make a big difference. Keeping at a strategy that is not working is the first ingredient in burn-out.
Do do what works. We find that we must change strategies frequently. My kids get bored very easily. We change strategies just about every month. We go from work books one month to videos the next month. If we don’t do this, they rebel and a mass rebellion is nothing to sneeze at. Having six children refusing to do school work is impressive. Even one could be daunting. So be flexible, and be ready to change strategies if the one you’re using has lost its shine. For us, changing strategies frequently is a strategy that works.
Having lots of resources is the key to having lots of choices. Use your local library, local homeschooling member library, or a good online resource such as Virtual Homeschool International (vhomeschool.net) to meet your family’s need for variety.
On the other hand, if Bobby loves worksheets and finds other methods such as working with blocks less interesting, then stick with worksheets until Bobby has satiated himself with worksheets. It could happen!
Rewards and PunishmentsNatural rewards: These are the intrinsic joy the child gets from his or her own behavior, as with the punishments, much beyond noticing takes way something from the experience for the child. “Nice painting, I bet you enjoyed doing it” is about all that you need to say, and much more takes away the praise the child is giving him or herself. We want to encourage this as much as possible as it is part of the rudder (self talk, self checking) by which the child will guide his or her life.
You may have heard of the book, “Punished by Rewards” by Alfie Kohn. One of the general ideas of this book is that if you reward every behavior, even the natural, joyful behaviors, you may indeed be punishing them by removing the intrinsic, or self reward the child finds in the behavior. You can extinguish, or basically kill the child’s innate desire to perform the behavior. The lesson here, don’t mess with what is already working. Don’t stamp out a child’s joy with too much praise or attention. Don’t reward a behavior that the child already finds rewarding. At least not too much.
For praise to be the most effective there needs to be three elements
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Praise needs to be timely. The praise you give your child must happen close enough in time so that your child connects the praise with what he or she did. Keep in mind that older children can wait longer between the action you are praising and the praise you give them.
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Praise needs to be specific. Saying "good job!" does not tell the child much about what you appreciate about what he or she did. Praise needs to be specific to be effective. Saying, "I see that you are working very hard on your penmanship and it really shows. Your upper case letters are touching both lines much more often today than they were yesterday (take paper) see here and here (point)." This is specific enough for the child to feel good about and useful to the child because he or she now knows what improvements you have noticed.
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General praise can be dangerous:
1. You may wonder why? By praising the child in a general way you leave the child wondering specifically what he or she did right, and how he or she can repeat the action. These questions can leave the child feeling inadequate and fearful. He may wonder what he did to get the praise and feel it is undeserved along with feeling as though he is a fake in some way. Many children will do something, "naughty" to correct your view of who they think they are. This begins a cycle of good behavior-praise, bad behavior-punishment, good behavior-praise, bad behavior-punishment, while with more information your child would be able to repeat the praiseworthy behavior.
2. General praise can be de-motivational. If the child feels that you will praise any activity or behavior, without noticing specifically what he did that was special or different, he may loose the desire to engage in that activity again. Think of yourself. If your partner says to you, "you do a great job with the children" does that make you feel like doing more of a great job? What if that was all he or she seemed to say about the time you put in to play ball with Betsy, or take Jimmy to a car show? Just how much would that mean to you? Now think of what praise like, "It means a lot to me that you care enough about Betsy to spend time teaching her to toss a ball; she really enjoys being with you. I notice how you explained everything so that she could understand" might affect your desire to play ball with Betsy again?
Praise needs to be sincere. Saying, "your room looks so clean!" in a high squeaky voice may make you feel better, but if the child knows the effort or job is not up to his or her better efforts, then your praise will be interpreted as insincere and you will loose credibility in the child's mind. Children are good at reading us, and if we want to be trusted we need to be honest. It is better to praise what you can about what the child has done, and ask the child to critique his or her own work. Saying, "I see you put a lot of time and effort into this project, that's great. Is there anything you can see that you might want to change if you were to do it again?" gives the child some praise for actual behavior while encouraging the child to self asses. This is credible in the child's eyes. It also teaches a skill.
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Praise your child infront of someone who's oppinion matters to the child.
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Let your child hear you praising him or her to someone else.
You can ask the child to make corrections several times this way without frustrating the child because he knows the goal, and he can see he is getting closer. The child will feel you are working with him instead of attacking his work.
Extended Family Life:
Community/friends:
Spiritually:
Financially:
Work Life:
Educationally:
Holidays
Child:__________________________
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Questions to ask yourself when creating curriculum: